The Economic and Social Development 

The United Nations views development as a process of “fulfilment of civil and political rights and the freedom to participate in both the decision making process and the enjoyment of the fruits of development in all spheres.”  

The White Paper in length, boasts of guaranteeing “the rapid and healthy progress of Tibet's modernization drive and the development of Tibet's society and economy in line with the basic interests of the Tibetan people”. But an impartial revision of the facts behind the official rhetoric presents the true picture of the dismal state of affairs in Tibet.  

Since its annexation of Tibet, China has imposed development projects on Tibet without consulting the local Tibetan people. A clear example of an imposed development project is the hydroelectric power station in Lake Yamdroktso. Tibetans regard the lake as a sacred place, which has been desecrated by the construction of the power station. Moreover the project has serious environmental implications, as the water level will continue to drop considerably each year. Hence Tibetans adamantly opposed the construction of this station but to no avail. Similar is the case with the Panam Rural Integrated Development Project, proclaiming that this project will boost the grain production of the Panam area in Central Tibet. Considering the fact that Panam is already one of Tibet's main ‘bread baskets', the real aim of the project, thus, was to transport the extra grain to the mainland and will attract huge number of Chinese workers and/or farmers to the region which will harm the interest of the local Tibetans. The Yamdroktso and Panam Rural Integrated Development Project are few examples which typify the development policies imposed by Beijing without taking into account the Tibetan views, sentiments and concerns. [1] Except for a handful of Chinese loyalists selected by Beijing, Tibetans have been systematically denied participation and lack effective political means to set their own economic development priorities in the practical realization of the priorities set by Beijing.  

China injects funds and investments with a strategic focus to develop its western region including Tibet. However, these investments and specifically the much-hyped economic boom has failed to benefit the Tibetans as Tibet still remains one of the poorest regions in China with huge income disparity between urban-rural populations; malnutrition among Tibetan children continued to be widespread in many areas of the TAR. On the contrary, the real beneficiaries of such policies are the Chinese, concentrated in a few urban centres. The non-Tibetans including Hui Muslims and the Han Chinese benefit extremely from these changes, while 85% of the Tibetans who live in rural areas have been excluded, with many of them still living in state of abject poverty. The government investments are rather heavily concentrated in few hands and few ‘highly prized status projects'; consequently, the benefits are also concentrated in few hands and in small areas, while the needs of the common Tibetan peoples remain unaddressed. A huge share of the government spending has been targeted more on resource development like large-scale projects (of dubious economic value, but important strategic value) such as the Qinghai-Tibet railroad and Gormo-Lhasa railway line which is projected to require more than 20 billion Yuan in investment. Jiang Zemin said during a visit to the United States that the railway project will go ahead at any cost even though it doesn't make any economic sense. He cited political reasons for the decision.  

Contrary to Chinese government claims that the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Project employs and economically benefits local Tibetans in myriad ways, numerous eyewitnesses have spoken otherwise. Louisa Lim of BBC wrote that workers at the Qinghai-Tibet Railway project had come from all corners of China for the building of the Golmud-Lhasa section and Tibetan seemed to be playing little part. Much of the required skilled labours are imported from China, along with many of the consumer goods. And in turn those skilled workers export much of their savings back to China. According to an independent study, “Approximately 95 percent of official Chinese immigrants are employed" in the state- owned enterprises. In contrast, Tibetans living in rural areas have very little if any non-farm employment with their fortunes largely defined by the prices they receive for their agricultural commodities. [2]  

Similarly, the expenditure on government administration in the TAR accounted for 14 per cent of total government expenditure, 5 per cent more than the national average. But on the other end of the scale, despite the melancholic human development indicators in the TAR, social spending or human development such as education, health, employment and local participation is given much lesser priority than what is provided at the national level. For instance, only 8.5 per cent of government expenditure in the TAR was spent on the operating expenses of education as against over 15 per cent of national expenditure spent on education. Similar is the case with public health care system and agricultural productions. Hence, the government spending was mainly focused on the government's own prioritised infrastructure projects rather than on the basic needs of the local population. This shows that Tibetans have neither the economic resources nor the education to compete for the new jobs and positions that the Western Development policies set up in their land.  

Another feature of the White Paper is its robust claim of rapid economic growth buttressed by some impressive but questionable figures. Before we go into the farcical details of these figures, it is worth noting that the official information policies are still marked by selectivity and the analysis propagated by the Chinese reflects more the will to spread messages about the successes of official policies. Moreover, the real situation in Tibet has been diluted through exaggerated claims of economic development and falsified figures of prosperity. Gyaltsen Norbu, the former “TAR” Chairman, said in 1997, “We should do away with this unhealthy trends in boasting and exaggeration and hiding the truth from the higher levels in the work of aiding the poor”. [3] Zhu Rongji, while admitting the unreliability of Chinese statistics said that the authorities for their own self-interest manipulate statistics. The provincial authorities seem to have mastered the art of doctoring the statistics.  

The White Paper says, “In the last four decades, Tibet has progressed by leaps and bounds in the system, structure and total volume of its economy … From 1965 to 2003, the GNP of Tibet increased from 327 million Yuan to 18.459 billion Yuan, and the GDP [4] per capita rose from 241 Yuan to 6,874 Yuan”. But a closer appraisal reveals the real cause that triggered the so-called “growth”. It is the tertiary sector, which is the vital engine behind the current GDP growth. This sector is an amalgam of four categories ranging from transport and trade to finance, social services, and government administration and the growth is concentrated on these “hard infrastructures”. Among this sector, the category known as ‘government agencies, party agencies and social organizations' is by far the largest category, both in terms of absolute economic value and in terms of growth performance. It represents spending on government and communist party administration, along with related branch organizations, and possibly non-military categories such as police, courts and jails.

