LHASA (China): Tibet’s capital is booming, but for Gucang Dunzhu, it doesn’t much matter. The Lhasa local government boasts 12 per cent growth rates for the past four years, driven by massive investment from Beijing aimed at jumpstarting the largely agrarian economy.
But when he left his village in Tibet’s mountainous hinterland and came to the city 11 years ago, Gucang Dunzhu spoke only Tibetan and knew no life beyond that of a herdsman, leaving him few skills to capitalise on the boom.
“It’s not easy to find work,” said the 29-year-old, who eventually found a job in a cement factory.
As China celebrates the anniversary on Sept. 1, of Tibet’s becoming an “autonomous region” of the People’s Republic in 1965, it will be aiming to showcase its national integration.
But analysts say that, 40 years on, society is more fractured than ever, with Tibetans becoming an underclass lacking the skills to participate in Beijing-driven industrialisation.
Tibet has been ruled by China since the People’s Liberation Army invaded the Himalayan territory in 1950. Nine years later, Tibet’s god-king, the Dalai Lama, fled on horseback after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
The vast, sparsely populated region known as “the roof of the world” was designated the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1965, a gesture Beijing made to other areas with large ethnic minority populations too to give them more say over their own affairs.
At the same time, Beijing encouraged Han Chinese migration, both to underscore its claim to Tibet and in hopes that wealth generated by entrepreneurial migrants would trickle down.
Instead of wealth building harmony, though, analysts say it is contributing to a rich-poor gap that falls along ethnic lines.
“The government expansion is being driven by Beijing, it’s not being driven locally. And that’s creating a very polarised economy,” said Andrew Fischer, a development economist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In the centre of Lhasa, two giant golden yaks grace a roundabout, a gift from Beijing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Tibet’s “peaceful liberation” and a reminder that for centuries herding yaks and farming have been central to Tibetans’ way of life.
But for this anniversary, analysts say, it’s not yaks or monuments that Tibet needs, but schools.
Only about 13 per cent of Tibetans have secondary school education or above, Fischer said, compared with 50 per cent of Han Chinese. Forty per cent of Tibetans are illiterate.
That translates into a yawning income gap exacerbating the ethnic divide.
“The difference in income is there, but that’s because they (Chinese and Tibetans) are engaged in different industries,” said Xu Jianchang, of Tibet’s Development and Reform Commission.
He acknowledged that education programmes that might allow Tibetans to move off the farm and into industries were in their infancy.—Reuters
