Is the Tibetan way of life in jeopardy?
Posted: Monday, June 11, 2007 11:15 AM
Filed Under:
Beijing, China
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
ZHONGDIAN, China – It’s not commonly understood that the Tibetan kingdom once stretched well beyond what is today referred to as Tibet. Looking at a map of China, you realize just how vast it was – and thus why it is strategically important to Beijing. You also see how much Tibetan territory has been folded into the neighboring four Chinese provinces.
What meager media coverage Tibet receives these days is confined to what’s known as the Tibet Autonomous Region (which, according to historians and Tibetan rights groups, comprises only half of the original Tibetan kingdom). But there is very little international reporting done about the Tibetan communities that span the other half – in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai, and Gansu.
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| Adrienne Mong/NBC News |
| An ever-present Tibetan marker near Zhongdian. |
So it came as something of a welcome surprise to us when we traveled to Zhongdian, an old gateway to the Tibetan plateau, high up in the mountains fringing Yunnan and Sichuan. In this corner of the world, the Tibetan community seems to be thriving despite the signs of creeping urbanization.
Their counterparts elsewhere in China, however, are not, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.
Tibetan herders forced to relocate
"Since 2000, the Chinese government has been implementing resettlement, land confiscation, and fencing policies in pastoral areas inhabited primarily by Tibetans, drastically curtailing their livelihood," the report says. "Many Tibetan herders have been required to slaughter most of their livestock and move into newly built housing colonies in or near towns, abandoning their traditional way of life."
These moves, said the report, are part of the broader "Go West" campaign which Beijing has pursued since 1999 to bring interior provinces up to the same standards of living as the southern and coastal regions. Economic improvement, the central government reckons, will also bring long-term stability and possibly minimize disgruntlement and resistance from minority ethnic groups like Tibetans. It also tightens Beijing’s long reach over remote, outlying areas.
Hence the link between "political objectives with economic objectives," said Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. "The central authorities are clear about this. The drive to the West is about consolidating the border. They talk about the cultural security of China. This basically means stamping out Tibetan culture, because Tibetan culture is seen as the vehicle and the basis for separatist aspirations."
Bequelin called Beijing’s resettlement program for Tibetans a long-term objective. "The central government has been concerned for a long time with nomads and with Tibetan ethno-nationalism in Qinghai and parts of Gansu," he said.
But the relocation program could backfire in that respect, fuelling resentment instead of quelling it. The Human Rights Watch report notes that many of those resettled wind up in a further impoverished state, no better off than they were before.
Herders, nomads
Looking around the vast grasslands surrounding Zhongdian, where herders bring their yaks down from the hills to graze in the mornings, we wondered how that picture might change if one day the central government decided the nomads here were a threat and wanted to institute resettlement programs in this town.
We caught up with Wong How-man, a Hong Kong explorer who has spent decades leading conservation and research projects in the Tibetan plateau, at one of his centers in the region. To see what he told us about the Tibetan way of life and its reliance on the yak, click on the video link below.
