 |   By Tseten Samdup - 1993 Despite over 40 years of Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Tibetanpeople refuse to be conquered and subjugated by China. The presentChinese policy, a combination of demographic manipulation anddiscrimination, aims to finally suppress the Tibetan issue bychanging the very character and the identity of Tibet and itspeople. Though governments and human rights organizations have expressedconcern about the transfer and settlement of Chinese people intoTibet, the issue is difficult to address effectively due to ashortage of reliable figures and the misleading use of statisticsby Chinese authorities. The Tibetan Government in Exile estimates that the Chinese inTibet that is, all the three region of Tibet, U-Tsang, Kham andAmdo, now outnumber the six million Tibetans. The Chinese governmenthas responded to these allegations by publishing statistics ofthe number of Chinese and Tibetans officially registered in theTibet Autonomous Region only (less than half of the territoryof Tibet - see below). This paper addresses China's transfer of population into the wholeof Tibet since the invasion in 1949-50, and its implications andeffects on the Tibetan population. The limitation of the study has been the lack of reliable statisticsas no independent study to determine the actual demographic compositionof Tibet has ever been conducted or allowed by China. There islittle doubt that the Chinese government uses figures which aredesigned to downplay the presence of Chinese settlers. Figuresused by the Tibetan exiled government are only estimates, sincethe exiled Tibetan authorities cannot conduct censuses in Tibetthemselves. One area of confusion results from different uses of the term"Tibet." Tibet is comprised of the three provinces of Amdo (now split byChina into the provinces of Qinghai and part of Gansu), Kham (largelyincorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu andYunnan), and U-Tsang (which, together with western Kham, is todayreferred by China as the Tibet Autonomous Region.) The Tibet Autonomous Region ("TAR") comprises less thanhalf of Tibet and was created by China in 1965 for administrativereasons. It is important to note that when Chinese officials andpublications use the term "Tibet" they mean only theTAR. Tibetans, including the Tibetan Government in Exile, use the termTibet to mean the three provinces described above, i.e. the areatraditionally known as Tibet before the 1949-50 invasion. It ismore than twice the area covered by the TAR. In this paper theterm Tibet refers to the regarded as Tibet by the Tibetan themseleves. The population of Tibet is generally agreed upon as being sixmillion both by Tibetan and independent scholars, but an exactnumber is not available. Sir Charles Bell, a British scholar and diplomat to Tibet, whowrote a number of authoritative books on Tibet, estimated theTibetan population to be at 4 - 5 million in 1930s.(1) The last British and Indian Head of Mission in Lhasa, the diplomatHugh E. Richardson who had to leave the city when Chinese troopsentered it, recently wrote, "Since 1912 no Chinese were inTibet except for a few traders and some Muslim butchers at Lhasa.There were no Chinese troops and no officials until 1935 whena small party managed to get in. They were regarded by the Tibetansas an unofficial liaison office; and in 1949 they were expelledby the Tibetan Government." China recently claimed that the Tibetan population doubled inTibet (i.e. TAR) between 1950 and 1990 from roughly one millionto two million.(3) According to Chinese sources, some 87,000 Tibetans were killedin Central Tibet, in also the Lhasa Uprising of March 1959.(4)The exiled Tibetan government, however, revealed in 1984 thatsince the invasion over 1.2 million Tibetans died as a directresult of China's invasion of their nation.(5) This figure wascompiled after years of analysis of documents, refugee statementsand interviews, and by official delegations sent to Tibet by theTibetan Government between 1979 and 1983. The fact-finding delegationstravelled to most parts of Tibet. A break down of this figures is a follows.
