Chinese settlements in Tibet

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Chinese settlements in Tibet are communities built by China in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Tibet formally declared its Independence in 1912 and continued to conduct itself as a fully sovereign nation until it was invaded by Communist China in 1949.

The Communist Chinese settlements in Tibet have followed a pattern of urbanization and sinicization. Just as the Soviet Union moved large numbers of Russians into territories such as the Baltic States and Ukraine in a supposed attempt to dilute their alleged distinct nationality so, in central and western Tibet (U'Tsang) towns may have been created in the middle of the countryside in an attempt to cement Chinese control and influence. A news report of April 1996 stated that 500,000 Chinese were to be moved into eastern Tibet to work in copper mines, a project that was to involve the building of several new mining towns.[1] [2][3]. The Harvard Asian Quarterly reports that 60-70% of the population in Lhasa now is Chinese and, outside of the traditional Tibetan "Bharkor" market, Tibetans own only 400-450 of the 3,500 to 4,000 shops [4]. Han Chinese also occupy most government-related employment with 95 percent of official Chinese immigrants employed in state owned enterprises.

The mass resettlement of Chinese migrants has reduced Tibetans to a minority in many areas, including Lhasa, causing chronic unemployment among the native people. In the east Tibetan border provinces of Kham and Amdo, the Chinese outnumber Tibetans many times over. Although the concept of "Tibet" generally refers to the three original provinces of Ü-Tsang, Kham and Amdo (Greater Tibet) what the Chinese authorities define as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), formally inaugurated in 1965, includes only one province, Ü-tsang. In 1949 Amdo and Kham were annexed and renamed as parts of China proper and became the province of Qinghai and parts of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces. [5]

In 1991 the Dalai Lama said:

The new Chinese settlers have created an alternate society: a Chinese apartheid which, denying Tibetans equal social and economic status in our own land, threatens to finally overwhelm and absorb us.^[1][2]

[edit] See also

• Chinese treatment of Tibetans

[edit] References