The Tibet Autonomous Regional People's Congress and its Standing Committee -- the local organs of state power inTibet -- fully exercise the power of autonomy bestowed by the Constitution and law, and have actively formulated laws and regulations appropriate to local ethnic and regional characteristics. Between and more than 60 local laws and regulations were worked out, such as the Rules of Procedure of the People's Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Regulations on the Study, Use and Development of the Tibetan Language in the Tibet Autonomous Region for trial implementation.
In recent years the Region has formulated 23 local laws and regulations, made 21 legal decisions, and cleared up or revised 23 laws and regulations involving politics, the economy, culture, education, environmental protection and other fields, including the Regulations of the Tibet Autonomous Region on Environmental Protection, the Regulations of the Tibet Autonomous Region on the Work of Town and Township People's Congresses and the Regulations on Enhancing the Examination and Supervision of the Implementation of the Laws and Regulations.
In addition, rules for the implementation of 14 national laws and regulations conforming to the local features of Tibet have been drawn up.
The legislative and administrative organs of the Tibet Autonomous Region have designated the Tibetan New Year, the Sholton and other traditional festivals of the Tibetan ethnic group as the Region's holidays, in addition to the official national holidays. In accordance with the special natural and geographical conditions of Tibet, the autonomous region has decreed a work week of no more than 35 hours, five hours less than the official national work week for workers and staff.
According to statistics, the number of laws and regulations worked out since by the People's Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region and its Standing Committee to safeguard the interests of the Tibetan people in light of the actual conditions in Tibet exceeds the total formulated during the 12 years preceding Both the Chinese Constitution and the Law on Ethnic Regional Autonomy specify that the chairmen or vice-chairmen of the standing committees of the people's congresses of ethnic autonomous areas shall be citizens of the ethnic group or groups exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned.
The chairman of an autonomous region, the governor of an autonomous prefecture and the head of an autonomous county shall be a citizen of the ethnic group exercising regional autonomy in the area concerned. According to statistics, members of the Tibetan and other ethnic minorities now account for After the election of members to succeeding governments at the township town , county, prefectural city and autonomous regional levels in , members of the Tibetan and other ethnic minorities accounted for Further progress has been made in the training and selection of cadres of Tibetan and other ethnic minorities inTibet since According to statistics the number of cadres belonging to the Tibetan and other ethnic minorities in Tibet had increased by Guaranteeing the study and use of the Tibetan language is an important aspect of safeguarding the Tibetan people's right to autonomy and exercising their right to participate in the administration of state and local affairs.
The Chinese Constitution specifies that all ethnic groups have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages. China's Law on Ethnic Regional Autonomy stipulates that in performing their functions, the organs of self-government of every ethnic autonomous area, in accordance with the regulations on the exercise of autonomy in those areas, employ the spoken and written languages or languages in common use in the locality.
Accordingly, the Regulations on the Study, Use and Development of the Tibetan Language for trial implementation adopted by the Tibet Autonomous Regional People's Congress clearly specifies that both Tibetan and Chinese should be used in the Tibet Autonomous Region, with precedence given to the Tibetan language.
The Tibetan language is the common language for the whole autonomous region. The resolutions, laws, regulations and decrees adopted by the people's congresses, and official documents and proclamations issued by governments at all levels in the Region are in both Tibetan and Chinese. In court cases involving Tibetans, the Tibetan language must be used in hearing cases, and legal documents must be written in the Tibetan language.
Newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations also use both Tibetan and Chinese languages. All signs and marks of government institutions, streets, roads and public facilities are in both Tibetan and Chinese scripts.
Tibetan academic, cultural and art workers have the right to write and publish their academic or artistic works in their own language.
The implementation of the ethnic regional autonomy system has further guaranteed the political rights of the Tibetan people, which is in marked contrast to the situation in oldTibet. Before the Democratic Reform of Tibet had long been a society languishing under a system of feudal serfdom which intertwined politics with religion, a society which was even darker than the European society of the Middle Ages.
The serfs and slaves, making up 95 percent of the total population of Tibet, were completely deprived of personal freedom and political rights. The serf owners considered serfs and slaves as their private property, so they could trade and transfer them, present them as gifts, make them mortgages for debts and exchange them.