Before the 1949-50 invasion by China, there was no discernibleChinese population in Central Tibet, and their numbers in Easternand North-Eastern Tibet (Kham and Amdo) were less than half amillion. On October 7, 1950 some 84,000 Chinese troops acrossed the Yangtzeand thereafter, their numbers increased rapidly. Tens of thousandsof Chinese troops arrived in Tibet. Thereafter, equal numbersof support staff, mainly administrators and other civilians, movedinto Tibet. The Chinese leader Chairman Mao Tse-tung admitted, "Whileseveral hundred thousand Han people live in Xinjiang, there arehardly any in Tibet, where our army finds itself in a totallydifferent minority nationality area."(6) But in 1952, Mao warned a visiting Tibetan delegation his plansto achieve total control of Tibet by means of a massive populationtransfer from China to Tibet. He argues that whereas Tibet covereda large area, it was thinly populated; its population should beincreased from the present two or three million to five or sixmillion and then to over ten million.(7) This policy received firm support from Zhou Enlai who said, "TheHan are greater in number and more developed in economy and culturebut in the regions they inhabit there is not much arable landleft and underground resources there are not as abundant as inthe regions inhabited by fraternal nationalities."(8) His Holiness the Dalai Lama recalled after his 1954 visit to China,"...just before returning to Lhasa we had been to see LiuShao-Chi. He mentioned to the Panchen Lama that Tibet was a bigcountry and unoccupied and that China had a big population whichcan be settled there."(9) Settlement of Chinese began initially in eastern and north-easternTibet (i.e. Kham and Amdo), and was later carried out also incentral Tibet. "In the early 1950s Chinese settlers fromSichuan were sent to the Kham area and those from Gansu were sentto Amdo to settle. They were allotted plots of land by the Chineseauthorities for farming." (10) Hu Yaobang, during an official visit to Tibet in May 1980, publiclyexpressed shock at the living conditions of Tibetans. He publiclycomplained whether all the money sent to Tibet "had beenthrown into the river." He promised the withdrawal of 85%of the Chinese cadres from Tibet. Though a few thousand were subsequentlywithdrown, the policy was never implemented, as Hu was dismissedfrom his position in 1983. Instead the Chinese government took the decision in 1983 to increasethe settlement of Chinese into Tibet. Numerous articles appearedin various official publications encouraging Chinese to move toTibet, and large construction projects were started in Tibet withChinese labour, in an apparent effort to accelerate the influxof Chinese. (11) The Radio Lhasa announced on 21 April 1984 that 10,000 Chinesefrom Sichuan province, described as "construction technicians,"would shortly arrive in Tibet. It appears that today, the movement of Chinese to parts of easternTibet which have been incorporated into Chinese provinces area matter of intra-provincial bureaucracy, whereas the transferof Chinese into the TAR, largely occurs at the instigation ofBeijing. (12) The Chinese population transfer into Tibet is in large part theresult of a government policy aimed at reducing the Tibetans toa powerless minority in their own country. (13) A serious study of Chinese policies over past years leads to theconclusion that population transfer is an important tool to consolidateChinese power in Tibet. The Chinese authorities have been activelyencouraging large numbers of Chinese to move into Tibet and helpingthem to take control of all major centres of political, economic,social and even cultural activities. This has resulted in theimplementation of education and employment systems and practiceswhich strongly favour the Chinese immigrants over the Tibetans. But, a recently published book, Poverty of Plenty, written bytwo Chinese economists, refer to a "large body of immigrants"and a "huge imported workforce." (14) Further, in thesummer of 1985, over 60,000 Chinese workers mainly from Sichuanarrived in TAR. (15) The Beijing Review in 1991 announced that"technicians from all over China have come to work at variousconstruction sites and about 300,000 workers are prepared to joinin the project." (16) A standard official explanation for the population transfer isthat the cultural levels of minority populations are low, makingdevelopment and contact with Chinese settlers a high priority.(17)Both official and unofficial Chinese sources claim that theChinese settlers are sent to Tibet to help "civilise"the backward Tibetans and their culture. (18) China asserts thatthe settlers have generally a positive moderising influence and"the influx of large body of `immigrants' has brought newlearning and culture;... This is precisely where hopes for theinvigoration of the economics of backward regions lie today."