In 2001, the tertiary sector accounted for almost 50% of the provincial GDP, and construction for just over 15 percent. Industry and mining accounted for less than 8% and agriculture for about 27% of the GDP. In contrast, throughout the rest of China the tertiary sector rarely accounts for more than one-third of the GDP.  

According to the TIN report, between 1998 and 2001 the GDP of Tibet grew from 9.12 billion Yuan to 13.87 billion Yuan, which is a difference of 4.76 billion Yuan (UK£299m; US$575m; EURO433m). The primary and secondary sectors accounted for 13 per cent and 25 per cent respectively, while the tertiary sector grew by 62 per cent. Government and party agencies accounted for more than one-third of this increase in the tertiary sector. The official reports imply that the growth in agriculture and industry have been rather sluggish, growing at far below the GDP growth rates. The worst performance was recorded in agriculture, which is the main activity of most Tibetans and accounted for 75 per cent of the Tibetan employment and 90 per cent of the rural employment in TAR. The value of the total agricultural output had increased by only 4 per cent in 2002, which was less than one-third and one-fourth of the overall growth rates of GDP and tertiary sector respectively. Given that 85 per cent of the Tibetans live in the rural areas, sluggish agricultural growth would have primarily affected the Tibetans. Similarly, industry and mining also grew by only 6.5 per cent in 2002 accounting for only about half of the GDP growth rate. The state subsidies and investment fuelled the boom in the construction of infrastructure in the urban areas which is reported as economic growth in the accounting of GDP. [5]  

Despite the May 2004 White Paper's claim of bringing development and modernity to Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), there has been no signs of reduction in the disproportionate level of poverty in Western China. However, the much-hyped economic boom has failed to benefit the Tibetans and other ethnic minorities, as Tibet still remains one of the poorest regions in China with huge income disparity between urban-rural populations. This fact is evidenced in a report entitled “China Human Development Report, 1997 and 1999” published by World Bank and the United Nation Development Programme, it is stated that UNDP has consistently found that the TAR and other Tibetan areas are ranked lower than most other areas of China in the Human Development Index, which uses indicators such as education, income, and health. The publication further reported that “Tibet is the poorest and least developed region of China with a human development index of only 0.39” placing it within the bottom 12 of a list of the world's 49 officially recognized least developed regions, between Rwanda and Maldives.  

The taxation system imposed on the Tibetans is by no means preferential. Taxation is one of the methods employed by the Chinese authorities to impose control on the Tibetan population, particularly the nomads and herders in remote rural regions of Tibet. The increasing taxation causes financial hardship, reducing many nomads to begging as a source of income. The farmers who cannot afford and fail to pay taxes (representing sometimes half of their average annual income) have their animals or even grazing land taken away by the authorities. Taxes have been levied on their crop yield, number of animals, animal products, number of family members, as well as water grass and building taxes. There were reports of official ruling by local authorities in certain regions of Tibet where limits were imposed on the number of livestock each family can have. Where families fail to adhere to official limits, fines are extracted. [6] In addition to the harsh regional policies, the Tibetan also suffer due to the system of decentralization of the tax organization, accordingly, the local cadres and state enterprise workers at a shang or township level have to fund most of their own wages and costs from revenue they raise themselves. The cadres do this by increasing the tax rates, by keeping the price paid by the government for compulsory procurement of grain of livestock much below the market rate, or by underestimating the weight or the quality of animals produced in lieu of taxes.

Chinese haves Vs Tibetan have-nots  

The Chinese authorities continue to gloat over the reduction of the number of Tibetans living in absolute poverty in the TAR. It appears that the China's official calculation of the number of people living in poverty does not account for increases in the cost of living. Thus, the nomads and farmers who were once declared as living in absolute poverty appear to be statistically 'richer' because their incomes have increased. In fact, the rise in income of Tibetans is accompanied by higher rise in the cost of living. The consumer price index of the rural areas, available from the official ‘Tibet Bureau of Statistics', shows that between 1992 and 2001 the cost of living in rural TAR rose by 97 per- cent while the rural incomes rose by only 69 percent. Thus the actual purchasing power of rural incomes was 14 per cent lower in 2001 than in 1992. The standard of living of the average Tibetan cannot be represented by literal growth figures, but by actual purchasing power. Calculated in these terms the official statistics reported by the Chinese government describe a dismal situation. Tibetans are likely to be as poor, if not more than before as the basic costs of food and necessities have risen immensely, not to mention the rapidly increasing fees for education and health services.  

The income figures underpin a sharp fall in rural living standards in the TAR as compared to the rest of China during the last decade. From 1993 the rural household incomes swiftly fell to the lowest in China, even lower than those of Guizhou, which is usually considered to be the poorest province of China. All of the other western provinces had already reported rural incomes greater than 1,500 Yuan in 2001. Therefore, although Tibetan rural incomes were allegedly growing fast, they were also growing from the lowest level in the region. [7]  

They further claim that ‘the formulation of policies and measures had greatly promoted the modernization drive in Tibet and improved its people's living standards'. In contrast to the officially expressed benign intentions of these policies, most of the development projects established in Tibet are aimed to benefit primarily the urban Chinese settlers particularly the Chinese businessman, investors and government officials. Besides, the Central authorities in Beijing make all the decisions and formulate all the strategic policies without taking into account participation and assessment of the local inhabitants. The Tibet Information Network has reported “energy resources including hydropower and gas are being exploited primarily for use in eastern China, rather than to assist industrialization in the West.” Moreover, those projects are developed and implemented without consulting Tibetans or assessing its impact on Tibet's fragile environment.  