It was not until that the Article Code and Article Code, which had been practiced for several hundred years in old Tibet, were abolished, by which codes the Tibetan people were divided, in explicit terms, into three classes and nine ranks and put on an unequal footing in legal status.
The codes specified that the lives of people of the highest rank of the upper class, such as a prince, were literally worth their weight in gold, whereas the lives of people of the lowest rank of the lower class, such as women, butchers, hunters and craftsmen, were worth no more than the price of a straw rope. Th serf owners safeguarded the feudal serfdom with savage punishments; they would frequently punish serfs and slaves by gouging out their eyes, cutting off their ears, arms or legs, drowning them or inflicting other terrible penalties.
Since the Democratic Reform abolished the feudal serf system, the Tibetan people, like the people of all other ethnic groups throughout the country, have become the masters of their state and society, and won the political rights enjoyed by all citizens as stipulated in the Chinese Constitution and law.
All citizens inTibet who have reached the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election, regardless of ethnic group, race, sex, occupation, family background, religious belief, education, property status or length of residence. They elect their own deputies and exercise the power to administer state and local affairs through the people's congresses elected by them. According to statistics, in when the succeeding township, county, prefectural city and autonomous regional people's congresses were elected, Tibet had 1,, voters, making up In some places percent of the voters took part in the elections.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Constitution and Electoral Law clearly specify that the National People's Congress, the highest organ of state power, should include an appropriate number of ethnic minority deputies. The Electoral Law contains special regulations to promote the election of deputies from among ethnic minorities.
For example, it stipulates that where the total population of an ethnic minority in an area where that ethnic minority lives in concentrated communities exceeds 30 percent of the total local population, the number of people represented by each deputy of that ethnic minority shall be equal to the number of people represented by each of the other deputies to the local people's congress; and that where the total population of an ethnic minority in such an area is less than 15 percent of the total local population, the number of people represented by each deputy of that ethnic minority may appropriately be less than the number of people represented by each of the other deputies to the local people's congress.
The ethnic minorities, who make up 8 percent of the total population inChina, now account for well over 14 percent of the total number of deputies to the National People's Congress. At present, Tibet has 20 deputies to the Ninth National People's Congress, 80 percent of whom are from the Tibetan or other ethnic minorities. Though the Moinba, Lhoba and other ethnic minorities in Tibet have small populations, each of them has its own deputies to the National People's Congress as well as to the people's congresses at all levels in Tibet.
Personages of all strata and all circles inTibet also participate in the administration and discussion of state affairs, and exercise their democratic rights through attending the political consultative conferences at all levels. Since its founding in , the CPPCC Tibetan Committee has recruited large numbers of people of the Tibetan and other ethnic minorities, as well as religious figures.
The legal codes of old Tibet stipulated: "Women are not to be granted the right to discuss state affairs. In female deputies to the Tibet Autonomous Region People's Congress made up 20 percent of the total.
Now Tibet has women cadres at or above the county level, and some Tibetan female judges, procurators, police officers and lawyers for the first time in Tibetan history.
Most staff members of the judiciary of the Tibet Autonomous Region are Tibetans or members of local ethnic minorities. Strictly in accordance with the Constitution and laws, the judicial departments of the Tibet Autonomous Region protect the basic rights and freedoms, and other legal rights and interests of the citizens of all ethnic groups inTibet.
They also protect public property and the lawful private property of the citizens, punish those law-breakers who endanger society, and maintain social order according to law. Both the crime and imprisonment rates of the Tibet Autonomous Region are lower than the nation's average. The legal rights of criminals are protected by law, and those who belong to ethnic minorities or religious sects are not discriminated against, but due consideration is given to their lifestyles and customs.
The government guarantees the provision of food, clothing, shelter and articles of daily use for prison inmates. Each prison in Tibet has separate dining facilities and diets for inmates of different ethnic groups and provides for them zanba roasted highland barley flour , buttered tea, sweet tea, etc.
