By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
LHASA – In a musty temple far outside this ancient Tibetan holy city, a young monk ushered a visitor into a dark chapel lined with statues of Buddhist gods of protection. In a hushed voice, he spoke of the misery of his people: limits on cultural activities, political purges in the monasteries, a flood of Chinese settlers into a land that had been the exclusive home of Tibetans for over a thousand years.
“More and more come every day,” he said, running his fingers along a string of prayer beads. “Don’t believe the lies about economic development.”
But then one of the worshipers in the chapel interrupted, a woman who had brought her daughter to the temple to pray. She shared the monk’s anger about the restrictions on her faith, but argued that Chinese migration and investment had benefited Tibet.
“Of course there are problems,” she said, “but I think our lives are improving.” She said she had a good job at a state research institute and hoped to send her daughter to college — not in Tibet, but elsewhere in China, to better guarantee the child’s future.
“He has his view,” she said of the monk, who listened impassively. “I have mine.”
Fourteen years after China’s ruling Communist Party used martial law to crush a wave of independence protests here, the people of Tibet are engaged in a different kind of struggle: a quiet, often personal battle between their deep desire to be rid of the Chinese and their increasing dependence on the money and opportunities that Chinese rule brings.
Dozens of unmonitored interviews — with farmers and businessmen, students and laborers, artists and monks — during an unusual, eight-day reporting trip across Tibet revealed a people torn by Beijing’s efforts to bind their homeland more closely to the rest of China.
Over the past decade, the Chinese government has lifted restrictions on migration to Tibet and cracked down on dissent, targeting Tibetans who seek to preserve a cultural identity separate from China’s. But it has also poured billions of dollars into the economy, including enough last year to more than triple the income of every Tibetan if it were distributed directly.
Rapid Change
The tremendous outlay of cash, and the hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants who have followed it here, have been used to build new highways, schools and hospitals in a land that had almost none during the centuries it was run by a theocracy. But cities here look more Chinese than Tibetan now, with concrete apartment complexes, gaudy lights and plastic palm trees replacing Tibetan architecture. Prostitutes walk the same streets as monks, and Mandarin, not Tibetan, is the primary language of government, education and trade.
The rapid pace of change has generated great resentment among Tibetans, who feel their homeland slipping away from them and complain that Chinese settlers now dominate the local economy. Though Tibet has drifted in and out of Chinese control for centuries, never before has China sought to colonize it or integrate it so closely with the rest of the country.
Support for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual and political leader, remains strong despite decades of government campaigns to discredit him. And yet independence demonstrations are rare now. Economic reforms in China have raised living standards for many Tibetans, and Beijing’s huge investments have created a new Tibetan middle class that has learned to live with Chinese rule and that sometimes embraces it.
“The government’s strategy is working,” said one dispirited young intellectual, who spoke on condition of anonymity in an interview in Shigatse, Tibet’s second-largest city. “Most people are happy to have a little money. They don’t worry about Tibet’s future.”
Those who do are watching China’s new president, Hu Jintao, who once served as Tibet’s Communist Party chief. Though he presided over the imposition of martial law here in 1989, retired Tibetan officials who worked with him say he is open-minded and may support more liberal policies.
There has already been some softening since Beijing replaced a hard-line local party chief in late 2000. Over the past two years, China has released seven Tibetan political prisoners, allowed a few exiled Tibetan journalists to visit their relatives and opened a new dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama, the most significant talks about Tibet’s future in decades.
The Tibetan leader, who is scheduled to meet with President Bush in Washington today, has proposed a compromise in which Tibet would remain part of China but be granted greater autonomy.
The Communist Party is divided about how to respond, according to officials familiar with the debate. One faction believes China’s policies are alienating Tibetans and supports a deal with the Dalai Lama, who fled Lhasa in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. These officials argue that his return is China’s best hope for maintaining control of the region and ensuring that Tibetans do not embrace violence, as some exiled young Tibetans are advocating.
A more influential faction believes China is tightening its grip on Tibet and appears willing to let the 68-year-old Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, die in exile in India. One party official involved in Tibetan affairs said the Dalai Lama must abandon any hope of Hong Kong-style self-rule and accept the Communist Party’s basic system of governance in Tibet if he wants to return and try to improve conditions.
That leaves the Dalai Lama in a difficult position. Though his desire to maintain Tibet’s distinct identity enjoys strong support in several foreign capitals, not to mention Hollywood, neither he nor his allies have been able to persuade Beijing to abandon policies that are changing Tibet quickly, profoundly and perhaps irreversibly.
Influx of Settlers
China has begun building a $3.2 billion, 700-mile railway that will wind through freezing, treacherous mountains to connect Lhasa with Qinghai province — and link Tibet for the first time with China’s extensive rail system. Beijing says the railroad will boost economic growth in Tibet when it is finished in 2007, but many Tibetans fear it will only bring more settlers.
“Of course we’re worried,” said a Tibetan businessman, lowering his voice during an interview in a tavern. “My parents say I should get ready to go back to the countryside, because when the railway is done, more Chinese will come and they will take all the jobs.”
The problem is evident in the workforce building the railroad. Of the 38,000 workers, only about 6,000 are Tibetans, and they make only $6 to $8 per day, officials said. By comparison, the Chinese workers earn $700 to $2,500 per month.