The White Paper boasts of the ‘transportation network with national highways and 14 provincial highways as the trunk lines, with more than 41,300 kilometres open to traffic and the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet railway that began in 2001'. One might wonder why Beijing is putting so much into Tibet for nothing. All the investments such as the construction of roads, airports, railways etc, were aimed specially to transfer Tibet's resources, to transfer the excess population back to Tibet and to integrate Tibet into China proper.  

The Tibetan plateau contains a wealth of natural resources, including gold, copper, uranium, wood and salt. It is due to such bountiful resources that the Chinese name for Tibet is Xizang, which literally means ‘Western Treasure House'. Under Article 9 of the Chinese constitution Tibet's resources — forests, medicinal herbs, wildlife, relics, and minerals — belong to the state, the only article that has been firmly and vigorously implemented by the Chinese authorities in Tibet. Since the launch of the Western Development project in June 1999, China further intensified the extraction of Tibet's natural resources and channelled coal, wood, oil, natural gas and other mineral resources into its industries in the eastern coastal region. The project was devoid of local participation, involvement and concerns. The project rather supports non-Tibetan businesses and Han Chinese immigrants or builds unproductive infrastructure and aids in resource extraction. The developmental projects initiated in Tibet do not respect the sentiment of the Tibetan people with regard to the land, culture and religious identity of the Tibetan people.  

Gabriel Lafittee stated, “Recent investments in extraction of Tibetan resources for China's use have grabbed headlines: BP, Agip, Enron, Exxon and AES are amongst the multinationals involved. Their investments will mine Tibetan salt lakes, dam Tibetan rivers for hydro-electricity, and extract huge quantities of natural gas, all to be taken immediately to China, where demand is great”. He further added, “But these investment are part of a much wider, long term strategy, which the Communist Party defines as its historic task to develop the west. It signals what the Tibetans have dreaded for decades, a real Chinese determination to absorb Tibet into the Chinese economy.” [8] Hence, the Chinese (migrants) and not the local Tibetans are the biggest beneficiaries, leaving the chasm between rich and poor wider than ever. The large-scale investment in Tibet and specifically in the new highways, dams, mineshaft, and wellheads funnel natural resources out of Tibet and bring tens of thousands of non-Tibetans in to works on such projects, leaving a legacy of environmental harm and social dislocation that falls most heavily on its inhabitants. [9]  

Chinese migration to Tibet has been actively encouraged by the Chinese leadership, in order to accelerate the economic development and to consolidate Chinese control over Tibet – migration of outstanding leading officials and technicians and encouragement of the PLA soldiers to settle in Tibet after their military service. An example of forced resettlement can be seen from the transfer of many Chinese Communist Party cadres and government officials to high and remote areas of Tibet. Refusal to comply by the orders may result in disciplinary measures, such as demotion or dismissal. Moreover, millions of Chinese prisoners who were transferred to prison labour camps in North East Tibet (Qinghai) were forced to settle in the area after their release or simply had nowhere else to go.  

Furthermore, the Chinese entrepreneurs are offered financial incentives to set up businesses in Tibet. In 1992, TAR issued a document entitled ‘Certain Regulations on Encouraging Businessmen from Home' [i.e. Mainland China] and abroad to invest in Tibet. Chinese living in Tibet are exempted from the strict one-child policy in force in the Mainland China. It is now a common notion in China that if you wanted to have more than one child then go to Tibet. The Chinese recruited in Tibet receive hardship allowance in addition to housing, free medical facilities and free education for their children.  

Lack of economic opportunities at home, relaxation on the restrictions on movement, higher wages and retirement pensions, relaxed family planning regulations and improved roads in Tibet have resulted in large-scale migration of Hui Muslims and Chinese, setting up petty business and semi-skilled service industries. Forced resettlement, active encouragement and a passive laissez-faire policy are the three methods employed by Beijing to carry out what it has significantly called ‘the final solution for Tibet'. [10] This policy has been successfully implemented in the so-called ‘Inner Mongolia' (part of Mongolia under Chinese control) where the ethnic Mongolian population constitute less than 2% of the population in the area and has largely lost its distinct cultural identity. When implemented fully, this ‘final solution' will render the sinicization of Tibet irreversible.  

In June 2002, Xinhua, PRC's official news agency, reported that new policies had been adopted to send more government cadres, soldiers, and “skilled people” to Tibet and other western regions in order to support development. The influx of 7.5 million Chinese settlers in Tibet which out-numbers the 6 million Tibetans has a dramatic economic and cultural impact on Tibetans. The level of unemployment among the Tibetan people is as high as over 40% in some areas. The TIN's research indicates that Chinese farmers make more than three times the income Tibetan farmers earn. Such a huge influx of Chinese migrants into Tibet is a great threat to Tibet's unique cultural, religious, and linguistic heritage. The continuous influx of Chinese migrants into Tibet to speed up the development process has resulted in discrimination, marginalisation and livelihood problems for Tibetans in their own land.    

The boom in tourism industry with the total income making up 5.6% of the TAR GDP, that China boasts of having successfully achieved, involves merely the Chinese operated tours and services with profit going to these Chinese agencies. Tourism in Tibet is an industry that tends to be heavily concentrated in Chinese ownership. The TAR also experiences heavy control on the tourist trade for example the Tibetan tour guides are put under several restrictions and political pressures. To ensure that all tour guides provide visitors with the Government's position opposing Tibetan independence and the activities of the Dalai Lama, all tour guides working in the TAR are required to seek employment with the Tourism Bureau and to pass a licensing exam on tourism and political ideology. The TAR Tourism Bureau continues its policy of refusing to hire Tibetan tour guides educated in India or Nepal. Hence, it seems impossible that the tourism industry would allow for much independent entrepreneurship and to have a broad positive impact on the Tibetan population.  