Each prison has a clinic, and the number of prison doctors is higher than the nation's average. Criminals enjoy rest days, holidays and traditional ethnic festivals, in accordance with the state's unified regulations. Prisoners may see visitors every month, may win a reduction of penalty or be released on parole, and may be given various awards according to law. Speeding up Tibet's economic construction, continuously improving the life of the Tibetan people, and ensuring that they fully enjoy the rights to existence and development are the Central Government's primary goals for its work in Tibet.
They are also the most important tasks of governments at all levels in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Outstanding achievements have been made in this regard through the unstinted efforts of the Central Government and the governments at all levels in the Region.
Since the Tibetan economy has increased rapidly. In the GDP of Tibet amounted to about 7. Since Tibet has reaped bumper harvests for 10 years in succession. The total grain output was , tons in , the highest output in Tibetan history and an increase of The output of meat was , tons in , an increase of Now the people of the Tibet Autonomous Region are working hard to attain the goal of getting rid of poverty throughout the Region and achieving comfortable lives for most of the people before the year Since the building of the parts of the infrastructure closely related to people's everyday life and production, such as communications, energy and telecommunications, and the development of construction, building materials, foodstuffs, traditional handicrafts, textile and other light industries have been quickened.
Now there are scheduled flights to other cities in China from airports in Tibet every day and some weekly international flights. A comprehensive network of communications and transportation consisting of air routes and highways has been basically completed inTibet. The volume of goods transported via highways in the Region increased The average number of passengers transported by airplanes is , each year.
So transportation conditions have been greatly improved, in striking contrast to the old days when the region was very hard to reach and goods had to be carried in on the backs of animals or people. Satellite telecommunications stations have been built in seven prefectures or cities in Tibet, and program-controlled telephone systems are in use in 51 counties. Satellite transmission and program-controlled telephones are being used in about 98 percent of the counties in Tibet, which is now connected with the international and domestic long-distance telephone automatic exchange networks.
Municipal construction has been speeded up in major cities and towns, such as Lhasa, Xigaze, Nagqu, Qamdo, Zetang and Shiquanhe. Since the s more than , sq m of old residential houses have been rebuilt in Lhasa, and 5, households have moved to new dwellings.
All this has improved the living environment and quality of life of both urban and rural residents. Economic development inTibet began on an exceedingly primitive and backward foundation.
Its natural environment is unfavorable for economic development because of its 4,odd-meter altitude, severe cold weather and thin air. In addition, under the rule of the feudal serfdom in old Tibet the economy in the region was extremely backward and the living standards of the people there were low. In view of all this, the Central Government has always attached special importance to the development of Tibet by providing generous assistance in manpower, materials, financial resources and technologies.
In addition, preferential policies have been adopted in line with the Region's actual conditions. No levies have been imposed on the peasants and herdsmen in Tibet since and there is no compulsory state purchase of grain there.
The income that Tibetan peasants and herdsmen earn is entirely their own. In recent years the Central Government has allocated upwards of 1. From the early s to the Central Government allocated more than 40 billion yuan for Tibet, and from to allotted 6. Among the latter were 1. The state has also given large-scale additional assistance to key and special projects inTibet in different economic and social development periods.
In some 43 projects were built for Tibet by nine provinces and municipalities mobilized and directed by the Central Government, and in the Central Government decided to build gratis another 62 projects for Tibet within three or four years, also with the cooperation of other provinces and municipalities of the country, involving agriculture and water conservancy, energy, communications and telecommunications, industry, and social welfare and municipal engineering.
Now almost all the projects have been completed and put into use. The actual total investment was 3. The comprehensive project for the development of the middle valleys of the Yarlungzangbo, Lhasa and Nyangqu rivers, in which the Central Government invested a fund to the tune of one billion yuan, was put into practice in , and since then both the grain yield and the net per-capita income of the peasants and herdsmen in the development area have increased by a wide margin.
The Yamzhoyum Lake pumped-storage power station, a project with state investments running to 2. In recent years another projects have been built or are being built in Tibet by 14 other provinces and municipalities, with a total investment of million yuan. The completion of these projects will push the economic development of Tibet and the living standards of both its urban and rural residents a still bigger step forward.
