Across the region, an array of tactics for keeping the peace

Feb 2nd 2010 | From The Economist online Day one | Day two | Day three| Day four Day four

ON THE plane out of Lhasa, I sit next to a Nepali businessman who frequently visits Lhasa to buy shoes. He puts them in containers to be taken by lorry to Nepal, where most of them are re-exported to India. He has his complaints: about the duties he has to pay at the border, and the snow that sometimes blocks traffic. But of the road from Lhasa to Nepal, he is full of praise. It once took three days by lorry, he says. Now it is a day and a half. “China is so developed,” he says wistfully, looking out of the window at the ribbons of light marking highways and city streets below. He has little positive to say about Nepal and its roads.

China has been pouring money into its infrastructure in the past few years, and—from a business perspective at any rate—Tibet has been a big beneficiary. On my last visit to Lhasa, in 2008, I went by train. The railway line, Tibet’s first such link with the Chinese interior, had been opened just two years earlier and is one of the country’s most spectacular engineering accomplishments. Critics of Chinese rule in Tibet condemn its impact on the environment and the encouragement it gives to a flood of immigrants from the rest of China. But as a feat, it amazes: the $4.2 billion line crosses higher terrain than any other in the world, including permafrost—which requires elaborate ground-cooling measures to protect the rails from changes in temperature.

James Miles Floor it On this trip I drove to the city of Shigatse on the same highway traversed by the Nepali businessman’s shoes. Shigatse itself may look uninteresting to tourists, who usually come to admire the ancient monastery on its outskirts or to stop off on a sightseeing trip to Mount Everest on the Nepali border. But the businessman is in awe of the wealth of some of its inhabitants. They have got rich, he says, by running freight services along the 830km (515-mile) highway. In the past few years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent improving the road. This has included covering its gravel sections with asphalt, which has greatly facilitated cross-border trade. On the Lhasa- Shigatse section, which winds along a valley lined by sand dunes and spectacular peaks, Han Chinese from the interior have opened little Sichuanese restaurants catering to the lorry drivers.

There is more to come. Later this year, work is due to finish converting Shigatse’s military airport to civilian use (Peace Airport, it is called, in homage to China’s “peaceful liberation” of Tibet 60 years ago). This will enable direct flights to Shigatse from the rest of China. A local tourism official says that Mount Everest will need to be protected from the resulting influx of visitors. Tibet had only one civil airport until the mid- 1990s. It now has three, and this year should have five. Work is due to begin next year on a sixth, which at 4,400 metres (14,400 feet) will be the highest in the world.

Railway building continues too. By 2012, says an official in Lhasa, the railway line will be extended to Shigatse (though he denies reports that there are plans to build another line to the interior, connecting Lhasa with the Sichuan capital, Chengdu). And there has been huge spending in recent years on rural roads. Work began last year on connecting China’s last roadless county—Medog, on Tibet’s border with India—to the highway network. There have been seven failed attempts to do this since the 1970s (mountains and frequent earthquakes are among the obstacles). The target now is 2011. It would be unwise to bet against success.

Critics of China’s human-rights record in Tibet worry that all these connections will facilitate the ravaging of China’s environment as mining companies move in to extract the region’s natural resources (the railway line happens to run conveniently close to a massive copper reserve, possibly the biggest in China). The rail link has already boosted immigration from the interior and with it the ethnic tensions that resulted in the violence of March 2008. More prosaically, as I discovered on the road to Shigatse, better roads have fostered a tendency to put the pedal down. On one stretch, a recently repaired metal barrier above a perilous drop into the Brahmaputra River (the Yarlung Tsangpo, as it is known in Tibet) bore testimony to the fate of a speeding tourist bus. In reaction, police now stop drivers periodically along the way, where their average speed since each prior checkpoint is measured. Our car crawled along a near empty road. With a fine of 100 yuan ($15) for each minute short of the ordained time of arrival at the next checkpoint, we could not afford to do otherwise.