A closer assessment of the development process in Tibet is characterized by the following features:  

• Economy is used as a tool to gain further political control. Economic growth and development are used as measures to check and curb Tibetan nationalism. The economic policies are intended to further dilute the Tibetan population and to intensify the process of sinicisation of Tibet.  

• Tibet's natural resources are transferred to cater to the demands of the Chinese industries outside Tibet. Providing cheaper and easier transportation of natural resources and fastening the exploitation of the rich mines of coal, oil, gold, copper etc on the Tibetan plateau. The People's Daily acknowledged that this project would bring an "unprecedented mammoth transfer of resources."  

• Beijing has opted for a top-down-approach with regard to its development policies and implementation mechanisms. China's official provisions and actual implementation fall in sharp contrast to each other.      
  
• Urban-oriented rapid growth strategies have resulted in great rural-urban income inequalities.

• As a consequence to China's policy of population transfer, Tibetans have remained marginalized and discriminated against in all spheres of life.  

• Tibetans are denied meaningful local participation, and there is disregard of local interests and sentiments in the development process. The market economy is under direct control and command of PRC and Tibetans have no role to play.  

• Refurbishing the acute shortage of power and gas faced in the more developed and industrialized eastern coastal areas of China under the west-to-east gas transfer, west-to-east power transmission and south-to-east water diversion. [11]  

Hence, as against the White Paper's argument, Beijing has completely failed to employ developments based on rights and needs of the Tibetan people, and subsequently has failed to benefit the Tibetans. As a result Tibetans still remain poor, backward and underdeveloped.

Freedom of Expression, Association and Privacy  

The White Paper maintains protecting ‘by law its citizens' freedom of information, association, expression, privacy, speech and press'. In reality, China systematically violates all these freedoms through policies of censorship, surveillance and punishment. Every publication and news goes through a sophisticated screening process and requires the consent of the party. The general public has little knowledge about the outside world since the information inflow and outflow are strictly screened and monitored by the authorities. Most of the journals and media are state-owned where people are fed with news laden with official party ideologies and propagandas.

This is particularly true with regard to the Internet. In 2002, China adopted new Internet regulations requiring all China-based websites to censor content or risk being shut down. Access to the websites perceived as threatening to national security is limited by a filtering mechanism known as the “Great Fire Wall”. [12] In addition, Beijing has set up surveillance system within the Ministry of Public Security employing cyber police force of some 30,000 to keep track of so-called “internet dissidents”. [13] As a result sites providing foreign news, human rights information, and information about sensitive issues such as Xinjiang and Tibet have been banned or made inaccessible, while numerous internet users in China have been arrested and incarcerated for violating these restrictions. The recent closure of ‘Tibetan Culture', a website ran by the Xueyu Zangren Cultural Exchange Co. Ltd in China's northwest Gansu Province and the subsequent disappearance of Tsewang Norbu, the editor-in-chief of the website is a recent example of such information embargo. 

The Government sponsored censorship and blocking of radio programmes is another example of the violation of freedom of information. As a major source of information and news, radio plays a key role in disseminating information in Tibet. The Central government has imposed restrictions on listening to foreign radio programmes broadcasting in Tibetan language. Chinese authorities regularly jam overseas Tibetan language broadcasting services such as Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and Voice of Tibet.        
In February 2004, the Tibet Information Network reported that TAR authorities had banned Tibetan author Woeser's book, "Notes on Tibet," for its politically "sensitive" content leading to the termination from her job. When a local television station, Tibet Television 3, inadvertently showed footage of a man in Nepal's capital of Kathmandu with a Tibetan national flag behind him, the station suffered an immediate crackdown from the Chinese officials. The head of the station was forced to acknowledge his ‘mistake' while staffs at the station were forced to undergo re-education and to write self-criticism acknowledging their error. [14] These are few of the cases which clearly highlight the lack of freedom of expression and freedom of press.

Environment  

Until 1949, when China invaded Tibet, Tibetans for thousands of years had had the understanding of the essential interdependence with environment for their survival and well-being. Seeing themselves as caretakers of the land, Tibetans recognized their responsibility to maintain the balance of their ecology. The Tibetans' wisdom is based on a subsistence approach of utilizing the land, coupled with a respect for the limitations imposed by their environment. One of the keys to Tibetan coexistence with the environment is to embrace a long-term view in making decisions, one which considers effects on succeeding generations as well as reflects the Buddhist acceptance of the cyclical nature of all living things.  

China's colonisation of Tibet is wreaking havoc on the environment of the Tibetan Plateau. The survival of the Tibetan culture and its environment has local, regional and global implications: The Tibetan Plateau is the source of Asia's 10 major rivers that is the lifeline to almost half of the world's population. Tibet has been shown to influence weather conditions that affect the global climate patterns.  

Since 1949, China has cut 40 percent of Tibet's estimated 221,800 square kilometres of south-eastern old growth, tropical and subtropical montane forests, consisting of spruce, fir, pine, larch, cypress, birch and oak. The Chinese clear-cut most of these trees from old-growth forests more than 200 years old. Official Chinese documents indicate that between 1959 and 1985, $54 billion worth of timber was shipped east to China. The worst floods in China in the last 40 years - exceeding losses to the tune of US$24 billion - focused attention on deforestation in eastern Tibet and its consequences for Chinese watersheds.  