The development of the economy has tangibly improved the lives of all people inTibet. In the average annual per capita income that urban residents used for living expenses was 5, yuan, 2. In , income of the above two types was 5, yuan and 1, yuan respectively. By the end of the bank savings deposits of both urban and rural people in Tibet were 3. In the average amount of grain owned by each Tibetan was kg, an increase of 28 percent over Though the population in was 2.
In , the average per capita consumption of meat in Tibet was In the average per capita consumption of vegetables by urban dwellers in Tibet had increased by 26 percent and that of edible oil by Other increases in that year were 2. In tandem with the development of the economy, the household property owned by both urban and rural people in Tibet has increased steadily. The peasant and herdsman households own large amounts of means of production, and the average fixed assets for production purpose are worth more than 8, yuan per household.
This quickly brought the Dalai Lama's elder brother, Gyalo Thundrup who lived in Hong Kong , into contact with representatives of the Chinese government and led to an invitation to the Dalai Lama to send a delegation that would have freedom to travel throughout Tibet including Lhasa and observe conditions there.
Beijing obviously believed that the delegation would be impressed by the progress that had been made in the region since Including the late Lobsang Samten, the Dalai Lama's older brother, the Tibetan delegation first visited Amdo in Qinghai Province where it received a tumultuous welcome.
Beijing, embarrassed by this expression of support for the Dalai Lama, contacted Ren to ask what would happen if the delegation were to continue to Lhasa according to plan.
Ren is said to have replied that the Lhasa people were more ideologically developed than the simple farmers and herders of Amdo and strongly supported the ideals of the Communist Party; there would be no such problems in the city.
The Lhasa Tibetans agreed politely; then they gave the delegation a welcome surpassing anything it had received in Qinghai. Thousands upon thousands of Lhasa people mobbed the delegation, many with tears streaming from their eyes, prostrating, offering ceremonial scarves, fighting to touch the Dalai Lama's brother, and a few even shouting Tibetan independence slogans. Since Beijing officials were accompanying the Tibetan refugee delegation, there was no way for Ren, who was known to be unsympathetic to Tibetan cultural, religious, and language reforms, to cover up this fiasco and his utter misreading of the sentiment of the Tibetan people.
When the refugee delegation returned to Beijing its members privately informed the Chinese that they were appalled at the massive religious and cultural destruction they had witnessed, and by the overall poverty, backwardness, and lack of material progress in Tibet, Leaving support for Tibetan culture aside, they chided the Chinese for not bringing basic improvements such as good roads or buildings to the people of Tibet at a level parallel to that found in Han areas. All of this shocked the highest reaches of the CCP.
Officials had expected to demonstrate the progress Tibet had made under 20 years of Chinese Communist rule and thereby set the stage for negotiations to settle the Tibet Question once and for all in a manner favorable to China. Now, faced with highly critical reports, they were forced to reassess the situation in Tibet and begin a process of readjustment that continues to the present.
After considerable preliminary investigation, including visits by several groups of Beijing officials, Hu Yaobang and Vice Premier Wan Li made an unprecedented fact-finding visit to Tibet in May to see conditions for themselves.
Apparently dismayed by what they saw and heard, they acted immediately, taking Ren back to Beijing with them presumably so that he could not thwart their reform plans. Hu made public an amazing six-point report that included among its salient points:.
This situation means that the burden of the masses must be considerably lightened. The people in Tibet should be exempt from paying taxes and meeting purchase quotas for the next few years… All kinds of exactions must be abolished.
The people should not be assigned any additional work without pay. Peasants' and herdsmen's produce may be purchased at negotiated prices or bartered to supply mutual needs, and they should be exempt from meeting state purchase quotas. The Tibetan people have a long history and a rich culture. The world renowned ancient Tibetan culture included fine Buddhism, graceful music and dance as well as medicine and opera, all of which are worthy of serious study and development.
All ideas that ignore and weaken Tibetan culture are wrong. It is necessary to do a good job in inheriting and developing Tibetan culture. Education has not progressed well in Tibet. Taking Tibet's special characteristics into consideration, efforts should be made to set up universities and middle and primary schools in the region.
