Sinicization of Tibet

The sinicization of Tibet is the alleged change of Tibetan society to Han Chinese standards, by means of cultural assimilation, migration, and political reform. Sinicization on the one hand is an inevitable consequence of the presence of a large number of Han Chinese in Tibet and on the other hand an active policy of the central government of the People's Republic of China. The active policy intends to make Tibet an integral part of the Chinese republic and to control Tibetan ambitions of independence. The result, whether in purpose or not, is the disappearance of certain elements of the Tibetan culture, sometimes called cultural genocide by the government of Tibet in exile.^[1][2] The government of China denies of these accusations and sees the reform of the theocratic system and modernization of the Tibetan economy as beneficial to most Tibetans.

Historical

The Chinese Muslim General Ma Bufang, Governor of Qinghai is accused by Tibetans of having carrying out Sinicization and Islamification policies in Tibetan areas, spreading along Chinese holidays like New Year and Chinese celebrations along with the Islamic religion and making them marry non tibetans.^[3] Forced conversion and heavy taxes were reported under his rule.^[4]

Change of power

Main article: People's Liberation Army invasion of Tibet (1950–1951)

In the decades after the collapse of Qing dynasty and preceding 1950, the region roughly corresponding to the modern day TAR was a de facto independent nation. It also printed its own currency and postage, and conducted international relations with foreign countries. It claimed three provinces Amdo, Kham, and Ü-Tsang (but had only control of west Kham and Ü-Tsang). Since 1950, China reorganized the area somewhat, by making east Kham part of Sichuan, and west Kham part of the newly established Tibet Autonomous Region.^[5]

China calls the entry of its army into Tibet a peaceful liberation; exiled Tibetans call it an invasion followed by colonization. However, the Chinese government points to population increases and quality of life improvements as justifications for their assertion of power in the historically Chinese-claimed region.

Failures in agriculture

The economy of Tibet is dominated by subsistence agriculture, that is agriculture with a destination to provide for one's family proper only. For this reason the entrance of 35.000 Chinese troops in the 1950s weighed heavily on the food supplies in Tibet. At Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama's visit to Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1954, Mao informed him that he would migrate 40,000 Chinese farmers to Tibet.^[6][7][8]

In the 1960s Chinese authorities forced Tibetan farmers to cultivate corn, instead of barley, the traditional crop of the Himalaya region, resulting in the first famine in Tibetan history. The harvests failed as farmers had feared and thousands of Tibetans starved from hunger.^[9][10]

Sending Tibetan students to China proper

As part of sinicization^{[citation needed]}, Chinese authorities recruit many of high-ranking Tibetans from primary schools to China proper, to attend Tibetan classes connected to local secondary schools or to a “Tibetan Secondary School” in Mainland China, where these students do not receive any Tibet-related education. In 1996, Chinese authorities declared a total enrolment of 12,590 Tibetan students in such classes.^[11] However, research conducted in the late 1990s by J. L. Upton about modern school-based Tibetan language education in the PRC^[12] has shown that, contrary to Exile claims, a large part of the content of textbooks was derived from Tibetan sources and dealt largely with Tibetan cultural life.^[13]

Cultural Revolution

Main article: Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was a revolution involving students and laborers of the Chinese communist party that was initiated by Mao and was carried on by the Gang of Four between 1966 and 1976 with the intention of preserving Maoism as the leading ideology of China. It was an inter-party struggle to eliminate political opposition against Mao.^[14]

The Cultural Revolution affected the whole of China and as a result Tibet also suffered greatly. Red guards attacked civilians that were seen as traitors to communism. Thousands of monasteries were looted and destroyed. Monks and nuns were forced to leave their monasteries to live a normal life and those who resisted were imprisoned. The prisoners were forced into hard labor, maltreated, tortured, and executed. In addition, the Potala Palace was nearly harmed, but the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai prevented the Tibetan Red Guards from causing damage.

Migration of Chinese (Mostly Han and Hui)

Tibet is 4,000 metres above sea level, with an annual average temperature below zero. Low pressure and thin oxygen make it very difficult for people outside Tibet to stay there for long periods.^[15] As a rule, the Han themselves are not keen on settling in Tibet as their children are subject to pulmonary oedema, and adults to altitude sickness.^[16]

The central government of the People's Republic of China follows an active policy of migration of Chinese to Tibet, luring them there with attractive bonuses and favorable living conditions.^{[citation needed]} Since the end of the 1990s there have come to be more Chinese than Tibetans in Greater Tibet (but still a minority in the designated Tibetan Autonomous Region). As of 2003, the population consisted of an estimated 6 million ethnic Tibetans and 7.5 million non-Tibetans of different ethnic groups.^[2][17]