World Watch Institute in its report has estimated that the heavily forested region from Amdo to the Yangtze River Basin has lost 85 per cent of its original forest cover. As a result, the Yangtze now discharges 500 million tons of silt a year into the East China Sea a volume equal to the total discharge of the Nile, Amazon and Mississippi rivers combined.  

Siltation has raised the riverbeds, increasing the risk of flooding: in Yunnan with the incidence of floods having tripled in the past 40 years. Chen Chuanyou (ICIMOD Report) documented five "calamitous" floods in Sichuan since 1950. Acid rain has also been noted by visiting scientists in the early-1980s, said to be due to burning coal at high altitude without sufficient tree cover. [15]  

China suffered its worst floods since 1954, when an uncontrollable Yangtze killed 10,000 people in 1998. Over 240 million people were affected and it cost the Chinese economy US$37.5 billion in losses. The deluge was repeated again in 1999 when the Yangtze killed 400 and affected 66 million people.  

The Indian subcontinent too suffered unprecedented floods of the Brahmaputra in 1998. Landslides and soil erosion caused by deforestation have increased the silt flow into the Bay of Bengal. One third of the two billion tons of sediment is deposited in the plains of Bangladesh, reducing the depth of rivers and causing disastrous floods every year.  

According to reports of the Environment and Development Desk of DIIR, the domestic and transnational effects of China's rapacious forest felling in Tibet are widespread and severe. In addition to the siltation, pollution and flooding of the 10 major rivers that feed China and South Asia, sustaining 47% of the world's population. Tibet's vegetation controls the plateau's heating mechanism and this in turn affects the stability of Asia's monsoon. India receives 70 percent of its rainfall from the monsoon. Deforestation also heads irrevocably to desertification: in a reversal of flooding, this curtails water flows, a phenomenon already experienced during the 1990s by China's Yellow River which is Tibet's Machu in its upper reaches dried up several times and suffered an overall 23% fall in water discharge.  

With China's half a century's practice of blatant disregard of the fragile Tibetan environment, the China at present is facing acute water shortages in more that 400 cities. Water crisis prevails in more than 108 cities with major crop losses resulting from lack of agricultural irrigation. The Global conservation group World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) in 2005 warned that the Tibetan plateau's wetlands had seen declining water levels and lake shrinkages and that rivers and streams had dried up.  

In keeping with Buddhist tradition, native hunters exploited little of Tibet's wildlife population. Over the last 40 years, however, Chinese soldiers and settlers have intensively hunted much of Tibet's wildlife to supply China's extensive market with meat and animal products. In addition to supplying routine demands by Chinese settlers in Tibet, hunters target some of the more exotic species for export - blue sheep for the German meat market and Tibetan antelope for their wool. China continues to offer some of Tibet's more spectacular wildlife, such as the argali sheep, to foreign trophy hunters, in spite of international efforts to protect these species. Tibetan plateau has 532 bird species in 57 families; at least 37 are endangered including the rare endemic black-necked crane, tragopan, Tibetan eared pheasant, Tibetan snowcock and Tibetan sand grouse. According to data compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources estimated that 188 of its animal species are rare or endangered.  

Increase in the human population, reduction of forest habitat and a dramatic increase in hunting has reduced several species to critical levels. Endangered species, including musk deer, Thorold's deer and McNeill's deer, are hunted to supply China's huge pharmaceutical market. Pelts of the golden monkey and snow leopard are much in demand in the cities, despite China being a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  

Over 126 minerals have been identified, including some of the world's largest uranium and borax deposits, one half of the world's lithium, the largest copper deposits in Asia, enormous iron and chromite deposits, and over 80,000 gold mines - in sum, 40% of the mineral resources claimed by China, are found on Tibetan soil.  

In addition to high-profile oilfields, estimated at 42 billion tons and currently producing up to two million tons annually, Tsaidam's natural gas reserves of 1,500 billion cubic meters are to become an important new clean energy source for China. At current consumption levels these reserves would meet China's total needs for seven years and the first phase of a massive pipeline network takes Tsaidam gas from Amdo (Ch: Qinghai) to Gansu's capital Lanzhou in 2001. The Tibetan people will receive no benefit from this, as all profits will go to CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation).  

Among some of the world's largest mineral deposits Tibet counts the Norbusa Chromite Mine in U-Tsang (Central Tibet) with its estimated overall value of US$375 - 500 million. Current annual extraction revenues of US$1.5 million are expected to spiral to US$3.75 million from this top quality deposit. Yulong Copper Mine, near Chamdo, holds one of the world's largest copper reserves at over 6.5 million tons and current annual production levels of 20,000 tons, bringing in a profit of US$2.5 million, are projected to rise to 100,000 tons by 2010.  

Unchecked mining practices have led to environmental degradation often permanently altering landscapes while massive wastage is also recorded due to improper extraction methods, outdated technologies and low efficiency in recovery, production and utilisation. Extensive soil pollution has been reported from negligent piling of massive debris, slag heaps, abandoned mines, mining tailings and toxic wastes from materials used in extraction leading to mysterious illnesses, birth deformities and decreasing crop-yields around mining areas. With mining nominated as one of Beijing's "Four Pillar" industries in the 'TAR', South and East Asia's Indus, Salween, Brahmaputra and Mekong rivers will face pollution from toxic mining wastes infiltrating soil and thus contaminating downstream flows.  

