Tibet: a case of cultural and religious oppression or economic deprivation?
THE media and various protest groups have almost universally treated the unrest in Tibet as a case of cultural and religious oppression and ignored the underlying economic processes. Penetrating market relations into Tibet has led to an explosion of business spurred by huge government subsidies for infrastructure, particularly under the Great Western Development ("Go West") Policy launched in 2000. Opening Qinghai-Tibet railway in 2006 quickened the influx of investment. But most of ethnic Tibetans have not benefited at all. Only a small layer of the Tibetan elite has reaped the rewards from Qinghai-Tibet railway. Up to 80 per cent of Tibetan youth are unemployed and more than a third of the population is living under the official poverty line. Reporting from Lhasa, the Wall Street Journal wrote on March 27: "Yet even as the government insisted the violence had been instigated by a small group of monks, it was apparent from interviews that a vast number of people had joined and that other factors were at play. One government official said that many of the people joining in the looting were unemployed youth." Other reports point to erupting frustration among the poorest layers of Tibetans in Lhasa, many of whom are former farmers and herders forced into the city amid the growing demand for land on the one hand, and cheap labour, on the other. Business Week pointed to the frenetic pace of business in China has helped fan ethnic resentment aimed at the millions of Han Chinese who have migrated into the region and have taken skilled, higher-paying jobs building the new roads, airports and power stations. The overall rural incomes of $583 are less than one-third of urban ones, in the west (where city-country populations tend to split, with the Chinese urban and the minorities rural) it is more extreme. Tibet's rural income is $393, or about one-quarter that of urban incomes, while in Xingjian it is only slightly higher, at $444. The economic growth rate of China's western provinces was 14.5 per cent in 2007 and in Tibet 17.5 percentmuch higher than the national average. The main reason for the high levels of unemployment among Tibetan youth is that state education is in the Chinese language. The Dalai Lama has abandoned calls for an independent Tibetan state let in recent years and called for talks with Beijing, as sections of the exiled elite have sought to re-enter booming Chinaon the basis of capitalism and a degree of autonomy. More radical groups, such as the Tibetan Youth Congress, have taken up the call for a "Free Tibet" and publicly disagreed with the Dalai Lama's "middle way". None of the two approaches is a solution for the Tibetan masses that will continue to be exploited by one or other capitalist clique in Lhasa, whether the status quo remains or one of these alternatives happens. The present crisis in Tibet is above all the product of the organic incapacity of the bourgeoisie to resolve the outstanding national democratic tasks in China. Neither the bourgeois nationalists of the Kuomintang (KMT) nor, after 1949, the Chinese Stalinists, were able to extend basic democratic rights to the country's minorities and integrate them into a unified nation state on that basis. As for the Tibetan elites, the history of the past century has repeatedly showed their venal role in prostrating themselves to various major powers. Although China's national minorities account for less than 10 per cent of the population, they settle in more than half of its territory. Tibetans have always been the poorest of China's major ethnic groups, living on the extremely isolated and harsh Qinghai-Tibet plateau. For centuries, the social development in Tibet never superseded the level of a semi-nomadic economy, supplemented by subsistence farming. The region was ruled by a Buddhist theocracy headed by the Dalai Lama and supported by a landowning aristocracy. Most Tibetans were "chabas" or serfs labouring for monasteries and landlords. Buddhism was extensively spread as the means for soothing the masses with the belief that their bitter lot was the result of their misdeeds in previous lives. Those who call today for a "Free Tibet" try to conjure up historical evidence of a Tibetan state. But the extreme economic backwardness of the region has always condemned the Tibetan ruling classes to political impotence. Apart from the seventh to ninth centuries, when Tibet was unified under the Tubo dynasty, the plateau was always divided between rival lords and Buddhist schools. The central authority of the Buddhist hierarchy stemmed from Kublai Khan, founder of the thirteenth century Mongol dynasty in China, who invaded Tibet and used the priesthood to legitimise his authority. Imperial Chinese patronage continued under the Ming and Manchu dynasties, right down to the 1911 revolution. The Chinese emperor was not just the secular ruler of Tibet, but part of the Buddhist pantheonthe reincarnation of Manjushuri, the "Great Buddha of Wisdom". The so-called modern "independence" of Tibet stems from the decay and collapse of the Chinese imperial system. With the waning influence of Beijing, Tibet became part of the "Great Game" as Russia and Britain intrigued and fought for influence and domination in Central Asia. In 1904, Britain dispatched an expeditionary force from colonial India to conquer Lhasa, slaughtering hundreds, if not thousands, of Tibetan soldiers. The region was not formally annexed; British officials imposed a treaty that effectively transformed it into a British semi-colony. The weak Manchu court in Beijing had little choice but to accept British pre-eminence in Lhasa. Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the 1911 revolution that toppled the Manchu dynasty, proclaimed a democratic republic based on the "unity of five races"the Han, Manchurians, Mongols, Muslims and Tibetans. Sun Yat-sen was the first to propose a railway to integrate Tibet into a unified national market. His Kuomintang (KMT) was never able to realise the vision, however. KMT's powerlessness reflected the weakness of the Chinese bourgeoisie, which was subservient to imperialism and tied to the parasitic landlord class. After the fall of the Manchu court, China broke up as feuding warlords carved out petty empires. Tibet remained "independent"that is, under British tutelageby default. Britain divided Tibet into Outer and Inner Tibet, incorporating 9,000 square kilometres into northwestern India in 1914. Successive Chinese governments rejected this border drawn in London, even though Britain recognised the balance of Tibet was part of China. The "McMahon Line", as it was known, set the stage for the 1962 border war between China and India.
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