Some cultural relics and Buddhist scriptures in temples have been damaged, and conscientious effort should be made to protect, sort, and study them. Cadres of Han nationality working in Tibet should learn the spoken and written Tibetan language. It should be a required subject; otherwise they will be divorced from the masses. Cherishing the people of minority nationalities is not empty talk. The Tibetan people's habits, customs, history, and culture must be respected.
This public statement is said to be mild compared to the secret report and speeches Hu Yaobang made to the party cadre, one part of which is said to have equated the previous 20 years of Chinese rule in Tibet with colonial occupation. This decision of Hu Yaobang and the Central Committee to support those inside and outside China who criticized conditions in Tibet formed the basis on which a series of reform measures were implemented in the following years. The post Tibetan cultural policy of the Chinese government more or less parallels that implemented throughout China where the practice of religion and other traditional customs is again allowed.
It also parallels minority policy in other "nationality" areas by rejecting assimilation and accepting the validity and practice of traditional minority culture within the communist state. It differs from the general reforms in two major ways; it exempts Tibetan farmers and nomads from all taxes until at least , and it empowers the TAR to reject or modify central government laws that conflict with traditional Tibetan culture.
The extent of the changes under the new policy is especially notable in the practice of religion. During the period of our field work in Phala, the nomads, for whom religion had again become an important part of life, were free to pursue the cycle of religious rites that typified the traditional society. Most households had small altars in their tents and flew prayer flags from their tent poles and guylines. Nomads no longer feared open displays of religion, and a number even wore Dalai Lama buttons and displayed his photograph openly.
Individuals turning prayer wheels, counting rosaries, and doing prostrations were common sights. Even government functions such as the summer horse-race fairs at the district headquarters included unofficial, but open, religious components, for example, monks reading prayers in special "monastery" tents. The depth of these changes was pointedly illustrated one afternoon in December of when a few nomads brought a newly purchased radio to our tent and sat listening to All India Radio's Tibetan language shortwave broadcast of news and religious prayers.
Because they had the volume turned up and our tent was just a few feet from that of a party leader, we asked if they weren't concerned that he would hear what they were listening to. The nomads laughed, saying "why should he care, he listens also. Some are also actively supporting the reemergence of monasticism by donating animals and food to help rebuild small local monasteries, and by hiring monks to conduct prayers for them at life's crises, e. These traditional practices did not reappear all at once or in an orderly fashion.
At first the nomads feared that the new policy was a devious trick launched to expose pockets of "rightist" thinking, and individuals were reluctant to take the lead and risk being singled out.
Change occurred only gradually as individual nomads took specific actions that, in effect, tested the general policy. When no protest or punishment came from the district officials above them—all of whom are ethnic Tibetans—a desirable practice spread, and this process is still going on.
The reemergence of nomad "mediums" individuals whom deities possess and speak through exemplifies this. It is an aspect of the traditional Tibetan Buddhist religious system that is considered unnecessary superstition not only by the Communists but to an extent also by the refugee government-in-exile. Yet it reappeared in Phala in the winter of when an adult in one camp took ill and was in great pain for days before he died.
A man from the same encampment went into trance spontaneously during the illness and was possessed by a deity who gave a prognosis and explanation of the disease. When no official criticism of this event occurred in the ensuing weeks and months, he and others fashioned the traditional costume worn by mediums, and he is now sought by others in Phala in cases of illness. What has been occurring, therefore, is a form of "cultural revitalization.
He wrote:. The Tibet situation conforms to Wallace's conditions for the emergence of revitalization movements in a general way. Wallace argued that for revitalization to occur the persons involved must perceive their cultural system as unsatisfactory, and this is clearly what transpired in Tibet. Compelled to abandon the traditional beliefs and symbols that gave meaning to the world around them and to actively embrace new "communist" norms and values that they considered repugnant, they experienced a crisis of morality and meaning.
This was further exacerbated when they had to put the new morality into practice by persecuting and physically punishing the newly defined "class enemies," many of whom were friends and kinsmen. In another important sense, however, the Tibetan situation is inconsistent with the Wallace model since the response in Tibet has not involved a conscious and organized effort on the part of an individual or a group to rectify the anomie by innovating a new cultural system.