Poor governance and control over mining have exacerbated environmental impacts in the Tibetan region. In the 1990s illegal mining, particularly gold, in eastern Tibet "Kham and Amdo" had huge adverse impacts and affected the livelihood of Tibetan nomads due to loss of grassland and land pollution from mine tailings and acidic drainage from shallow alluvial gold mining. Uranium mining, particularly in the Thewo region of Amdo (presently part of Kanlho Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu), also known as Project 792, has caused tremendous hardship to the local Tibetans in the region. Reports of birth deformities in both the livestock and human population, increase in epilepsy cases, local water sources becoming unsafe for drinking, and cases of mysterious deaths of livestock and humans continue to come from the regions where uranium has been taking place. Project 792 was officially closed in 2002 by an order from Beijing on account of mine-exhaustion; however, recent reports indicate the clandestine operation of mines with the connivance of local officials and some business firms. [16]  

With the rapid nuclearisation of the Tibetan plateau which includes 17 top secret radar stations, 14 military airfields, 11 of which are now being lengthened for new long-range combat aircraft, eight missile bases, at least eight intercontinental ballistic missiles, plus 70-medium range and 20 intermediate-range missiles, in addition to the Northwest Nuclear Weapons Research and Design Academy (the "Ninth Academy") situated 100 kms west of Amdo's capital, Siling and the missile base near Nagchuka which was selected as an alternative to Xinjiang's Lop Nor for possible nuclear testing- international concern on evidence that nuclear and other hazardous wastes are being dumped on the plateau, is ever-increasing. China's official Xinhua News Agency admitted in 1995 that radioactive pollutants had been discharged from the Ninth Academy near the shore of Lake Kokonor in a 20 sq.metre dump. Radioactive wastes, liquid slurry and solid and gaseous wastes have been dumped by the Academy which is located in a watershed draining into the Tsang Chu River which becomes China's Yellow River downstream. Nomads and villagers around the Ninth Academy also experienced high rates of cancer in children, similar to the findings of post-Hiroshima. Contaminated waste water from Tibet's largest uranium mine, near Thewo in southern Amdo, is reported to be released into the local river and victims, both human and animal, turned blue or blue-black after death. The ‘TAR' environment report (1996) stated that 41.9 million tons of liquid waste was discharged into the Kyichu River in Lhasa.  

China still employs shallow burial techniques for nuclear waste, a method now obsolete in the West, and remote regions of Tibet are earmarked in Beijing's plans to trade in the profitable recycling of hazardous and toxic wastes from developed nations.  

A March 2002 report from U.S. Embassy Beijing, stated that perhaps the biggest challenge to Tibet's long-term environmental quality was desertification driven by climate change while citing the fact that 3% of Ali Prefecture's total land area had “desertified” in recent decades due to rising average temperatures and wind erosion. Experts say that average temperatures on the Tibetan plateau have increased 1.5 degrees Celsius since the 1970's, leading to drying out of lakes, especially in northern Naqu Prefecture.  

More importantly, according to a 2001 report by the China Meteorological Administration, glacial melting in the unpopulated north and west of the TAR has accelerated. Given the fragility of the permafrost environment, these trends raise the possibility of widespread desertification on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, the starting point of China's most important eastward-flowing rivers.  

The U.S. Embassy Beijing report also stated that Tibet was suffering more than its share of natural disasters, especially floods highlighting the fact that many floods were caused due to landslides forming natural dams, which then burst, with severe consequences. Examples of the Shigatse flood in 1979 following the breaching of a natural dam at Bin Ku, the July 2000 flooding in India and Bangladesh, which destroyed villages and cost scores of lives downstream due to a large natural dam burst on the Yigong River and the more recent threat caused in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh in India by the vulnerable Pareecho river lake are a few cases in the matter. According to government experts, some 80% of Tibet's territory can be considered “geologically hazardous.” [17]  

Although the White Paper claims that ‘Tibet adheres to the strategy of comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development, integrating environmental protection with modernisation efforts by planning and developing them simultaneously, and forming an efficient supervision and control system, for environmental protection and pollution control' while purporting a few examples of ‘nature reserves', but the basic fact remains that China cannot undo the environmental disaster that it is inflicting upon Tibet and on the world. Tibet's complex environmental problems cannot be addressed by cosmetic changes like designating swathes of land as nature reserves or making laws for the people when the real perpetrator of environmental damage is the Government itself.  

As a Former Director of the Environmental Protection Bureau in the Tibet Autonomous Region said on Tibet's environment: "In Tibet we can't do what other provinces did, first destroying the environment and then fixing it; Tibet's environment is more fragile. We have to protect it from the start, because it might not recover otherwise."  

On 7^th March this year, In sheer contradiction to the White Paper's claim, Mr Pan Yue of the Ministry of Environment, speaking to a German Magazine, Der Spiegel, again acknowledged that “The Chinese Miracle will End Soon". Mr Pan said, “ the economic strides made by China comes at a huge cost to the country's environment which will soon overwhelm the country creating millions of "environmental refugees."  He further said, “We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth. To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps most embarrassing, nearly three times more than India. Our raw materials are scarce, we don't have enough land, and our population is constantly growing. Cities are growing but desert areas are expanding at the same time; habitable and usable land has been halved over the past 50 years. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory; half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens do not have access to clean drinking water.”  

Speaking of the severe deteriorating China's environment, Mr Pan further added, “One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China. In Beijing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment. Lung cancer has emerged as the No. 1 cause of death. Even now, the western regions of China and the country's ecologically stressed regions can no longer support the people already living there. In the future, we will need to resettle 186 million residents from 22 provinces and cities. However, the other provinces and cities can only absorb some 33 million people. That means China will have more than 150 million ecological migrants or, if you like, environmental refugees.”    

