After the release of yet another 12,000 character White Paper, titled "Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China" on February 28, 2005 by the State Council Information Office, Beijing, the world is further convinced that the much hailed 'new China' is sadly but a larger and more powerful replicate of the old, rhetoric and propagandist China, which has in its unwritten constitution the right to trample over truth and ground realities at its own convenience and ease to present the case of a ever happy and prosperous China.

The latest White Paper with its persistent references to Tibet can be acclaimed as a work of utopian fiction filled with communist propaganda, false statements and baseless statistics to fancy the minds of readers but drastically fails to stand up to the scope of a researched and objective official document, thanks to the repeated distortions of history, and the de facto political, social and religious status of Tibet.

The White Paper in length boasts of the right of self-government of ethnic autonomous areas through the representation of the ethnic groups in the people's congress and the people's government of the autonomous area. But it is a universally acknowledged fact that the people's congress and people's governments are mere rubber stamp committees that work at the whim and directives of the authoritarian Communist Party of China (CPC). The White Paper categorically fails to mention the role that the CPC plays in handling the overall affairs in the ethnic autonomous areas. The most powerful position in Tibet is that of the Communist Party Secretary, a post that no Tibetan has ever held, with Beijing directly appointing all the Party Secretaries. The White Paper claims of popular participation of ethnic minority people in the self-government of the particular autonomous region but the London based Tibetan Information Network reported on January 20 that the share of Tibetans in cadre employment was 49.7 (44069) in 2003 citing the most recent statistics published in the Tibet Statistical Year Book. The share of Tibetans employed as permanent workers in state-owned units also fell sharply to just 53% with the rest made up by Han Chinese.

With the announcements of the TAR personnel changes in the Tibet Autonomous Region on 29 September 2004 at the fourth meeting of the 8th Standing Committee of the People's Representative Congress, the ethnic imbalance in appointments was starkly reflected. Out of 13 appointees in the procuracy departments of the various TAR prefectures, only two were Tibetan cadres who appeared to be replacing Chinese and the TAR level, only one Tibetan out of five appointees was included in the procuracy while out of the seven new appointees to various intermediate courts, only one was Tibetan. These basic facts stand in sharp contradiction to and nullify the declared policies of the PRC as stated in the much-vaunted 'National Minority Regional Autonomy Law'.

The White Paper claims that use and development of the spoken and written languages of the ethnic groups have been given provisional priority in performing official duties but then even for a sporadic watcher of the XZTV, one can't fail to distinguish the fact that the prima lingua during the official meetings is but Chinese, be it written or spoken. Discrimination of the Tibetan language is both patent and latent in the Chinese communist system. For example exams were recently introduced for permanent employment in the public sector. These exams were held in Chinese.

The White Paper notes that 'by the end of 2003, there were 1,700 sites in Tibet for Buddhists to conduct religious activities, and some 46,000 resident monks and nuns' in an attempt to glorify their respect for the freedom of religious belief in the ethnic autonomous areas. But the 1,700 so called sites for Buddhists to conduct religious activities when compared to the 6000 plus monasteries that the communist Chinese destroyed in Tibet, it gets reduced to mere defeated pretensions of a religious drama enacted by an atheist regime to salvage their pride from the rampant and systematic obliteration of Tibetan Buddhism that they have carried out and are still conducting in Tibet. An independent survey conducted by Melvyn C. Goldstein and his associates in TAR pointed out that "Chinese government policy considers Buddhism in a negative light and constraints it in various ways. For example, limit on the number of existing monasteries or nunneries are enforced and there and prohibitions against the creation of new religious institutions. At the same time, the government also began to enforce more strictly a rule that prohibits males under 18 years of age from becoming monks."