In 1949, there were between 300 and 400 Chinese redidents in Lhasa.^[18] In 1950, the town covered fewer than 3 square kilometres and harboured around 30000 inhabitants. The Potala Palace and the village of Zhöl below it were considered separate from the city at the time.^[19][20]

In 1953, according to the first population census, Lhasa numbered about 30,000 residents, including 4,000 beggars and not counting the 15,000 monks.^[21]

In 1992, Lhasa's permanent population was estimated at a little under 140,000 people, including 96,431 Tibetans, 40,387 Han Chinese and 2,998 sundry. To that figure must be added something like 60,000 and 80,000 temporary residents, for the most part Tibetan pilgrims and traders.^[22]

In 2008, Lhasa had 400,000 people,^[23] with a majority still being Tibetan.

The 2008 attacks by Tibetans on Han and Hui owned property were allegedly due to large amounts of them moving into Tibet.^[24] George Fitzherbert has said that, "Tibetans complain of being robbed of their dignity in their homeland by having their genuinely loved leader incessantly denounced, and of being swamped by Chinese immigration to the point of becoming a minority in their own country."^[25]

Cultural identity

Some young Tibetans feel that they are both Tibetans and Chinese and are fluent in both Tibetan and Mandarin.^[26]

Cultural genocide accusations

In 1989, Robert Badinter, a high-profile French criminal lawyer, participated in a well-known French television program devoted to human rights, Apostrophes, in the presence of the 14th Dalaï Lama. Talking about the disappearance of the Tibetan culture in Tibet, Robert Badinter used the term "cultural genocide".^[27] Later on, and for the first time in 1993, the Dalaï Lama used the same term, "cultural genocide", to describe the destruction of the Tibetan culture.^[28] More recently, at the time of 2008 Tibetan unrest, he accused the Chinese of Cultural genocide in their crackdown.^[29]

In 2008, professor Robert Barnett, director of the Program for Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, stated that it was time for accusations of cultural genocide to be dropped: "I think we have to get over any suggestion that the Chinese are ill-intentioned or trying to wipe out Tibet."^[30] He also voiced his doubts in a book review he published in the New York Review of Books:"Why, if Tibetan culture within Tibet is being 'fast erased from existence', [do] so many Tibetans within Tibet still appear to have a more vigorous cultural life, with over a hundred literary magazines in Tibetan, than their exile counterparts?"^[31]

See also

• 1959 Tibetan uprising
• 1987-1993 Tibetan unrest
• 2008 Tibetan unrest

Further reading

• Fischer, Andrew M. Urban Fault Lines in Shangri-La: Population and economic foundations of inter-ethnic conflict in the Tibetan areas of Western China Crisis States Working Paper No.42, 2004. London: Crisis States Research Centre (CSRC).