(19) But Tibet is a land most Chinese find inhospitable, and in orderto persuade Chinese workers and settlers to move to Tibet andremain there, the Chinese government needed to develop extensiveeconomic, social and educational incentives. These include higher pay (as much as four times as high as inChina,(20) longer leave; very favourable loans, housing and variousindividual privileges. All of these incentives are enormouslycostly for the government, and the government's resolve to maintainthem testifies to the economic and political importance of maintaininga substantial Chinese populations in the Tibetan areas. China's development and political subjugation strategy for Tibetrelies upon large numbers of Chinese administrators and workerssettling in the region. The settlers not only occupy the bestresidential areas but also dominate Tibet's economic enterprisesand jobs effectively marginalising Tibetans and turning them intosecond class citizens in their own land. This also results inan enormously top heavy superstructure which is costly and ofhardly any benefit to the Tibetan population. (21) In the summer of 1992, the Chinese authorities decided to openTibet (TAR) and to "turn from a closed or semiclosed economyto active participation in domestic and international commenerce."(22) Chen Kuiyuan, Deputy Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous RegionCentral Party Committee, said that "we should ... open ourjob market to all fellow." (23) Another Chinese Party DeptySecretary, Zhang Xuezhong, called for "continously invitingtalented people to work in the region." (24) In the TAR, for example, while Chinese statistics claim that economicoutput has quadrupled from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, theadministration management costs have increased tenfold. And "forevery one yuan worth of commodities brought in, there is a directoutlay of 1.33 yuan in administrative costs." (24) Even the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second highest Lama, who was usedby the Chinese authorities to propagate the official Chinese viewsdelivered one of his fiercest criticism ever only days beforehis mysterious death in January 1989. He was quoted in the officialChinese press as saying that the benefits of Tibet's developmentduring the last 30 years of communism had been out weighed bythe price that had been paid. (26) Given China's past policies in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang(East Turkestan), Tibetans feel a real threat to their distinctcultural, religious and national identity. Today, in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, the native population isgreatly outnumbered by the Chinese immigrants. In Manchuria thereare three million Manchurians against 75 million Chinese. In InnerMongolia 25 million Chinese outnumber 2.5 million Mongols(27)and Xinjiang has six million Chinese to about five million Ujhurs.(28) The Chinese census statistics and statements by various officialsshow a big increase in Chinese population in Tibet during thepast 40 years. According to official Chinese sources, in 1985 Qinghai had a populationof 3,947,368, of which only 750,000 were Tibetans. (29) But, anarticle in Renmin Ribao dated 26 April 1991, downplayed the Chinesepopulation in Tibet. The article gives a breakdown for TibetanAreas including TAR, Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan accordingthe 1990 census is as follows:
In addition, some 400,000 Tibetans are scattered outside Tibetin other Chinese provinces.(30) Today, in what the Chinese refer to as Qinghai province, for everyone Tibetan there are three Chinese - 2.5 million Chinese as against800,000 Tibetans. (31) A Tibetan source estimates the Chinese population of Lhasa administrationregion in the mid 1980s to be 630,000; that of Shigatse, 170,000;that of Lhoga region, 93,000, that of Chamdo region, 320,000;that of Ngachu area, 85,000; and that of Ngari area, 150,000.These figures give a total of 1,728,000. (32) Unlike Eastern Tibet, the Chinese population is primarily in concentratedaround the cities and towns because the environment is more harshin the TAR. The official Chinese population breakdown of the Tibet AutonomousRegion is the most controversial. The Tibetan Government in Exilebelieves there could be over one million Chinese in TAR. Chinesefigures are as following: (33)
(* Many of the "minorities " are actually Tibetans,but from different region: eg. Monpa, Lhapa, Nakhi...) Therefore, even by Chinese official figures there has been a considerablepopulation transfer. The real divergence in figures comes whenwe look only at the TAR. There we see even in 1990 a very low81,200 Chinese in whole of TAR (of which 44,939 are in Lhasa)compared to 2 million Tibetans. (34) This figures is quite unbelievable,as any visitor to Lhasa city would agree. Lhasa's population in1950s was 37,000 and today it has dramatically increased to 120,000(35)so that today Chinese outnumber Tibetans in the city by about3 to 1. The figures provided by China only include Chinese civilians registeredas residents in Tibet. (36) It does not include military personnel(estimated at 300,000 to 500,000), cadres, administrative staff,the armed and the ordinary police force and the "illegal"or non-registers migrants whose number continue to increase. TheChinese figures do not include the military(37) which is estimatedby various intelligence organizations to vary between 150,000to 250,000 in the TAR and double those figures in the whole ofTibet. Chinese officials admitted in 1975 that a total of 250,000to 300,000 Han were in the TAR, including PLA soldiers. (38) In1979 and 1980, Chinese figures showed that there were 130,000Chinese cadres, i.e. government employees, in the TAR alone. (39)The Western media has estimated the military's strength betweensome 250,000 to 300,000. (40) In 