Officially, only about 212,000 Chinese have moved to Tibet, making up 8 percent of the region’s 2.66 million residents. But the actual number of settlers may be two to three times higher. In Lhasa and other cities, where the settler population is concentrated, Chinese appear to outnumber Tibetans.
These migrants, members of China’s ethnic Han majority as well as its Muslim Hui minority, travel to Tibet from poor villages and crowded cities across the country, and most find it much easier to make money here than back home.
“There are fewer people, and there’s less competition. It’s wide open if you’re willing to work,” said Li Rongguo, 23, a cab driver who came to Lhasa as a soldier with the Chinese military and now makes more in a month than he could in an entire year back home in Sichuan province.
In some ways, Tibet is China’s version of the Wild West. Wang Xiaolong, 21, fled here after stabbing a man in a drunken brawl in Gansu province, then found work as a driver. Li Xia, 26, a singer from a financially troubled state opera troupe in Henan province, set up a stage with a few colleagues in Lhasa and doubled her income.
But the Chinese are doing far better than the locals. They take most of the construction jobs, run most of the grocery stores and drive most of the pedicabs. Even in the Barkhor, the traditional market area in Lhasa that surrounds the 1,300-year-old Jokhang temple, Tibet’s holiest shrine, most of the shopkeepers are now Han and Hui.
“I’m the last Tibetan,” said Sishang Dolma, 37, the owner of a clothing store in Lhasa’s vast night market, gesturing at the long rows of Chinese-run stalls behind her. “All the others sold to the Han or went out of business.”
She said Tibetans have trouble competing because the Chinese have more experience, more capital and often, like immigrants around the world, more ambition. They also have better connections with suppliers in China and often arrive in Tibet with a job already lined up by a friend or a relative.
Struggle for Natives
By contrast, the pool halls and alleyways of Lhasa are full of young Tibetans without steady work, and alcoholism and juvenile crime are on the rise. Rural Tibetans who come to Lhasa often end up waiting at the side of the Second Ring Road, scrambling through the dust for seats on the trucks that slow down to pick up day laborers each morning.
The vast majority of Tibetans live in the countryside, where conditions have improved over the past two decades and the government has repealed most taxes. But their average income is the lowest in the nation and the rates of illiteracy, poverty and infant mortality are among the highest in the nation. Meanwhile, because Tibetans are exempt from China’s one-child policy, the rural population is growing.
“The problem is, we have the same amount of land but there are more and more people,” said Yishi Jampa, 20, who left his village as a teenager to help support his five siblings. He now shares a small apartment in Lhasa with 10 other Tibetan migrants and struggles to find regular work. Some days, he takes home little more than a dollar.
But the Chinese government’s decision to pump money into the economy has also meant rising salaries for a growing segment of Tibetan society, especially entrepreneurs and government employees.
About 90 percent of Tibet’s budget is covered by the central government. In 2001, Beijing promised to spend $8 billion on infrastructure projects and subsidies in Tibet over five years, more per capita than anywhere else in China. It also ordered every Chinese province and several state companies to invest in Tibet.
“We know how backward Tibet is compared to the rest of the world,” said Langzhu, 44, a truck driver in Tsetang, Tibet’s third-largest city. “That’s why Tibet can’t break away from China. We need the resources. . . . Tibetans aren’t working so hard, but every province is giving us money, lots of money.”
In some cases, Tibetans are using this new wealth to preserve their culture. At J.J.’s, a huge music hall located on the plaza in front of the Potala Palace, a troupe of Tibetan dancers, singers and musicians performs every night before hundreds of people. Most of the songs, most of the audience, most of the music hall employees and all of the performers are Tibetan. The owner is Tibetan, too.
Similar music halls, known as nangmas, have popped up across Tibet. Police shut several down in the mid-1990s, worried they were becoming hotbeds of separatist activity. But in recent years these businesses have been allowed to flourish, though songs deemed politically inflammatory are banned.
Wen Qing, 33, owns the largest nangma in Tsetang. Her father is Han, a soldier who participated in the invasion of Tibet in 1951, but her mother is Tibetan, and she considers herself Tibetan, too. When her parents moved to Sichuan province, she stayed and opened a small grocery store. After a few years, she saved enough to open Tsetang’s first Tibetan-owned bar, then a wholesale market, a pool hall and finally the nangma, which is packed every night as late as 4 a.m.
“It’s true most of the shopkeepers are from inland now, but I think that will change as we learn to compete. After all, as local residents, we have advantages, too,” she said.
“Tibet is definitely changing,” she said, “but overall I think it’s a good change.”
Others are more torn. Tsering, 65, a retired government employee, spent more than a year’s salary building a house with traditional Tibetan architecture in the Lhasa suburbs because he was saddened by how Chinese settlers had transformed his city.
But he also said Chinese rule had changed his life for the better. He grew up in a poor village, the son of landless peasants, and was 13 when China took control of Tibet. The Communists gave his family land, and the state hired him as a driver. His two sons went to college and got even better government jobs.
“We’re very grateful to the party,” he said, giving a tour of his spacious home, which he shares with his children and their families. The house has a courtyard, a second-floor deck, three television sets and a room for his grandson’s nanny.
But sitting on an upstairs mantel is a large photo of the Dalai Lama, a white scarf draped carefully around the frame. Tsering smiled and said many of his neighbors have similar photos.
When their Chinese bosses come to visit, he said, they put the pictures away, temporarily.
