MB Civic

By Tim Johnson
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
Kentucky.com

ZENGSHOL, Tibet — Sun, May. 06, 2007

In a sweeping campaign that recalls the
socialist engineering of an earlier era, the
Chinese government has relocated some
250,000 Tibetans — nearly one-tenth of the
population — from scattered rural hamlets
to new “socialist villages,” ordering them
to build new housing largely at their own
expense and without their consent.

The government calls the year-old project
the “comfortable housing program.” Its
stated aim is to present a more modern
face for the ancient region that China has
controlled since 1950.

It claims that the new housing on main
roads, sometimes only a mile from previous
homes, will enable small farmers and
herders to have access to schools and jobs,
as well as better health care and hygiene.
But the broader aim seems to be remaking
Tibet — a region with its own culture,
language and religious traditions — in
order to have firmer political control over
its population. It comes as China prepares
for an influx of millions of tourists in the
run-up to next year’s Summer Olympic
Games.

A vital element in the strategy is to
displace a revered leader, the Dalai Lama,
now 71, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for
advocating resistance to the communist
government. The government hopes to
name a successor after he dies. In the
meantime it has opened the gates of Tibet
to greater numbers of ethnic Han Chinese,
and has tightened control of religious
activity.

It’s pouring hundreds of millions of dollars
into road-building and development
projects in Tibet, boosting the economy,
maintaining a large military presence and
keeping close tabs on the citizenry through
a vast security apparatus of cameras and
informants on urban streets and in the
monasteries.

Some Tibetans, including farmers
interviewed in the village of Zengshol, say
they’re happy to be in better quarters than
their primitive, ancestral homes of mud
brick. In other villages, Chinese escorts
prevented a visiting reporter from
speaking with residents.

Other than a state media account that
proclaimed that “beaming smiles” were
“fixed on the faces of farmers and herders”
as they built and moved into new housing
in what it called “socialist villages,” the
Chinese news media have given almost no
coverage to the forced relocation.

Foreign reporters, under tight strictures
that largely prevent them from traveling to
Tibet except on once-a-year trips under
Foreign Ministry guidance, risk being
removed from the region if they openly
interview people. This report was prepared
while undertaking tourism in Tibet.

The first critical account of the remaking of
the Tibetan landscape came from New
York-based Human Rights Watch. It quoted
Tibetans who had fled the country,
trekking across the Himalayan mountains
into Nepal.

On several trips outside Lhasa last month,
a McClatchy reporter traversed 800 miles
of roads and witnessed the forced
transformation of the countryside. In the
new settlements, cookie-cutter houses,
striking in their uniformity, lined the roads
at regular intervals. The settlements varied
in size but were mostly towns, larger than
the abandoned villages. The red flag of
China flew atop every house.

In Zengshol, the faces weren’t exactly
beaming, but the farmers were reluctant to
voice complaints.

Some experts say the relocations have
lifted up the impoverished peasantry and
could bring prosperity. “It’s created a
building boom,” said Melvyn C. Goldstein, a
social anthropologist and expert on Tibet
at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland. “I think it’s phenomenally
successful, more than I would’ve believed.”

Human Rights Watch’s witnesses told a
different story.

Peasants must take out loans of several
thousand dollars to pay for the houses,
which cost an average of $6,000, even
though annual rural incomes hover around
$320 in the deeply impoverished region.

“None of those interviewed reported being
given the right to challenge or refuse
participation in the campaign,” the
advocacy group said.