The Communist Party says it is winning the fight for hearts and minds, writes CLIFFORD COONANin Lhasa
ONE OF Tibet’s top Communist Party officials said Beijing was winning its fight for the hearts and minds of the Tibetan people, some of whom rioted in 2008 against Beijing rule. The government would step up projects to improve the lot of Tibetans, he said.
China faces a challenge to win the affections of Tibetans who support the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism who fled Lhasa in 1959, eight years after it was formally annexed by the People’s Republic of China.
China says Tibet is, was and always will be Tibetan; but the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala in northern India claims to represent the Tibetan people and wants more autonomy.
Hao Peng, deputy secretary of the Communist Party in Tibet and vice-chairman of the regional government in the isolated mountain enclave, said the central government was committed to addressing yawning income gaps and opportunity inequalities in Tibet between Tibetans and the Han Chinese who arrive daily by road and rail in the vast mountainous region to set up businesses.
Some could be seen at the enormous, state-of-the-art train station near Lhasa as they alighted the train from Lanzhou. Han Chinese businesses are more and more in evidence on the streets of Lhasa, once one of the most remote and mysterious places on earth and still a difficult place to get to.
“We are doing our best to improve the quality and calibre of local Tibetans and have also introduced special policies in terms of employment projects, subsidies and grants to help projects helping local people,” Mr Hao said during a briefing in the Tibet government offices.
Many Tibetans resent the fact that Han Chinese from other provinces are benefiting the most from the region’s resources and development boom, but Mr Hao said the government was working to address these concerns.
“It’s not unusual that businessmen from other parts of China benefit from Tibet’s development, as they help the local economy,” he said.
Mr Hao appeared open and frank in the discussion, answering a number of questions in a manner very unusual in China. An avuncular figure, he represents the new more approachable face that China wants to front its multibillion-yuan efforts to improve the Tibetan economy.
Some 76 per cent of 15,500 civil servants hired in the past five years were Tibetan, he said, and a priority was raising education levels.
“When you come back in 10 years you will remark how the farmers’ income level here approaches the national average,” he said.
Winning hearts and minds is about more than just building factories and model villages, however.
Mr Hao put the blame for any unrest in the region firmly at the feet of the Dalai Clique –a grouping centred on the Dalai Lama.
On March 14th, monks marched from the Jokang Temple, Tibetan Buddhism’s most holy temple at the heart of Lhasa, and called for greater freedom. Tensions subsequently spilled over into widespread violence in Tibetan areas both inside the Tibetan Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas in China. Nineteen people were killed.
Tibetan independence groups say scores died in a subsequent crackdown, a claim denied by the Chinese. Nonetheless, Lhasa remains on its guard, with soldiers armed with machine guns standing guard on the streets of the ancient town.
“After March 14th we have taken many efforts to maintain stability. Unity is a blessing while instability is a curse. The People’s Armed Police on the street are necessary to enforce stability,” Mr Hao said.
“We have the ability and confidence to maintain stability in Tibet forever, and we will ultimately achieve long-term order and stability,” he said, adding that the Dalai Lama needed to accept that Tibet was an “inalienable” part of China.
The reason that ordinary Tibetans were not allowed to display pictures of the Dalai Lama, whom they worship as a god-king, was because he is “not just a religious figure. He is also a mastermind of separatist activities.” Mr Hao said “No sovereign country in the world would allow the hanging of a portrait of a person like that . . . the Dalai Lama colluded with anti-China forces abroad to make trouble in Tibet.
“What you see in the streets, including the police and other legal forces, are necessary measures to maintain stability . . . the local, ordinary people love the country, they love the Communist Party of China.”