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rfmcdonaldEven as the 139th iteration of Canada's national holiday of Canada Day was celebrated yesterday, Tibetan activists in Canada mourned the participation of Canadian firms in the completion of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a rail connection that may . David Bruser, in the Toronto Star of the 30th of June, outlined the barest contours of these fears ("Bombardier, Nortel under fire").
Environmentalists have criticized the Qinghai-Tibet railroad, now fully operational, for its impact on the ecologies of the Tibetan Plateau, which dominates both Qinghai province and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Like many other cold high-altitude environments, the Tibetan Plateau hosts unique ecosystems protected by isolation which are, however, rather vulnerable to human intrusion by virtue of the local scarcity of resources. This ecological damage can be taken as inevitable, given how relatively little the Tibetan Plateau has been subjected to industrial technology.
Of more immediate concern to many Tibetan activists is the long-standing fear that Tibet will be overwhelmed by Han Chinese immigrants. This fear is of long-standing, and is product of the fact that there are perhaps two hundred times as many Han Chinese as there are Tibetans, with the Tibet Autonomous Region--the historical core of the Tibetan cultural area--having a population of barely more than two million people. Under Mao, forced population relocations implanted substantial Han Chinese populations in Qinghai and western Sichuan provinces, both territories part of the Tibetan cultural sphere, while the lifting of the most obvious migration controls under Deng Xiaoping produced a certain influx of Han Chinese migrants to the TAR (1, 2). At present, Tibetans form a two-thirds majority of the population in ethnographic Tibet excluding heavily Han Chinese-populated areas in northeast Qinghai, this proportion rising to 95% in the TAR. Even assuming an undercount of Han Chinese, Tibetans still form a comfortable majority of the population in their historic homeland, this majority bolstered by the fact that Tibetan women evidence substantially higher fertility rates than their Han Chinese counterparts in the 1990s (1, 2).
All this could change if, with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railroad, immigration to Tibetan areas by Han Chinese surges. The example of
Xinjiang to Tibet's north, a region historically dominated by Turkic Muslim Uyghurs that is being Sinicized through immigration comes too readily to mind.
The further integration of Tibet clearly poses serious risks for Tibetan culture, but I'm not immediately inclined to think the colonization of Tibet to necessarily be a likely consequence. While Han Chinese do overwhelmingly outnumber Tibetans, this population ratio is perhaps less relevant than the fact that the areas which form ethnographic Tibet--the TAR, Qinghai, Sichuan--are some of the poorest regions in the People's Republic. Xinjiang's economy, marked by such resources as land suitable for agriculture and vast stockpiles of mineral resources and hydrocarbon fuels, offers many more opportunities for many more Han Chinese migrants than the Tibetan areas' overwhelmingly underdeveloped areas. Individual Han Chinese certainly may possess technical and language skills that the mass of Tibetans simply might not have (yet), but the selective migration of professionals to an environmentally hostile and poor region isn't a sort of migration likely to overwhelm native populations. If China reverted to the forced population movements of Mao or if Tibet was found to be as potentially prosperous as Xinjiang, things would change. Both scenarios strike me as unlikely.
Tibetans don't have to worry about being overwhelmed by immigrants. No, the threat posed by the Qinghai-Tibet railroad will be more insidious still. How well will a Tibetan culture already hammered by Communism cope with the opening of the region to mass tourism? That shift is going to transform Tibetan culture radically, as anyone familiar with the effects of mass tourism on once-isolated cultures can attest.
In a test run tomorrow, Bombardier Transportation will see its new train cars roll on the 1,956-km Qinghai-Tibet Railway, a project that netted the Montreal-based firm $78 million (U.S.)
But to some Tibetan activists, like Tsering Khangsar of the Canada Tibet Committee, Bombardier, along with Nortel Networks Corp. and other firms involved in the project, have dirtied their hands in an enterprise that will help destroy Tibetan culture.
Khangsar attended the Nortel Networks Corp. annual general meeting yesterday to protest the project, which uses Nortel's wireless communications technology.
She told the crowd at the Toronto Congress Centre on Dixon Rd. that she feels it represents a final stage in Tibetan cultural genocide.
Nortel's CEO Mike Zafirovski quickly countered the suggestion of Nortel's collusion with evil, saying, "We've given this lots of thought. We view this matter finished, and we're moving on," then referred Khangsar to the proxy circular.