Rather, what has occurred is a spontaneous, diffuse process wherein members of a society individually have resurrected and reintegrated components of their traditional cognitive and affective systems so as to relieve stress and dissonance and reconstruct for themselves a more satisfying culture. This process of diffuse revitalization in Phala extends to all facets of the cultural system.
Hunting wild animals and butchering livestock, for example, are again taking on the stigma they had in the traditional society. Since Buddhism teaches that taking life is sinful, the nomads traditionally relegated slaughtering activities as well as castrating and cutting ear marks on livestock to a hereditary "unclean" social stratum, the very poor, or the irreligious.
This custom has again emerged in Phala and throughout Tibet, and most nomads no longer slaughter their own livestock. An incident that occurred during our field work in Phala illustrates the extent to which the traditional cognitive system has been reintegrated into the present system. A former u pung poor class nomad—who had been an official during the commune period—sold a lactating sheep to a trader before milking it, thereby breaking a.
Nomads believe that such an act could affect negatively the milk production of the entire camp, and a man in the same camp—who had been persecuted as a class enemy—became incensed.
He berated the seller and words soon turned into pushing and fighting. They took the case before the local xiang government, the poor class nomad arguing that the wealthy class nomad looked down on him and was trying to impose reactionary superstitions on him. The local and district level officials, however, were not impressed with what has become an anachronistic perspective and did not side with him. Instead they fined both men for fighting, in the process validating the acceptability of even this type of custom.
On another occasion, when a goat of one of Phala's four party members was accidentally strangled during milking by the rope that tied it, he threw the carcass into the adjacent lake rather than eat meat which had been killed by females the milkers , albeit inadvertently. Current marriage patterns also illustrate the reemergence of traditional attitudes and values. A number of today's wealthy nomads, for example, favorably consider a potential spouse who has a high-status family background from the old society, and almost all nomads now refuse to marry those from the traditional "unclean" stratum.
Similarly, nomad practitioners of traditional Tibetan medicine are again active in the area, and traditional singing and dancing often spontaneously erupt when the young from several camps come together. In the broader Tibetan social arena, the nomads are once again as in the old society hiring scores of villagers who make to day trips one-way each summer to tan sheep and goat skins, carve prayer stones, mold clay figurines of deities, build prayer walls, and construct storehouses and residences.
This practice not only is reestablishing social boundaries between farmers and nomads but is also reaffirming the social worth of the nomad's pastoral way of life. The post cultural policy in Tibet, therefore, has allowed individual nomads in Phala to revitalize their culture, reconstructing a satisfying system of coherent meaning with which to perceive and evaluate the world around them and, in the process, reestablish pride in their customs and way of life.
Although all nomads realize that the government is the final arbiter of how far this process can go and that there was considerable individual variation in the extent and timing of the process—some nomads being less interested in adhering to traditional religious and social values—as of the bulk of the traditional cultural system was essentially operational again, and the nomads were pleased by this thoroughly unexpected turn of events. However, their knowledge and fear that the current government could intervene again at any time and impose its alien values has left feelings of vulnerability, anxiety, and anger and has discouraged development of positive attitudes toward the state.
To a considerable extent this accounts for the obvious incongruity between the objective effects of the new policy in Tibet and the Tibetans' often negative reaction to the government that enacted it. It will take a long time for most nomads to forget the first two decades of Chinese rule. Reforms, Production, and Trade. China's new policies in Tibet have also dramatically changed the system of production and improved the overall standard of living. As in the rest of China, the major economic reform program in Tibet is known as the system of " complete responsibility" gendzang.
It began in Phala in the fall of when the commune was dissolved and all the commune's animals were divided equally among the nomads, regardless of age or sex.
Overnight, each household became completely responsible for its own production and marketing as in the pre era. The nomads were again free to sell or barter their animals as they saw fit.
In addition, households were allowed to retain the animals they had held privately during the commune era. This raised the average to But unlike the rest of China, the central government also canceled all taxes and quota sales for nomads and farmers in the TAR until at least Health care was also made free for all residents. The Phala pastoral production system, past and present, involves rearing yak, sheep, and goats, and harvesting their products, consuming part of the yield, and then bartering another portion to obtain necessities such as barley and tea.