1986, the Tibetan Government in exile compiled a report whichhighlighted that a total of 6.2 million Chinese civilians hadbeen moved into Tibet in addition to some 500,000 troops. Since September 1987, over 8,000 Tibetans have fled Tibet to escapearrest during China's crack down on demonstrators advocating therestoration of Tibetan independence. This brings the number ofTibetan refugees living in exile over 120,000. The question of Chinese population transfer into Tibet is hotlycontested. But both the exiled Tibetan government as well as Tibetanofficials in the Chinese administration have expressed concernat the growing number of Chinese in Tibet. Three different sources in 1985 reports that at least 100,000Chinese live in Lhasa. (41) The Panchen Lama, in an important speech in 1987 said "TheChinese population in Tibet started with a few thousand and todayit has multiplied manifold." (42) In 1989, Ngapo Ngawang Jigme, the highest ranking Tibetan officialin the Chinese government and vice-Chairman of National People'sCongress in Beijing stated in an official address, "The Tibetanpeople cannot be separated from the support and assistance ofthe fraternal Han people. However, large number of labourers,including peddlers and hawkers have now flowed into Tibet witha total of at least 100,000 in Lhasa alone. This has created alot of trouble for public order." (43) The Mayor of Lhasa, few days later said the city had about 140,000population with a floating population of 100,000 and it was creatingcertain tensions. (44) In the summer of 1991, an official Australian Human Rights Delegation,spoke of large Chinese military and civilian population in Tibet.(45) In 1979, when the First Fact Finding Tibetan Delegation visitedHis Holiness the Dalai Lama's birthplace, Takster in Amdo, whichhad previously been an entirely Tibetan community, only 8 outof the 40 families were Tibetans, and the remainly 32 familieswere Chinese. In 1987, after his visit to Tibet, former U.S. President JimmyCarter met "senior leader" Deng Xiapoing in Beijing.Carter said that he was worried that large-scale immigration mightdamage Tibetan culture. But Deng Xiapoing reiterated Beijing'spolicy - Tibet needed Han immigrants, as the region's populationof about two million was inadequate to develop its resources.(46) This admission was significant because it was a departure fromofficial Chinese government denials of the existence of a populationtransfer policy. In April 1992, 128 Chinese cadresx(47) who are "politicallystable, ambitious, correct ideologically, have good knowledgeof policies, a strong sense of displine, hardworking and not morethan 40 years old"(48) were sent to Tibet's remote bordercounties. The object of the policy has become increasingly obvious. Thusrecently the Chinese authorities emphasised that birth controlof one child per family among Tibetans should be applied morestrictly and extended to Tibet's remote interior(49) becausethe region can not support a larger population. Yet at the sametime, that same government announces a major "development"project in the Yarlung Valley for which it claims that 300,000people will be relocated in the Tibetan valley.(50) The United Nations Sub-commission on Prevention of Discriminationand Protection of Minorities expressed "concern at the continuingreports of violations of fundamental human rights and freedomwhich threaten the distinct cultural, religious and national identityof the Tibetan people."li In introducing the resolution,Mr. van Boven, the Dutch Sub-Commission Member explicitly referredto population transfer as one of the principal threats. Asia Watch, a New York based-human rights organization, has expressedits grave concern about the rapid growth of the Chinese populationin Tibet and the imposition of Chinese authorities of policiesthat are de facto socially discriminatory against the Tibetanpopulation in Tibet. It further states that social disadvantagesand inequalities flowing from these policies form a contraventionof the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of AllForms of Racial Discrimination, a covenant to which China accededin 1981. Asia Watch further expressed concern at the inherently discriminatoryaspects of policies that are aimed at keeping non-resident Tibetansout of Lhasa while allowing non-resident Chinese the right tosettle freely in the city. The figures themselves do not tell the real story. Regardlessof the debate over the exact figure, the effect of the Chineseinflux is enormous already and seriously threatens the Tibetanculture and identity today. This is because the Chinese have movedinto and have taken over all the economic, political, culturaland spiritual centres of the country, transforming them into Chinesecentres where Tibetans are already effectively marginalized. Theactual political, economic and administrative power is, of coursealso in the hands of the Chinese. Though various Tibetans havebeen appointed in various administrative positions, they havelargely nominal roles most of the time. If China is allowed to pursue this policy, the result will bethe permanent disenfranchisement of the Tibetan people and destructionof its national and cultural heritage. Tibet will become justanother province of China. Tibetans will be reduced to an insignificantminority in their own country.
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