Before the Chinese invasion, Sera had 8,000 monks, Drepung 10,000 and Gaden 5,600 monks. The Chinese government directive of 1997 stated that Sera is allowed to have a maximum of 300 monks, Drepung 400 and Gaden 200. To cite another instance of the complete inexistence of religious freedom in Tibet, in August 2001 many hundreds of Tibetan nuns, monks and Chinese Buddhist scholars were forced to leave the monastic institute and nunnery of Serthar in Kardze which was followed by the consequent destruction of the institute. The life imprisonment sentence passed on Tulku Tenzin Delek and the continued silence over the whereabouts of the 11th Panchen Lama reaffirms the hollowness of the White Paper's claim of religious freedom in Tibet. There has been renewed emphasis on the patriotic re-education campaign, the resumption of the strike hard campaign, the establishment of re-education-through-labour camp, and the systematic obliteration of the ancient Tibetan practice of religious belief by the Democratic Management Committees to curtail and control religious activities in Tibet. Various independent reports such as the International Religious Freedom Report, the United States Human Rights Annual Report, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention report, the Human Rights Watch Report, the Amnesty International Report etc. have vindicated the fact that strict state regulations and repression over the religious freedom and basic human rights inside Tibet continues unabated.

The repeated claims of retaining the folkways and customs of ethnic groups in the White Paper fall in stark contrast with the actual practise of tight control and ban over the customary practices in Tibet. There has been a state ban on the celebrations of the birthday of H.H. The Dalai Lama, whom China have themselves regarded as Living Buddha in the White Paper, restraints from participation in religious devotions connected to the traditional Saka-dawa festivals amongst others. The ban on the photo of H.H. The Dalai Lama since 1994, portrayal of which is a social and religious custom of Tibetans and the countless arrests of Tibetans for just possessing the photo of H.H. The Dalai Lama that has followed since, distinctly repudiates China's claim of guaranteeing the right of all ethnic minorities to retain their traditional folkways and customs in daily life.

The White Paper insists that the education level has been 'markedly raised' in the ethnic autonomous areas coupled with the usual plethora of figures but the ground realities tell another story. The education system in Tibet indicate that Tibetans in Tibet are being educated through a system that seeks to sever the new generation from their past and completely sinicize them. The Tibetan medium of instruction is taught only at the elementary school level while the secondary and higher studies are in the Chinese language, leaving the Tibetan children with no choice but to prefer Chinese language to their mother tongue. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Ms. Katarina Tomasevski, gave a scathing report following her official visit to China, blasting the government's ban on religious schooling and stated that education imposed upon minorities violated their human rights as it denied their religious and linguistic identity. She noted that China's education system did not conform to the international legal framework defining the right to education, recommending an immediate affirmation of China's international obligation to ensure free education for all children and the prohibition of the practice of manual labour at school. Researches have revealed that many of the impoverished region's children are still without basic schooling with the UN Development Program released Human Development Report of China in 2002 listing literacy in Tibet as the lowest in all of China.

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. The simple fact that thousands of Tibetan children risk their lives yearly by crossing the Himalayas and come into exile to enrol in educational facilities run by the exile Tibetan government ascertains the fact that the Chinese educational system and standard is hostile to the aspirations and way of life of the common Tibetan populace.

The White Paper asserts that there has been a 'continuous progress in the area of medical services and public health', comparing a list of 2003 figures with ones as early as of 1952, which directly curtails their claim over a 'continuous progress'. Official China Daily newspaper reported on January 19 said that the Pozhang township Hospital, the only one for the local population of 7,000 in Shannan Prefecture Tibet possesses just one bed bought in the 1980s two pairs of scissors and one set of obstetric forceps for midwifery. Lousang, Director of the Department of Basic Medical Protection for Women under the Medical Bureau of the TAR in Lhasa said that at county level only five out of the 73 hospitals can do Caesarean sections and with such cases prevalent all over Tibet, a team of public-health field workers from US after their research in Tibet concluded that Tibet was amongst the most hazardous places for expectant mothers. The independent health workers reported that Tibetan women were 6 to 10 times more likely to die of childbirth than Chinese women and infants were 3 times less likely to survive. The Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, Cambridge put the maternal mortality rate at 500 per 100,000 live births.