The nomads traditionally make a winter trading trip to village areas 20 to 30 days' walk to the southeast, and farmer-traders come to the Northern Plateau during the summer months to barter with the nomads. These individual trading activities were terminated during the Cultural Revolution but quickly reemerged under the new economic policy. Wool has been the most important trade item for the nomads. Cashmere, the soft down of goats, was traditionally of little importance to the nomad economy but it has risen dramatically in value over the past few years; in it sold for 6 to 8 times more per kilogram than wool at government rates.
All three species of domestic livestock also produce milk, which the nomads convert into yogurt, butter, and cheese. Two other components of the production system are salt trading and hunting. Both are in part backup activities, utilized widely in bad times but less so when the yield from domestic livestock provides a satisfactory livelihood. Since economic conditions have improved since , most of the wealthy and middle income nomads have forsaken hunting for religions reasons, leaving mainly the stratum of poor nomads who still hunt.
Traditionally, Tibet's nomads were the primary producers of salt for both Tibet and the Nepalese hill areas. Each spring some of the Phala nomads would take pack animals to a saline lake about 30 days' walk to the northwest to collect salt from large exposed salt beds.
Most of this went to pay a "salt tax" to their lord, the Panchen Lama, while the excess was bartered with villagers. Some nomads still trade salt, but the combination of the opening of truck roads to these lakes over the past decade, new competition from Chinese salt, and higher prices for their other products has reduced the profitability of salt and led most nomads to drop it from their annual production cycle, saving themselves the two-month round trip to the lake.
On the local household level, the response to the new market-oriented economy has been completely entrepreneurial—all remnants of communal production have been eliminated.
District and county officials have not opposed this; instead, as will be seen below, they have themselves become entrepreneurs trying to maximize the profits of their own offices by manipulating market exchanges in various ways. At present, there are five types of trade in Phala: 1 trade with the government at the district and county levels; 2 private trade with farmers living along the fringe of the Northern Plateau—the traditional barter trade; 3 trade with farmers and traders who come to the plateau in summer to exchange products and labor for livestock or livestock products; 4 trade with other nomads, e.
Although the new economic policy gives nomads and farmers in the TAR he right to sell their products to whomever they want, the bulk of the wool and cashmere trade is conducted with the district's trade office through a system of contract or quota sales. The reason is simple. The nomads are being forced by district and county officials to sell a quota to the government, although these officials represent the transactions as voluntarily negotiated contracts.
Further research is required to understand this decline, but it illustrates the difficulties of keeping Han migrants in these remote locations beyond specific, heavily subsidized bouts of infrastructure investment or increasingly capital-intensive mining and petroleum exploitation.
As Han left in droves, the minority population increased by almost 15 percent, resulting in a sharp increase in the minority share by 6. While this might be considered an exceptional case given the nature of the local economy, similar dynamics have happened elsewhere, suggesting a broader structural trend. The census data by ethnicity are not yet available for the prefectures in Gansu and Sichuan Gannan, Aba, and Ganzi , although other indirect data such as the proportion of the population aged years old strongly suggest the same dynamics.
At the county-level of these prefectures, population decline is similarly predominant in the lower-altitude counties on the eastern edge of these prefectures that border Han areas such as Wenchuan county, which was the epicenter of the earthquake in Sichuan.
In these limitrophe counties, minority shares are lower and populations older, and population decline is most likely explained by an exodus of Han people, as in Haixi. In contrast, the more remote counties that are mostly Tibetan and younger generally exhibit strong population growth, as in Guoluo and Yushu. The young age structures suggest that the growth is mostly due to local Tibetan birth rates, not to in-migration.
Within the TAR, almost half of the population growth was due to the very rapid growth of Lhasa, which grew by 55 percent over the past decade, after roughly doubling in the s see Table 3. This was clearly due to strong in-migration, including Tibetans migrating from other parts of the TAR. Lhasa also accounted for more than half of the increase in the Han population , out of , additional Han in the TAR compared to Nyingchi and Ngari, prefectures at strategic military locations in the ongoing border conflicts with India, also saw rapid growth of over 2 percent a year, and accounted for an additional sixth of the Han increase in the TAR in the s.