References

1. ^ Burbu, Dawa (2001) China's Tibet Policy, Routledge, ISBN 978-0700704743, pp 100-124
2. ^ ^{a b} Samdup, Tseten (1993) Chinese population - Threat to Tibetan identity
3. ^ Woser (Thursday, March 10, 2011 21:11). ""Three Provinces of the Snowland, Losar Tashi Delek!"". Phayul. http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=%22Three+Provinces+of+the+Snowland%2C+Losar+Tashi+Delek!%22+%3A+By+Woser&id=29212&t=1&c=4. Retrieved March 24 2011. 
4. ^ Blo brtan rdo rje, Charles Kevin Stuart (2008). Life and Marriage in Skya Rgya, a Tibetan Village. YBK Publishers, Inc.. p. xiv. ISBN 0980050847. http://books.google.com/books?id=6IH_pG2yLssC&pg=PR14&dq=ma+bufang+taiwan&hl=en&ei=4xDJTP2CFcaAlAeCnPnnAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=ma%20bufang%20taiwan&f=false. Retrieved 2010-06-28. 
5. ^ Burbu, Dawa (2001) China's Tibet Policy, Routledge, ISBN 978-0700704743, pp 86-99
6. ^ Forster-Latsch, H. & P. L. Renz S., in: Geschichte und Politik Tibets/ Tibet unter chinesischer Herrschaft, Wikibooks (German)
7. ^ Horst Südkamp, Breviarium der tibetischen Geschichte, p. 191, 1998 (German)
8. ^ Golzio, Karl-Heinz & Pietro Bandini (2002) Die vierzehn Wiedergeburten des Dalai Lama, Scherz Verlag / Otto Wilhelm Barth, Bern / München, ISBN 3-502-61002-9 (German)
9. ^ Shakya, Tsering (1999) The Dragon in the Land of Snows, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0712665339
10. ^ Stein, Rolf (1972) Tibetan Civilization, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0-8047-0806-1
11. ^ The Next Generation: State of Education in Tibet Today (1997)
12. ^ J. L. Upton, The Development of Modern School-Based Tibetan Language Education in the PRC, in Postiglione, China Minority Education, 1999 ; quoted by A. S. Bhalla et Mark Brenner, below.
13. ^ A. S. Bhalla and Mark Brenner, Literacy and basic education, in Poverty and inequality among Chinese minorities (A. S. Bhalla, Shufang Qiu eds), Routledge studies in the Chinese economy, No 22, Routledge, 2006, 202 p., pp. 81-82.
14. ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick & Michael Schoenhals (2006) Mao's Last Revolution, Harvard University Press, ISBN 978-0-674-02332-1, p. 102
15. ^ A. S. Bhalla and Mark Brenner, Literacy and basic education, in Poverty and inequality among Chinese minorities (A. S. Bhalla, Shufang Qiu eds), Routledge studies in the Chinese economy, No 22, Routledge, 2006, 202 p., pp. 81-82.
16. ^ Jack Ives and Bruno Messerli, The Himalayan Dilemma, Routledge, 1989, p. 233 (quoted by Dorothy Stein, in People Who Count, Earthscan, 1995, note 1).
17. ^ Pinteric, Uros (2003): http://www.sidip.org/SIDIP_files/pintericu_tibet.pdf International Status Of Tibet, Association for Innovative Political Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
18. ^ Roland Barraux, Histoire des Dalaï Lamas - Quatorze reflets sur le Lac des Visions, Albin Michel, 1993, reprinted in 2002, Albin Michel, ISBN 2226133178.
19. ^ Liu Jiangqiang, Preserving Lhasa's history (part one), in Chinadialogue, october 13, 2006.
20. ^ Emily T. Yeh, Living Together in Lhasa. Ethnic Relations, Coercive Amity, and Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: "Lhasa’s 1950s population is also frequently estimated at around thirty thousand. At that time the city was a densely packed warren of alleyways branching off from the Barkor path, only three square kilometers in area. The Potala Palace and the village of Zhöl below it were considered separate from the city."
21. ^ Thomas H. Hahn, Urban Planning in Lhasa. The traditional urban fabric, contemporary practices and future visions, Presentation Given at the College of Architecture, Fanzhu University, October 21, 2008.
22. ^ Heidi Fjeld, Commoners and Nobles. Hereditary Divisions in Tibet, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, 2005, p. 18.
23. ^ EN.TIBET.CN (11 January 2008) Tibet gives concern for vehicle exhaust.
24. ^ "Beijing renews tirade". sunday pioneer. Tuesday, March 8, 2011. http://www.dailypioneer.com/322807/Beijing-renews-tirade.html. Retrieved March 24 2011. 
25. ^ 'To engage with China's arguments concerning Tibet is to be subjected to the kind of intellectual entrapment, familiar in the Palestinian conflict, whereby the dispute is corralled into questions which the plaintiff had never sought to dispute. Tibetans complain of being robbed of their dignity in their homeland by having their genuinely loved leader incessantly denounced, and of being swamped by Chinese immigration to the point of becoming a minority in their own country. But China insistently condemns such complaints as separatism, an offence in China under the crime of 'undermining national unity', and pulls the debate back to one about Tibet's historical status. Foreigners raise questions about human rights and the environment, but China again denounces this as a foreign intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, and pulls the debate back to Tibet's historical status.' George Fitzherbert, 'Land of Clouds', Times Literary Supplement, June 30,2008 p.7
26. ^ Hannue (2008). Dialogues Tibetan Dialogues Han: http://www.amazon.com/dp/9889799936 ISBN 9889799936
27. ^ Les droits de l'homme Apostrophes, A2 - 21 April 1989 - 01h25m56s, Web site of the INA: http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice&from=fulltext&full=Salonique&num_notice=5&total_notices=8
28. ^ http://www.dalailama.com/page.104.htm 10th March Archive
29. ^ BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | 'Eighty killed' in Tibetan unrest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7299212.stm
30. ^ Robert Barnett, Seven Questions: What Tibetans Want, Foreign Policy, March 2008.
31. ^ Robert Barnett, Thunder for Tibet, a review of Pico Iyer's book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Knopf, 275 p., in The New York Review of Books, vol. 55, number 9, May 29, 2008.