Back to top >> Day three

I HAVE seen my share of development zones in China. They appear on the edges of cities and towns, amid wasteland or, very often, farmland prised from ill-compensated peasants. Officials fill them with dreams of transforming their region’s economy. Sure enough, within months or a couple of years at most they are brimming with factories turning out profits with the help of armies of low-paid workers who flock in from far and wide.

The Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone fits the bill partially. It is an expanse of wasteland, a few minutes’ drive west from the centre of Lhasa, along a six-lane road divided in the middle by closely packed little Christmas trees and lined with military camps, restaurants and big, smart-looking car dealerships: Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford and Buick. The new and oddly-named Jardin Secret Hotel (“like a piece of emerald on the bank of the Lhasa river” says its website, making no mention of the camps and dealerships) presents itself with a large, mock-Tibetan façade that suggests hope for an influx of big- spending tourists and businessmen. The steep hills opposite bear the scars of quarrying.

Officials’ dreams are evident enough. Over the entrance to the zone there is a big blue hoarding with a quotation from Deng Xiaoping, China’s late leader and architect of the development-zone concept. “The development zone has a lot of hope”, it says. The phrase was uttered more than two decades ago in another vast expanse that was to transform a sleepy border town into a whole new skyscraper-studded city: Shenzhen. There had been pessimists, who thought Shenzhen would not make it. In Lhasa, scepticism is certainly in order. “Build it and they will come” does not really work the same way on the roof of the world. Lhasa won state-level approval for its development zone in 2001. In 2006, Tibet’s first rail link with the rest of China was opened. The line runs straight through the zone and Lhasa’s extravagant new railway station lies just beyond it. In recent years millions of dollars have been spent upgrading the Friendship Highway that runs past the zone and leads into Nepal, a vital conduit for Tibet’s exports. Conditions, it might be said, look ripe for the zone’s takeoff.

A boom there has been, but not an industrial one. The rail link has been a huge boon to Lhasa’s tourist industry. It has been a help to Lhasa’s commerce too. The trains provide more reliable transport for the sort of freight that used to get stuck on the plateau’s roads for days in bad weather or when trucks broke down. But Lhasa’s zone is proving slow to fill.

My last visit was in March 2008. It was mid-morning when I was taken to the zone’s headquarters. The vestibule was large, bright and tellingly empty of people. An official showed me a model: a dream come true of factories, villas and office buildings. Half of it, he said, already been built. My own observations suggested there was a degree of hyperbole in this. We walked up to a first-floor meeting room, beside a silent corridor. It was during this interview that the ethnic violence erupted downtown, waking up dreaming officials with a jolt (though in that first hour of the rioting no one appeared to bother my hosts at the zone with news that something was amiss).

This time I needed no more than a quick drive around to see that the past two years—and a huge infusion of government cash, to get Lhasa’s riot-shattered economy back on its feet—had done little for the zone. “Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone booms”, trumpeted an official website at the end of 2008. It said 115 companies had registered to set up there. Of these, 14 had “started operation” or were “under construction”. A new definition of “boom” perhaps; try telling that one with a straight face to the officials in China’s coastal zones. By the end of last year, there had been an uptick: 178 registered with 40 already on-site. The statistics, however, deserve a little scrutiny. A report just published in Lhasa’s official media mentioned only six factories that were actually making things, some of them on an experimental basis. Not bad for nearly a decade’s work. James Miles Still just domestic

One company preparing to move into the zone this year is Lhasa Brewery, which is half-owned by Carlsberg. Its current factory, which will remain in production, lies just off the road to Sera Monastery north of Lhasa. A senior manager there, Tsering Daji, told me the brewery had fulfilled its targets for 2008 despite the rioting. Last year post-tax profits were up more than 8%. Business, he admitted, had been affected by the violence. Fewer beer-swilling tourists came. But tourism is getting back on its feet (for Chinese visitors, at least, who make up the vast majority of travellers). It will be a big day for the zone when the brewery’s premium brand, Qingke, rolls off the production line.