Lhasa and especially Nyingchi saw a strong increase in the Han population share. Shannan Tib. Lhoka , which also contains militarized borders , also saw a substantial increase in share, although this is partly explained by strong Tibetan outmigration, probably to neighboring Lhasa. The other three prefectures of the TAR exhibited population growth as would be expected according to the natural increase rates generally observed among rural Tibetans, which are among the highest in China, counterbalanced by some outmigration.
Han population shares increased, but more moderately or barely at all in the case of pastoral Nagqu and from a small base—like what happened in the more remote prefectures in Qinghai. In this sense, the TAR exception was more precisely a Lhasa, Nyingchi, and Ngari exception, reflecting massively subsidized geo-strategic priorities. Lhasa is a very important culturally and politically symbolic exception, but it is an exception nonetheless, as the prime urban center of a vast region the size of western Europe that, up until recently, was mostly agrarian.
Even despite doubling over two decades, the low Han share of the TAR in will still probably be greeted with incredulity by those who allege population swamping. However, it is important to recall that the census was conducted on November 1 as it was in and , well after summer when the Han tourist population swells and most journalists and other observers visit.
Moreover, we know from previous censuses that the Han are concentrated in the urbanized core of Lhasa, and very few reside in rural areas. This continues to be reflected in the census in that 53 percent of the , non-military Han counted in the TAR were in Lhasa. Given that they dominate economic opportunities in Lhasa and other urban centers, this may make them seem more demographically dominant than they are.
In other words, we need to look at the effects of Han migration through the lens of urban employment rather than demographics. This is especially the case given that Tibetans have been urbanizing rapidly over the last 20 years, not simply as a matter of government policy but also from their own initiative , as they leave farming, herding, and rural areas altogether, in search of work in towns and cities.
Fears of these effects are understandable but must be nuanced, whereas reductive narratives, including recent allegations of coerced or forced labor, muddle these nuances. The census data also highlight the urban employment predicament facing Tibetans.
For instance, the proportion of the population living in urban areas in the TAR increased from 23 percent to 36 percent between and More specifically, the rural population in the TAR barely grew, by only 23, people, even though its natural increase would have been more than 10 times that, clearly demonstrating how urbanization was not only driven by Han in-migration, but also by local Tibetans leaving rural areas or rural areas being reclassified as urban.
The trends are even more intense outside the TAR, where rural populations have been declining. In this context, Han migrants benefit from strong competitive advantages over locals within the rapidly emerging urban economies that are dominated by the state and non-local entities with clear Chinese linguistic and cultural biases.
Han migrants not only tend to have much higher levels of education than locals as identified in earlier surveys , but most are also fluent in Mandarin Chinese whereas Mandarin is a second language for most Tibetans, who generally learn it in school. Census results confirm that illiteracy or lack of schooling has remained much higher among Tibetans—by far the highest in China and in this sense the situation is also completely different from Xinjiang, where illiteracy is low among Uyghurs.
For instance, the population survey measured an illiteracy rate of 33 percent in the TAR for the population 15 years old and older , which had barely improved during the s despite decades of government education campaigns designed to address it. Similarly, in the census, 34 percent of the population aged 6 years and older did not have any schooling and an additional 32 percent had only a primary level of education.
These rates had not substantially changed since the census. Similar rates of no-schooling were measured in the Tibetan prefectures outside the TAR, such as 25 percent in Huangnan Tib. Malho , and 32 percent in Yushu. While this speaks to the failure of government education policy in these areas, it also speaks to the urgent need for vocational training and preferential employment programs tailored to the needs of this population.
Preferential recruitment policies have been traditionally designed to address disadvantages among more highly educated minorities e. However, vocational education and employment at lower levels of employment remain important needs for most Tibetans, especially given that vocational education in the TAR has been, until recently, severely undersupplied relative to elsewhere in China.
Indeed, this is the reason that the TAR government has pushed since for a strong increase in vocational education for rural Tibetans seeking work outside their traditional livelihoods of farming and herding. Recent allegations of coerced labor in the TAR are based on observations of this increase in vocational education, and equating it with vocational training in Xinjiang, where similar claims have been made regarding a system of forced or coerced labor.
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