"Nortel categorically rejects in the strongest possible terms that we are collaborating with any government to repress the human rights or democratic rights of its citizens," the circular said. "Nortel supplies the same product solutions to China that it provides to many other customers around the world."
Environmentalists have criticized the Qinghai-Tibet railroad, now fully operational, for its impact on the ecologies of the Tibetan Plateau, which dominates both Qinghai province and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Like many other cold high-altitude environments, the Tibetan Plateau hosts unique ecosystems protected by isolation which are, however, rather vulnerable to human intrusion by virtue of the local scarcity of resources. This ecological damage can be taken as inevitable, given how relatively little the Tibetan Plateau has been subjected to industrial technology.
Of more immediate concern to many Tibetan activists is the long-standing fear that Tibet will be overwhelmed by Han Chinese immigrants. This fear is of long-standing, and is product of the fact that there are perhaps two hundred times as many Han Chinese as there are Tibetans, with the Tibet Autonomous Region--the historical core of the Tibetan cultural area--having a population of barely more than two million people. Under Mao, forced population relocations implanted substantial Han Chinese populations in Qinghai and western Sichuan provinces, both territories part of the Tibetan cultural sphere, while the lifting of the most obvious migration controls under Deng Xiaoping produced a certain influx of Han Chinese migrants to the TAR (1, 2). At present, Tibetans form a two-thirds majority of the population in ethnographic Tibet excluding heavily Han Chinese-populated areas in northeast Qinghai, this proportion rising to 95% in the TAR. Even assuming an undercount of Han Chinese, Tibetans still form a comfortable majority of the population in their historic homeland, this majority bolstered by the fact that Tibetan women evidence substantially higher fertility rates than their Han Chinese counterparts in the 1990s (1, 2).
All this could change if, with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railroad, immigration to Tibetan areas by Han Chinese surges. The example of
Xinjiang to Tibet's north, a region historically dominated by Turkic Muslim Uyghurs that is being Sinicized through immigration comes too readily to mind.
The 2000 census put Xinjiang's total population at about 18.5 million, and official surveys showed growth to 19.05 million by the end of 2002. Among these people, the two most populous ethnic groups are the Uighurs at 45.2 percent and the Han at 40.6 percent, with the Muslim Kazakhs running a poor third at 6.7 percent, according to the 2000 census. Chinese accounts say the total population in 1949 was 4.33 million, of whom 75.9 percent were Uighurs, 10.2 percent Kazakhs and only 6.7 percent Han.
[. . .]
What has really made the difference to the proportions in the population is immigration of Han Chinese from the east. This began in the 1950s when authorities demobilized many of the victorious communist troops into the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and sent numerous other Han from the east to join the corps. They had three main tasks: to maintain border security, to keep the minorities in order, and to boost economic production. This Han immigration reached a height in 1978, then began to decline during the 1980s, but again accelerated in the 1990s. In 2000, the government launched its Great Western Development Strategy, which has involved extensive investment from the east in Xinjiang and Han immigrants to staff development.
The further integration of Tibet clearly poses serious risks for Tibetan culture, but I'm not immediately inclined to think the colonization of Tibet to necessarily be a likely consequence. While Han Chinese do overwhelmingly outnumber Tibetans, this population ratio is perhaps less relevant than the fact that the areas which form ethnographic Tibet--the TAR, Qinghai, Sichuan--are some of the poorest regions in the People's Republic. Xinjiang's economy, marked by such resources as land suitable for agriculture and vast stockpiles of mineral resources and hydrocarbon fuels, offers many more opportunities for many more Han Chinese migrants than the Tibetan areas' overwhelmingly underdeveloped areas. Individual Han Chinese certainly may possess technical and language skills that the mass of Tibetans simply might not have (yet), but the selective migration of professionals to an environmentally hostile and poor region isn't a sort of migration likely to overwhelm native populations. If China reverted to the forced population movements of Mao or if Tibet was found to be as potentially prosperous as Xinjiang, things would change. Both scenarios strike me as unlikely.
Tibetans don't have to worry about being overwhelmed by immigrants. No, the threat posed by the Qinghai-Tibet railroad will be more insidious still. How well will a Tibetan culture already hammered by Communism cope with the opening of the region to mass tourism? That shift is going to transform Tibetan culture radically, as anyone familiar with the effects of mass tourism on once-isolated cultures can attest.