There is an overwhelming shortage of qualified medical workers in Tibet with studies of western NGOs finding out that in the Shigatse area there were no clinics in 165 villages surveyed while another report stated that in a group of villages surveyed, all the village health workers had only primary level school education with the older ones being previously 'barefoot' doctors. In complete contrast to the claims laid in the White Paper the Tibet Statistics Yearbook 2000 published by the Tibetan Statistical Bureau confirmed that in 1999, the year when the Western Development Scheme was announced, the number of hospitals in TAR dropped from 876 in 1998 to 824, hospital beds from 6305 to 6255 and the number of doctors from 5089 to 4696. The Tibet Information Network in its report on Health and Health care in Tibet concluded that affordable and adequate health care was still not available to majority of Tibetans with many endemic diseases not under control, emergency medical care virtually non existent, and the authorities not yet taking decisive action in developing preventive strategies for newly emerging conditions such as HIV/AIDS. The report also said that Tibet's health care system appeared to be on a par with some of the poorest regions in developing countries.  

The implications of the spread of SARS during its outbreak in China in 2002, to the western regions of China were serious due to the high levels of poverty and poor health care with conditions of health and health care provision in Tibetan areas being among the worst in the PRC. A survey by Tibet's Health Bureau and the SEVA foundation of the US on Tibet's eye disease sufferers showed that the region's incidence of cataracts as 14.6%, which meant that about 360,000 out of the 2.63 million people in Tibet were cataract patients. The failure of the health care system in Tibet to reach many rural areas, where the majority of Tibetans live, and prohibitive medical costs, means that many Tibetans are still dying from illnesses and conditions that could easily be treated, such as diarrhoea or pneumonia. Pulmonary diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and asthma are already widespread in Tibet - Tibet has the highest rate of tuberculosis in the PRC. The life expectancy of Tibetans in Tibet remains an alarming low 40 years as compared to 71.96 years of China.

While the White Paper maintains the promotion and development of radio, film and TV services in ethnic minority areas, recurrent news reports ascertain that the freedom of communication and information still remain seriously curtailed and censored. 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.

Internet services and information technology remain centuries away from most of the ethnic areas and even if such services are available, it comes with a state censorship and filtering systems to screen and block items containing politically sensitive terms such as human rights, Dalai Lama, Tibet etc., various websites and search portals such as Google in addition to the mandatory 'Internet Browsing Registration Card' which Lhasa residents who seek to use the internet must acquire without which internet cannot be accessed. The recent report issued by Human Rights in China stated that Tibetan writer; Woeser lost her job, home and freedom of movement because Chinese officials considered her writings overly favourable to the Dalai Lama. Woeser adds up to the millions of Tibetans who have been condemned and persecuted by China for practicing their basic human rights of speech and expression.

The White Paper also boasts of attaining high rate of GDP but the actual situation is almost in sharp contrast. Rather the local Chinese officials seems to have now became experts in the art of doctoring statistics to please the higher authorities. Premier Zhu Rongji himself admitted the unreliability of Chinese statistics. Zhu said that the authorities for their self-interests manipulate statistics. The general unreliability of statistics in Tibetan areas often reflects an unwillingness or fear at a local level of being held accountable for poor conditions.

Moreover, the "blood transfusion" or subsidies and support from Beijing and other provinces in China have kept the system running and fuelled the so called 'boom' in the construction of infrastructure in the urban areas which is reported as economic growth in the accounting of GDP. Whatever little funds or investments is being put into Tibet is aimed for the benefit of the Chinese officials and the Han immigrants in urban areas, and such a growth entails repression, appropriation of lands, rapid exploitation of limited resources such as forests, medical herbs, wildlife, relics and minerals etc.

Chinese, who consider their own culture as being a "civilizing" one has been consistently trying to impose it on that of the Tibetans, thus creating a Sino centric monoculture in which Tibetan cultural identity is subsumed. Another method for such an imposition is through the introduction of karaoke bars, discotheques and pool bars, thus providing distraction for countless unemployed and disillusioned Tibetan youth.

All in all, the latest White Paper, 'Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China' conveniently eludes to address major pressing issues of unemployment, basic human rights and civil and political rights, destruction of environment and gross human rights violation and the gross discontentment amongst the ethnic people inside these so called "autonomous" areas. The very fact that China persistently has to churn out series of forged and fabricated fairy tales of China being a utopian nation, vindicates the fact that they need to strive consistently to raise its credibility and the global image. These so-called 'White' Paper which is nothing but a reproduction of the earlier ones with little addition of a distorted statistics, will never help in realizing their vicious objectives. As, two wrongs do not make a right; even a thousand White Papers cannot succeed to trick the world into believing their distorted tales and impressive made-believe statistics.