MB Civic

The Impact of Beijing’s Policies on Tibet and Asia (ICT)
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February 28, 2008

The first major report on the impact of the
world’s highest altitude railway across the
Tibetan plateau reveals how it is changing
Tibet, to the detriment of the Tibetan
people and land, and details the dramatic
implications for the whole of Asia.

‘Tracking the Steel Dragon: How China’s
economic policies and the railroad are
transforming Tibet’ is embargoed until
February 28. Advance copies are available
for press (see below).

Mary Beth Markey, Vice President of the
Washington, DC-based International
Campaign for Tibet, said today: “Tibet’s
new railroad, hailed as a ‘golden path to
prosperity’ by China, is quite the opposite.
It is the most visible symbol of a political
and strategic agenda aimed both at
strengthening the Chinese state’s authority
and control over Tibetan areas, and
beginning large-scale extraction of Tibet’s
natural and mineral resources for the first
time. This coincides with a time in Tibet’s
history when ordinary Tibetans have no
real say in decision-making on their
country’s future.

“We are urging governments to call for a
proactive, affirmative and preferential
policy towards Tibetans, while foreign
investors in Tibet must implement
guidelines that aim to ensure the genuine
participation of Tibetans in the
development of their economy.”

The railroad from Qinghai to Lhasa is the
most high-profile symbol of China’s
strategy to develop its western regions,
which is one of the most important
dynamics of contemporary China. The aim
of its construction is to expand the
influence and consolidate the control of
the Chinese Communist Party, which
regards this as crucial to China’s successful
rise in the 21st century. As the linchpin of
China’s plans to begin large-scale
extraction of Tibet’s mineral and other
natural resources, the new railroad has
changed the dynamic of investment,
drawing foreign corporations to enter the
Tibetan economy for the first time.

China seeks to present an image of
progress and prosperity in Tibet to the
outside world. It blocks any dissenting
opinion or contradictory information,
leading to a climate of fear about open
discussion of the railway’s impact. Despite
the increasingly oppressive political
atmosphere in Tibet, ‘Tracking the Steel
Dragon’ uncovers the facts behind the
propaganda, bringing together the views
and experiences of Tibetans, Chinese,
foreign scholars and policy-makers with
data gathered from the field.

ICT’s new report, ‘Tracking the Steel
Dragon’, documents the immediate impact
of the railroad 19 months from its
construction in the context of China’s
strategic and economic objectives and
shows that Beijing’s policies on the Tibetan
plateau are:

# Leading to a ‘second invasion’ of Tibet by
accelerating the influx of Chinese people;

# Causing the further exclusion of Tibetans
from economic activity – which even some
Chinese analysts believe risks provoking
the very despair and opposition among
Tibetans feared by the Chinese state in its
quest for ‘political stability’;

# Damaging Tibet’s fragile high-altitude
environment, with disturbing implications
for hundreds of millions of people in the
entire Asian region;

# Threatening the extinction of one of the
last examples of sustainable pastoralism on
earth, through the enforced settlement of
Tibetan nomads;

# Heightening military readiness on the
Tibetan plateau through the expansion of
Chinese influence and construction of civil
and military transport links, causing
concern in neighboring India linked to
disputed territory issues in the border
areas between the two Asian giants;

# Causing serious concern for the survival
of Tibet’s culture and religion, which is
integral to Tibetan identity and important
not only to Tibet, but also to China and the
wider world;

‘Tracking the Steel Dragon: How China’s
economic policies and the railroad are
transforming Tibet’ (260 pages, with more
than 40 images from inside Tibet) is
published by ICT on February 28, 2008. For
an advance pdf copy, please contact:
press@savetibet.org