Education and Language Policies  

The White Paper also emphasizes on having made great advancements in the field of Tibet's education. It asserts, “By the end of 2003, Tibet had 1,011 schools of various types and levels and 2,020 teaching centres, with a total of 453,400 students, the enrolment proportion of primary schools rising to 91.8% and the illiteracy rate dropping to less than 30 per cent. Since 1985, the Central Government has established Tibetan classes/schools in 21 provinces and municipalities, training up to 10,000 college and secondary technical school graduates”. However, it is an undeniable fact that these educational institutions remained largely confined to the urban areas to serve primarily the Chinese urban elites. In order to cater to the huge influx of Chinese settlers being transferred into Tibet by the Chinese authorities there was an immediate need to provide schools for the children of the settlers. Thus the majority of new schools have been built in the cities and urban areas where the Chinese live. The rural areas, where over 85 per cent of the Tibetans live remained totally neglected and deprived of these educational facilities. For instance, secondary schools in the rural areas are vital for training the rural youth in skilled work and for providing a bridge to higher education for the rural areas. Yet between 1998 and 2001, the total percentage of regular secondary schools in the rural areas of the TAR had been reduced from two to one, while the urban secondary schools had increased from 18 to 20 and county and town secondary schools from 70 to 79. [18]  

In rural areas, some students face great difficulty to reach their schools, as they have to either walk long distances or are forced to use other modes of transportation, which ultimately results in high number of dropouts. The system of education in Tibet represents a violation of the China's legal obligations stemming from the ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which, at article 13(2) declares that “Primary education shall be made generally available free to all” and that “Secondary education in its different forms, … shall be made generally available and accessible to all by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education”. [19]                      

Roughly one third of the school-aged children in Tibet continue to receive no education at all. This is not due solely to the remoteness of some Tibetan regions, an argument frequently invoked by the PRC, but also to the prohibitively high school fees charged by the Chinese authorities. The vast majority of the interviewed new Tibetan arrivals in India confirm that Tibetan students have to pay extremely high school fees and even primary school education is not free, despite repeated claims by the PRC and the provision in Article 10 of the 1986 Chinese ‘Law of Compulsory Education' that state shall not charge tuition for students receiving compulsory education. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Ms. Katarina Tomaševski, stated that compulsory education has not been made free in China. [20]  

Ms. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, in stark contrast to the White Paper, stated that only 31% of children in Tibet had access to the compulsory nine years of education.  China's budgetary allocations favour military expenditure at the expense of investment in education. While military expenditure ate up 18% of the GDP in 2002, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics referred to 2.2% budgetary allocation for education of GDP for 1998/99 as the most recent figure in November 2003, much below the internationally recommended minimum of 6% of GDP.  

Because of inadequate budgetary funds for education, many public schools have been charging high fees. As per the China's official statistics for 2000, merely 53 per cent of funding for education was public. [21] Those children whose parents can somehow afford the fees, bribes and other charges, confront blatant discrimination making it extremely difficult or impossible to qualify for secondary or tertiary education. Moreover, it won't be enough to simply look at the figures acclaimed by the PRC regarding numbers of educational institutions but rather one must consider more closely the actual content of the education in these institutions.  

Despite high fees and miscellaneous charges, the standard of school facilities particularly in the rural areas are very poor. According to statistics compiled by the Sports and Education Department, “in the whole of Chamdo Prefecture, 20% of school buildings are in a perilous state” [22] . Instead of channelling extra funding into the poorer rural areas where Tibetans are desperately in need of assistance, the authorities forced Tibetans in agricultural and pastoral areas to establish people-funded schools, known as Mangtsuk Lobdra, the Chinese government spends not even a single cent on these schools.  

The increase in the number of schools and educational institutes in Tibet over the years has little significance to Tibetans, because the education policies in Tibet are used as a means to inculcate communist ideologies. In other words, the education system in Tibet is an ideology-driven education, which seeks to instil loyalty to China and the socialist cause. According to the provisions of article 3 and 43(2) of the 1995 Education Law of the People's Republic of China ‘all schools are required to strengthen the education in patriotism, collectivism and socialism', which reinforces the idea of a ‘Patriotic education' i.e. the use of ideology in the teaching system.  

Official government media reports in 2003 stated that 92 percent of eligible students in the TAR attended primary school and 61 percent attended middle school and that 80 percent of the counties in the TAR had instituted 6-year compulsory education and 17 percent had 9-year compulsory education. However, in practice, many pupils in rural and nomadic areas received only 1 to 3 years of schooling. Official statistics put the illiteracy rate for young and middle-aged TAR residents at 37 percent, but some observers believe it to be much higher in some areas. Furthermore, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Ms. Katarina Tomaševski, has deplored the fact that the literacy rate in Tibet is only 39 percent and that the situation warrants redressal by the Beijing authorities.  

Tibetan language has been continually undermined for political reasons and there is very little use of Tibetan as the language of education and administration. Chinese language is generally used to teach various subjects in schools – even in those that are officially designated as "Tibetan" schools. Chinese students in Tibetan areas generally have the option to attend exclusively Chinese-medium schools. As a practical matter, proficiency in Chinese is essential to receive a higher education. China's most prestigious universities provides instruction only in Chinese, while the lower-ranked universities established to serve ethnic minorities allows study of only some subjects in Tibetan. [23] As Chinese language is spoken widely, used for most commercial and official communications and holds the dominant position in government, commerce, and academia. Under such circumstances many young Tibetans seeking to get ahead are left with little choice but to use Chinese language rather than Tibetan.  