But few of those bottles are likely to rattle their way into the Chinese interior or down the road to Nepal. Tibet’s zone has another problem: it is far from any affluent markets, and transport—though relatively improved—adds cost to anything that does get shipped out. Most of Lhasa Brewery’s beer is consumed in Tibet and much of it by visiting Han Chinese. Zone officials will be praying that Lhasa’s streets remain peaceful.

Back to top >> Day two

MORE than 300km (200 miles) west of Lhasa lies Tibet’s second-largest city, Shigatse. Its vast administrative area embraces the Chinese side of Mount Everest and a population that is 90% rural. Unlike Lhasa, the city of Shigatse has no rail or air links with the rest of China (though these are on their way). Yet in 2008, when many other Tibetan areas of China were in turmoil, urban Shigatse was oddly calm. Has China here found a formula for successful control?

Nowhere is the contrast between Shigatse and Lhasa more evident than at Tashilhunpo monastery on the outskirts of the city. Set on the side of a steep hill, the ancient complex of whitewashed buildings and gold- roofed shrines looks much like any of the handful of great monasteries scattered across the Tibetan plateau. Unlike at Sera monastery in Lhasa however, Tashilhunpo’s security looks minimal. I saw no police inside, and, unlike at Sera, I did see dozens of monks including young boys who had been sent to the monastery for training. My government guide was with me, along with a senior Tashilhunpo monk, but not the posse of minders who had trailed behind me at Sera. The Tibetan government- in-exile reported a small protest in Shigatse in March 2008, but the monk, Bianba Tsering, and other Shigatse residents I spoke to said the city had been quiet. Bianba Tsering (who might have had reason to be cautious on this topic) said no Tashilhunpo monks had been involved in Lhasa’s upheaval. “It’s too far away,” he said.

James Miles Like gold-roofed shrines anywhere else

The only other large Tibetan monastery that has remained largely trouble-free in the past two years is Kumbum, close to Xining, the capital of Qinghai province to the north of the Tibet Autonomous Region. But Kumbum is in an exposed position. Xining is a large Han Chinese city on the border between the plateau and Han China: far from Lhasa, the nerve centre of Tibetan Buddhism. A senior abbot defected from Kumbum to America in 1998, but otherwise its monks have kept quiet.

Tashilhunpo, however, is deep inside Tibet. It is the traditional seat of the second-most-powerful monk in Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama. Its religious importance might have been expected to make China all the more worried about the possibility of dissent there. But China clearly feels that it controls the Panchen Lama, and through him the loyalty of monks who revere him.

Unlike in Lhasa, I saw no riot police deployed on the streets of Shigatse, even though it is a city that seems brimming with the main ingredients for trouble that are manifest in Lhasa: a large population of Han Chinese drawn in by a booming (2008 excepted) tourism industry. Shigatse looks like one of China’s myriad of boomtowns, with endless Han- Chinese-owned restaurants and Han-Chinese-run clothing shops and hair salons. During my visit it lacked the pall of haze that normally shrouds Chinese cities. It has little manufacturing to speak of.

In Tashilhunpo, pilgrims flock to pay homage at shrines honouring the Panchen Lamas. One of them contains a golden statue of the tenth Panchen Lama, who died in January 1989. The central government donated more than 60 million yuan and 600kg of gold for its construction. The tenth Panchen Lama stayed in China after the Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959. He was imprisoned during the 1960s and 70s, only to emerge in the 1980s as China’s chief spokesman on Tibetan Buddhism (even though he was privately critical of China’s stringent controls). Pilgrims appear unfazed by his ambivalent career, crowding forward to offer small banknotes and add yak butter to the flickering lamps in front of his statue.

This and several other Tashilhunpo shrines display three photographs of Panchen Lamas side by side, with the tenth in the middle, his predecessor to the left and the 11th to the right. The young man who now holds the title embodies China’s attempt at control over Tibetan Buddhism. He was appointed in 1995 at the age of six in a ceremony attended by top Chinese officials. China refused to accept the boy recognised by the Dalai Lama as the new incarnation. This alternative, non-state-sanctioned Panchen Lama has not been seen in public since and is believed to be under close watch somewhere in China. His photograph is displayed in some monasteries far from Lhasa, but certainly not at Tashilhunpo. Bianba Tsering, my guide, said all Tibetans accept the official Panchen Lama as the rightful heir.

