Impoverishing Tibetans
As we have seen, the nature of development in Tibet is
complex and varies vastly from area to area. Despite the vision of a
developed west that China is putting out, still there are enormous divides
within China itself in terms of development, with the eastern coastal
cities booming, and the west largely left out of the economic
transformation taking place in larger
cities.
125
Within Tibet itself, the divides
are even more marked, and Gabriel Lafitte has argued that the
policies of urbanisation, centralisation, and modernisation have left
large social groups within Tibetan society, such as the
traditionally prosperous nomads, cut off from the new infrastructure.
Lafitte remarks: "If we look at the Tibetan Plateau as a whole,
Chinese impacts are highly concentrated in enclaves, especially the
urban enclaves, mining and resource extraction enclaves and military zones.
Meanwhile, other areas remain largely untouched, neither
subjected to intensive pressure to increase production, nor able to
access modern services and facilities."
126
The testimony which TCHRD has gathered from
recently arrived refugees from Tibet indicates that the state of
development in Tibet is a source of major concern, and that China's claims
about reduction of poverty, adequate health care, housing, food
security, lenient taxation policies, increased agricultural production,
and improving standard of living in Tibet are flawed and hollow.
China has had nearly 50 years in which to develop Tibet.
However, the development it has pursued has not taken
Tibetan concerns into account, and has primarily been about
maintaining political control in Tibet. There has been a marked absence
of grassroots development. And Lafitte notes, "What is
especially conspicuous by its absence is any attempt at
development of the West by investing in ... the people.
China's entire strategy for western development is locked
onto key projects which do little to build basic
infrastructure or train human beings in the skills needed
for grassroots development."
127
Its "civilising mission" can thus be placed in the context
of the history
of modern imperialism, and can be seen to have failed the
Tibetan people and to have infringed their right to
development. When we perceive the achievement of freedoms
as interdependent with the achievement of development, and
when we look at concepts such as "standard of living" from
a variety of Tibetan perspectives, we can see the way
forward for a sustainable and equitable pattern of
development in Tibet.
Unfortunately, presently the news trickling out from Chinese
officials and media is that the mistakes of the past will be
continued in the near future with the upcoming 10th Five
Year Plan for China. Population transfer remains a key
threat to Tibetan identity and culture. Post Hu Yaobang's
reforms and visit in 1980, Tibetans were promised an 85%
reduction in the number of Chinese cadres and large inputs
of central subsidies to boost the failing Tibetan economy.
The reduction of Chinese cadres was reassessed and
discontinued in 1983, and in fact the huge input of state
subsidies resulted in greater Chinese population transfer
into Tibet and "provided an incentive for Chinese cadres to
stay in Tibet."
128
Furthermore, China continues to be
beset by population pressure leading to increased
urbanisation and mass resettlement of millions from rural
China to burgeoning towns and cities. A report in the China
Daily quotes sources from the State Development Planning
Commission as saying that urbanization may be made a
priority in the 10th Five Year Plan. It explains that,
"China's guiding principle of urbanization is to plan and
develop super-large and large cities, expand medium-sized
cities, and improve small cities and towns."
129
A further report reveals that
"China is trying to help at least 100
million rural residents move into small urban areas within
the coming decade."
130
There are indications that China-wide the focus will remain
on large infrastructure projects with Li Rongrong,
vice-minister of
the State Development Planning Commission, revealing of the
soon to be released 10th Five Year Plan (2001-2005):
"The construction of railways, highways and airports,
and power grids in rural areas, coupled with the government's input
into technological upgrading by industrial firms will not only
generate demand for the achievement of short-term objectives, but also
create a favourable environment for long-term production and
consumption growth."
131
And yet despite the talk of developing the West,
bank loans to the Western areas of China account for only 15 percent
of the total for China.
132
The Develop the West campaign will rely on
developing highways, rail, hydro-electric power, gas and oil in the
western regions. China needs to fuel the development boom in the East
with energy from the West, including gas, oil and hydro-electric
schemes being planned in Tibet. The plan is to finance development of
the West in a number of ways including bilateral and commercial
foreign direct investment loans, lottery tickets, and Chinese policy
bank loans from banks such as the State Development Bank. "China
will lay stress on developing hydropower plants in the western region.
The goal is to realize `sending electric power from the west to
the east'."
133
Again education of and consultation with Tibetans
about these projects is sorely lacking, as is their
participation.
134
Two current development proposals give some indication
of China's intentions for Tibet in the next Five Year Plan.
The first example is the AES Dams Project. AES Corporation,
a multinational company based in the United States and
involved in electricity production, is planning to dam
the upper reaches of the Yellow River in Tibet.
