By Max Boot
July 19, 2014
I was
surprised to find that Lhasa and Tsetang are not nearly as decrepit as
Kathmandu or even Mumbai. In fact they are not decrepit at all—both cities look
brand spanking new. That’s because, for the most part, they are. China has
poured billions of dollars into Tibetan economic development. The result:
smooth concrete roads (not like the bumpy ones full of potholes in Nepal and
India); countless new stores, apartment blocks, and single-family homes; the
first-ever railroad on the high plateau; a new airport in Lhasa; and clean,
orderly sidewalks (unlike the dirty, littered, chaotic ones in Nepal and
India). You do not see the poor, huddled masses sleeping on the streets of
Lhasa, as is common even in India’s biggest cities. Nor do hordes of beggars
confront you. Even traffic is better regulated. Lhasa and Tsetang resemble
relatively prosperous cities anywhere else in China—and therein lies the
problem.
The
Tibetans know they are second-class citizens in a country not their own—they
have a separate language, history, and religion from those of the Han Chinese,
even if they were ruled by Chinese dynasties for part of their long history.
Their fate is all the more bitter in that, unlike other Chinese, they are
denied the right to travel freely abroad, and they must deal with the often
rude and condescending attitudes of Chinese newcomers who act like colonialists
anywhere. As the State Department’s report further noted: “There was a
perception among Tibetans that authorities systemically targeted them for
political repression, economic marginalization, and cultural assimilation, as
well as educational and employment discrimination.”
July 19, 2014
Seven
Years in Tibet was
the title of a popular book and movie. I spent only five days in Tibet in early
July—just long enough to get adjusted to its headache-inducing altitude (the
capital is 11,800 feet above sea level)—so I hesitate to draw sweeping
conclusions. But even a brief visit revealed realities beyond the headlines,
which normally focus only on events such as monks burning themselves to death
to protest Chinese occupation. Visiting two of the largest cities, Lhasa and
Tsetang, and driving around the countryside, I saw the benefits as well as the
bane of China’s rule.
![]() |
Train running over a bridge in Lhasa |
Benefits? I admit to being surprised to find
any, given the (understandable) focus of “Free Tibet” activists on how terrible
China’s rule has been. The Chinese have killed hundreds of thousands of
Tibetans and inflicted upon them oppression that has been described as cultural
genocide. But, high as the cost has been, the benefits of Chinese sovereignty
are undeniable, especially to someone who had just come from India and Nepal,
both democracies that are considerably freer than China but also considerably
poorer. Per capita income in Nepal is $730 a year; in India $1,570; in China,
$6,560.
For
Beijing is undertaking an aggressive program of cultural and political
imperialism. All the money poured into Tibet is designed to reconcile Tibetans
to their status as subjects of Beijing, which they have been ever since Mao
Zedong’s Red Army invaded in 1950. (A Tibetan uprising in 1959, carried out
with CIA support, was brutally suppressed.)
China’s
imposition of authority is not subtle. Red Chinese flags fly everywhere—even
(or especially) from the Potala Palace overlooking Lhasa, where generations of
dalai lamas resided before the current occupant of that august
politico-religious post (the 14th dalai lama) decamped in 1959 to exile in
India. Just as common are propaganda posters depicting all of China’s
presidents, from Mao Zedong to the incumbent, Xi Jinping. Chinese guards in
orange jumpsuits that make them look like henchmen from some Bond movie are
omnipresent inside Buddhist monasteries. No doubt undercover operatives are
just as numerous, if less conspicuous.
Surveillance
cameras ring both Lhasa and Tsetang, and Chinese Army bases are a common sight
in both cities even if official rules prohibit photo-graphing them. The Public
Security Bureau (China’s powerful police force) actually operates checkpoints
on the roads where drivers have to present their identification to be allowed
to proceed. As elsewhere in China, Internet access is strictly censored; anyone
trying to access Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail is out of luck unless equipped
with elaborate software to do an end run around the Great Firewall of China.
Simply getting a permit to visit Tibet is a tortuous process (an ordinary Chinese
visa will not do), and foreign visitors can be denied entry on a political
whim. (Japanese tourists are forbidden to come because of tensions between
Beijing and Tokyo.) The State Department’s 2013 human rights report noted
“other serious human rights abuses” including “extrajudicial killings, torture,
arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial detentions, and house arrests.”
To its
credit, Beijing has reopened and rebuilt monasteries that were trashed during
the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Buddhist monks have limited religious
freedom, as long as they don’t display any pictures of the current dalai lama.
But that has done little to lessen resentment among Tibetans, who fear that
they are becoming a minority in their own country as Beijing continues to encourage
and subsidize Han Chinese immigration.
The
prospect of real freedom for Tibet seems ever more remote—it will become
thinkable only if China itself has a change of regime to become as democratic
as Taiwan. Even local autonomy under China’s imperial oversight, as advocated
by the dalai lama, seems unlikely. The level of Chinese investment in Tibet
makes clear Big Brother is here to stay. The best that Tibetans can hope for is
a bit more breathing room inside their gilded cage.
NOTE-- Max
Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of
Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. The above article is reprinted from The Weekly Standard
went to lhasa and tsetang wont give you a whole picture of Tibet. lhasa, no doubt, is the capital city of Tibet. but the epi-center of revolution or Tibetan resistance movement, whether politically or economically, culturally, educationally, erupted from the eastern Tibet. we have to keep in mind that Tibet does not stands for "Tibetan autonomous region" which China branded in the 60s.
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