China’s success, so far at any rate, in keeping Shigatse relatively calm will make it all the more inclined to try the same tactic when the Dalai Lama dies. Tibetan Buddhism could well end up with two Dalai Lamas— one in Tibet, but another living outside China and able to speak out. For the Communist Party it will be a dangerous game. Back to top >> Day one

IN LHASA the authorities want to project an image of life returning to normal after the riots of March 2008. In some ways it is. The extensive wreckage I saw during my last visit, which happened to coincide with the riots, has long since been cleared. Ethnic Han Chinese whose shops were wrecked and merchandise piled up and burned by Tibetans are back in business. After the violence I had seen Tibetan pilgrims turned away from the Jokhang temple in the heart of Lhasa by gun-waving troops. Now they are flocking to it again, prostrating themselves on the paving slabs outside (two small boys among them wearing sacks to protect their clothing from the wear of countless obeisances).

James Miles Unceasing prostrations

That I have been allowed to return is doubtless part of the authorities’ efforts. An occasional visit by a journalist gives the impression that the city is open. It is still far from it. Numerous previous requests to go there since the unrest had been turned down (though, it must be said, it was rarely easy for journalists to get permission to go, even before the rioting). Tourism—a crucial driver of the city’s economy—has yet to recover fully. The upheaval unnerved Han Chinese who might have visited from other parts of China. Jittery officials did not help by tightening restrictions on foreign tourists, including a requirement that they be escorted by guides.

My own official guide took me today to Sera monastery, about 3km (2 miles) north of the city. I had tried to visit this important centre of Tibetan learning just after the rioting, only to be detained by police standing guard outside. Sera, and Lhasa’s two other large monasteries Drepung and Ganden, have long been at the forefront of Tibetan dissent. A protest by Sera monks outside the Jokhang temple on March 10th 2008, and a subsequent demonstration by colleagues demanding the monks’ release, were part of the build-up to the violence (directed mainly against property rather than people) in Lhasa four days later.

The police presence outside Sera is hardly less evident than it was on my last, abortive visit. This time I got through with my government escort, but even beyond the police cordon (through which, it seemed, pilgrims were allowed to pass) the ancient monastery itself was teeming with security officials. I probably saw more of them than I saw monks. Half a dozen people in plainclothes accompanied me, along with one of Sera’s senior monks, Qamba Tashi.

The monk enthusiastically described the monastery’s religious artefacts, but was clearly reluctant to give away much of anything about life in Sera today. There were, he said, 500 monks at Sera. A report in the official media last year suggested that there could have been twice as many there when the riots broke out in Lhasa (in which very few monks were seen participating). Some 500 “visiting monks and lodgers” were expelled after the unrest, the report said. Qamba Tashi said that no monks from Sera itself were punished after the riots, though “some” of the temporary residents had been. Again, no details. Visitors would have included long-term students; Sera is one of Tibetan Buddhism’s highest centres of learning.

In downtown Lhasa, approaches to the city’s two main temples, Jokhang and Ramoche, are guarded by clusters of riot police in camouflage uniforms and helmets, armed with batons and—some of them—rifles. Others are stationed on rooftops overlooking the square in front of Jokhang, a large open area surrounded by shops selling Tibetan handicrafts that is often the starting point of any unrest in Lhasa. A foreign tourist describes seeing police get upset when another foreigner took a photograph that included such police in the background.

China needs to be careful if it wishes for a return to normality in Lhasa. There is little sign that it has understood how a massive influx of tourists in 2006, following the inauguration of Tibet’s first rail link with the rest of China, helped fuel the riots. The resulting boom brought with it a large number of ethnic Han immigrants and left some Tibetans feeling marginalised. Extra security measures adopted since the riots are likely to put a lasting damper on tourism here. But they will do nothing to make Tibetans happier http://www.economist.com/diversions/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15389252