The hydropower dam will cost US $170 million as a
joint venture between AES and a Hong Kong company the Truf
Busy Group Ltd. The dam is to be built at Drigang Lhaka in
Qinghai Province (Amdo). However, the electricity generated from
the project will not benefit local Tibetans, who have no access
to electricity, and will be directed towards the cities of Xining,
the Chinese-dominated capital of Qinghai, and Lanzhou, the capital
of Gansu Province. This project comes within wider plans to
produce more electricity to feed the rapid growth of Chinese
industries,
particularly in the East, but also to quickly build
infrastructure in the neglected West. However,
"the vast Tibetan hinterland of Qinghai remains beyond
electrification, except for county administrative centres
served by small hydro schemes."
135
Two nearby dams
(Longyangxia and Lijiaxia) have been the backbone of Chinese
settlement and industry in Qinghai, and it is planned that
the new dam will also accelerate the urbanisation and
Chinese settlement of this area of Tibet.
136
The dam comes
also in the context of increasing water shortage and erosion
problems in China. It is currently not known exactly what
the environmental impacts will be; equally there are
potential issues regarding resettlement and displacement of
local people.
The second development proposal in-line with China's
strategies for the West is the recent establishment of
PetroChina, a subsidiary of the Chinese National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC). CPNC has for decades been extracting
oil from the Tsaidam basin in northern Tibet. The oil
serves the needs of China's heavy industries, and the
proceeds from the extraction and sale of the oil, along with
the jobs involved, remain outside the grasp of Tibetans.
Along with oil, the resource rich Tsaidam basin produces
salt, gold, zinc, lead, potash and asbestos. These
resources have been extracted for use in what has become a
burgeoning petrochemical industry located in the arid
northern area of the Tibetan plateau. This
industrialisation has made possible the large-scale
settlement of Chinese workers and migrants to this
traditional Tibetan area. By 1991, over 200,000 of CNPC's
Chinese workers had been settled in western China.
137
In 1999 PetroChina was created out of CNPC, with the
decision-making and the Board of Directors remaining with
CNPC. This "new company", has plans to exploit Tibet's
natural resources for use in the boom cities of eastern
China and for the further industrialisation of Chinese
cities outside of the Tibetan plateau, including Xining and
Lanzhou. Recently discovered natural gas fields in the
Tsaidam basin (estimates have placed these reserves in the
range of 150 billion cubic metres) will be extracted and
transported out of Tibet through a pipe-line stretching to
the east
coast of China. According to a 1999 report from the China
Chemical Reporter available on the China Business Newsbase, the
ultimate destination of Tsaidam basin reserves is the
middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze basin including
Shanghai, Wuhan and Nanjing.
138
If this transmission proceeds as planned, within 20 years all of
Tibet's natural gas will be exhausted, with no benefit
for the Tibetan people.
If these two projects are an indication of the future
direction of development in Tibet, resources will
increasingly be extracted to supply China's urban and
industrial boom, while an ever-increasing number of
Chinese settlers will find employment inside Tibet to
support these projects.
After examining the socio-economic condition of the
Tibetan people it is clear that there is a huge gap between the
professed development that has taken place in Tibet and the real
development that has touched the lives of the Tibetan
people. The gap between the official discourse of
development and the lives of the people is often blurred
by the use of impressive facts and figures. In this paper
it is argued that the development that has taken place
in Tibet, rather than benefiting the Tibetan people has
actually occurred at their cost resulting in a violation
of their socio-economic rights, or broadly their right to
development.
Why has the influx of Chinese money not benefited the
average Tibetan? One explanation was advanced by an agency of
the Australian government which was hired by China to
evaluate investment in the Tibetan area of Qinghai.
The Australian Agency for International Development
concluded that the Chinese subsidies pump money into
large superstructures rather than targeting the poor.
This approach to poverty alleviation places emphasis on
activities that are project oriented in nature and not
necessarily on the participation of the poor in identifying
and developing solutions to their poverty. It also places
emphasis on large enterprise activities and does not target
poor households.139
This conclusion was echoed by the UN Development Report
submitted by China in July 1998 which states: “Within the
poor areas, the focus has been upon economic and
infrastructure development; there has been little
information about the effects of such projects on the lives
of poor families themselves.”
The large, cost-intensive projects create such developments
as dams and roads that do not directly raise the local
income. Much of the money spent on projects is drained off
by the cost of project administration. According to Chinese
statistics, for example, in 1993 the operating cost of TAR
projects was 18.34%; and in 1996 it was 21.8%. Moreover,
the true cost was higher since the artificially low
percentage excluded the pension and social security costs of
the workers. 140
These subsidies have a direct effect on the GDP (Gross
Domestic Product) while excluding the poor. Because the
money paid to the construction workers is included (by
Chinese definition) in the GDP, increased subsidies will
immediately increase the GDP. Furthermore, because the GDP
includes taxes collected from the region, all taxes paid by
the project workers and all monies received from the
residents to compensate for the development projects will
also appear in the GDP. 141 Finally, the GDP is increased
by the large profits made by the PRC in exploiting the
Tibetan natural resources. For example, according to
Chinese-published figures, the PRC has earned 30 billion
yuan from 1949 to 1997 on Tibetan forestry alone.142 It has
through 1997 drawn 14 million tons of crude oil and more
than 7 million tons of refined oil from the Tibetan Tsaidam
oil field, producing 1.5 million tons of oil and gas per
year.143 Its 1994 extraction of coals, metals, and salts in
the TAR alone was worth 580.24 million yuan.144
The bulk of China’s financial subsidies go towards
maintenance of Chinese personnel in Tibet. They also serve
as incentives for Chinese settlers. More often than not
economic growth takes place at a certain social cost.