The phasing out of Tibetan language in Tibetan schools and universities indicates the vicious intention of the Chinese authorities to deny Tibetan students the right to be taught in their mother tongue. Chinese officials in the "TAR” display a striking and ominous trend to intensify the sinicization of Tibetans in Tibet through the targeting of Tibetan language as they link it with Tibetan nationalism and hence to a propensity for ‘splittist' activities. Chinese leaders perceive Tibetan language as the proper target of both the current campaign against the pro-independence movement and the nation wide campaign to eradicate traditional beliefs.  

Instead of being a means to achieve the full development of the Tibetan children's personality, talents, and mental and physical abilities, the education system in Tibet is used as a tool to ensure political stability and ethnic unity within the region. In an attempt to "sinicise" the Tibetan people, children are targeted for indoctrination; their freedom of thought, religion and expression repressed. Students are even forced to denounce the Dalai Lama and taught in the Chinese version of Tibet history. The Government controls curricula, texts and other course materials, and continues to represent a distorted picture of the Tibetan history in schools across Tibet. Because of such negative presentation of the Tibetan history, Tibetan children are considered backwards and frequently harassed by teachers and fellow-students. [24] In an interview with a China-sponsored press trip of foreign journalist to Tibet in August 2004, a young monk near the Jhokhang temple in Lhasa, openly expressed how China is violating their freedom of thought by compelling them to study a distorted version of the history of Tibet. He said:  

“If someone from China says something about our history, and we know it is not true, because it is not what our scholars teach as the real history, but we cannot say so. We are not free to dispute. There is only one version of history allowed.” [25]  

By repressing the use or knowledge of Tibetan language and replacing it with Chinese language with its use both in commerce and administration, China hopes to erode Tibetan cultural identity and completely integrate the next generation of Tibetans into Chinese culture. Therefore, the education system imposed upon Tibetans violates their human rights as it denies their linguistic and religious identity.            

In October 1995 Communist Party leaders in the Tibet Autonomous Region are said to have circulated a document arguing that separatism was partly caused by schools teaching too much religion and using the Tibetan language. [26] Teachers suspected of arousing pro-independence sentiments among their students have been systematically removed from their posts or detained and sentenced. The ultimate aim of the China's education policy in Tibet is to inculcate loyalty to the “Great Motherland” and the Communist Party. In October 1994 Chen Kuiyuan, the TAR Party Secretary stated:  

“The success of our education does not lie in the number of diplomas issued to graduates from universities, colleges, poly-technical schools and middle schools. It lies, in the final analysis, in whether our graduating students are opposed to or turn their hearts to the Dalai clique and in whether they are loyal to or do not care about our great motherland and the great socialist cause. This is the most salient and most important criterion for assessing right and wrong, and the contributions and mistakes of our educational work in Tibet. To successfully solve the problem, we must improve political and ideological work at schools and have political and ideological work run through all the teaching, study and work at schools.” [27]  

As an outcome of such unlawful and anti-Tibetan education policies, thousand of children risk their lives fleeing Tibet in search of an education that preserves their language, culture, history and traditions. Between January and August 2004, 2,416 new refugees have reached the Tibetan Reception Centre in Dharamsala. Of these refugees young Tibetans below the age of 25, account for 61.21% of the total. The total number of Tibetan refugees who arrived at the Tibetan Reception Centre from 1991 until June 2004 was 43,634, out of which 59.74% were young Tibetans below the age of 25. [28]  

If China continues to adopt and impart Tibetan children with such an education which is marked by indoctrination policy, culturally biased curriculum and censorship, denial of Tibetans cultural right and dignity, Tibetan language eclipsed by the Chinese one, and discrimination in terms of educational facilities, then the chance of the unique and ancient Tibetan culture surviving even another generation is grim. Based on the current state of affairs with regard to education, the future of Tibetan children, who are the seeds of the Tibetan society, could become under-educated, unemployed and ignorant of their rich Tibetan heritage.  

The White Paper's assertion of the illiteracy rate in Tibet dropping to less than 30 per cent, seems nothing more than a mere mendacity, and the Chinese official's mastery in the art of doctoring facts and statistics. For instance, officials from the TAR present the TAR illiteracy rate in 2000 as 32.5 percent. However the China Statistics Yearbook 2000 published by the National Bureau of Statistics, Beijing reveals the actual illiteracy rate as 66.2%. Such a discrepancy is caused mainly due to statistical sleight of hand in the presentation of the statistics. Specifically, illiteracy rates in the 2001 China Population Statistics Yearbook were calculated by dividing the number of illiterate persons aged 15 and older by the total population of all ages, rather than by the total population aged 15 and older, the standard Chinese and international practice. Consequently, the higher base population enlarged the denominator, which in turn lowered the calculation of the illiteracy rate, giving the appearance of a dramatic drop in illiteracy throughout the country. Recalculated using the proper denominator, the actual illiteracy rate of the TAR in 2001 was 47.3 per cent. While private observers have revealed that Tibetans suffer from what is probably the lowest literacy rate in the world, with as much as 70 per cent of the rural population unable to read. [29]

The table and the graph depicting the comparative analysis of the illiteracy rates among people in various provinces provides an easy visual interpretation of the situation of education in Tibet. An apparent conclusion may be drawn that the education status of Tibetan in TAR is comparatively lesser to that of other provinces. Rather, education levels are still far worse than even the worst educated province of the People's Republic of China (PRC) – Qinghai.

Table-1. Illiteracy rates among the population aged 15 and older, 1998-2002

 

Sources: National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 1999, (hereafter CSY), Beijing: China Statistics Press, tables 4-8 and 4-9; CSY 2000, 4-8 and 4-9; CSY 2002, 4-13; CPSY 2003, 1-18.

                         

Table-2. Illiteracy rates among the population aged 15 and older
(2002 Population Survey)