Firstly, there is a divide between the developed urban
(Chinese dominated) economy and the
underdeveloped rural (Tibetan dominated economy). Within
the urban economy there is a divide between the Chinese migrants
and the poorer Tibetans. The economic growth that has taken place
in the urban economy has crystallised as a result of the proactive
role of the state in providing subsidies in ensuring a certain form
of planned development. The costs of these subsidies are partially
borne by the poor Tibetan farmers and nomads.
145
Traditional human rights law has always assumed that once
economic growth is achieved states would encourage the
growth of civil and political rights and eventually this
would benefit individuals and groups. Economic development,
however, threatens the cultural identity of minorities like
the Tibetans by supplying an excuse for the degradation
of their human rights guarantees.
While it has been a consistent claim of the Chinese
authorities that civil and political rights cannot be
realised without the realisation of economic and social
rights, the Chinese government's policies towards the
Tibetan people reveals a dual violation of both these
sets of rights. Economic policies of a state can result
in regimes of inequality. In Tibet the social cost of the
economic policies of the Chinese government plays itself
out as the violation of the right to development of the
Tibetan people.
What then does a right to development mean for the Tibetan
people? In a broad sense the right to development entitles
people to pursue economic, social, cultural and political
development. Thus, even conceding that the state remains
the final administrator of the right, the state's right
to pursue economic development is contingent upon its
observance of its duties to the people.
146
By treating development not merely as the right to
economic development but as a comprehensive economic, social and
cultural process, the declaration severely contests the form of
development followed by the Chinese state. China treats the right to
development as a hierarchy of rights; with plain economic development at
the top. China's strategy for economic growth expressly permits
the delay of human rights protections. The policy of population
transfer, for example, allows it to degrade cultural rights in the name
of economic development. China has likewise failed to assure
Tibetan involvement in development. In the case of the
violation of the Tibetan peoples' right to development,
the verdict on the Chinese government is written by the
suffering of the Tibetan people.
The following accounts of recently arrived Tibetan
refugees' views of development in Tibet, powerfully disturb
the narrative of progress and poverty eradication that
the Chinese government has offered.
Dawa, a young farmer from Kyirong County, Shigatse
Prefecture, arrived in Dharamsala on 25 January 2000.
He reports that: "In general, Tibetans have not received
many benefits from development in Tibet. While Tibetans
can run businesses, they are required to pay heavy taxes.
These taxes are at a higher rate than Chinese settlers
running similar businesses. Tibetans can only run a
business in their home village, whereas Chinese settlers
are free to open businesses anywhere in Tibet. If a
Tibetan businessperson did set up a business in another
town, they would have to pay double the usual taxes and
rates, even double the cost of electricity."
Nyima, a young nomad from Nagchu Prefecture, arrived
in Dharamsala on 11 February 2000, and feels that "Tibetans
receive no benefit at all from the construction and other
economic development taking place in my region."
A young man, from Ngamring County, Shigatse Prefecture,
arrived in Dharamsala on 29 January 2000. He felt that
the Chinese model of development in Tibet "is all a show
to the outside world. In the rural areas there are no
proper schools or infrastructure. In my area the roads
which are built go to mines."
While it may be true that some Tibetans have benefited from
the development that has taken place in Tibet, we must ask
what has been lost, and recognise that today in Tibet many
have yet to see any tangible improvements in their day
to day lives. Lobsang Sangay writing of the development
that has occurred, comments that, "most Tibetans have
not felt themselves to be the beneficiaries" Rather,
Tibetans have felt increasingly marginalized in their
own territory and see themselves as mere observers of an
economic development benefiting others."
147
Development in Tibet is one of China's greatest claims
to success, but the picture emerging is of a land of
haves and have-nots. The promises made have yet to be
fulfilled and the cost borne in the decades of Chinese
rule has left the issue of "development", which could be a
real avenue of change and empowerment for Tibetan people,
tainted and controversial. We can only hope that in the
future fresh strategies and approaches will yield concrete
gains for Tibetans in realising their right to development.
Their participation will be the key.
[ Next:
Appendix: Toiling Hard for Basic Subsistence ]
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