Under the guise of environmental protection, China tightens ITS grip on Tibet

INTERNATIONAL DESK: Since the early 2000s, the Chinese government has been resettling Tibetan nomads across Tibet and neighbouring provinces, with reports putting figures of those relocated to around at least two million. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has justified this policy, whose latest iteration came in 2018 with the “extremely high-altitude ecological resettlement” programme, on the grounds of poverty alleviation and environmental concerns. However, rather than reflecting legitimate practical necessities, these rationales are used as a convenient cover for the state’s ultimate aims: solidifying control over the region’s natural resources and, perhaps more importantly, the Tibetan people themselves.

In 1950, the PLA under Mao Zedong invaded and occupied Tibet before ultimately annexing it in 1951. Eight years later, the Dalai Lama — then the political as well as spiritual leader of Tibet — fled to India, where he has remained in exile ever since. From there, he has tirelessly advocated for Tibetan rights, alongside a global diaspora community with its base in Dharamsala in northern India. United in their cause, Tibetan activists, parliamentarians, journalists, and others monitor and shed light on the current human rights situation in Tibet — one which they argue is deteriorating rapidly and often characterised by policies that initially appear benign on the surface.

In recent decades, the CCP has introduced new development strategies whose stated goals include addressing poverty across China’s western regions. In particular, the Chinese government claims it wants to resolve the income gap between the Tibetans living in urban areas and those maintaining nomadic lifestyles. This is also to preemptively stifle any kind of discontent from arising within those rural communities. Ironically, the CCP’s relocation policies have actually managed to inflame such frustration.

A better life or false promises?
Paradoxically, despite promising better facilities and infrastructure to these nomadic communities to convince them to relocate, the CCP has often failed to deliver on these pledges. Some pastoralists were drawn to the idea of higher quality education for their children, or greater hospital resources, but better schools and medical care have fallen short in these newly built neighbourhoods, which the government calls “New Socialist Villages”. While several Tibetan nomads expressed interest in moving to these places with the hope of accessing improved services, the fact that the government had neglected the pastoralist communities in the first place suggests that they may not have had a real choice in whether or not to relocate. The consequences are clearer for those who outright refused to move. For example, nomads in Qinghai were met with significant fines and threatened with imprisonment. These pastoralists had drafted a petition arguing that the forced relocation policy was not legally sound according to Chinese state legislation.

Tibet is extremely important in terms of its natural resources, so much so that former leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile Lobsang Sangay has called Tibet the blueprint for the Belt and Road Initiative.

The areas into which these pastoralists are moved often lack economic opportunities. Further, they are not provided with sufficient support to adjust and adapt to the starkly new living conditions. According to Human Rights Watch, based on official government documents, Tibetan nomads were at times required to pay nearly three-quarters of the cost of constructing their new houses, which seems counterintuitive to the CCP’s stated purpose of poverty alleviation. Such relocation leaves once self-sustaining nomads more financially vulnerable and dependent on government subsidies, effectively giving the state precisely what it wants: more power over the Tibetan population.

Erosion of Tibetan culture
Financial difficulties, the language barrier — many Tibetan nomads are not fluent in Mandarin — and a dearth of educational and employment prospects for those suited and accustomed to a nomadic life compound the struggles that come with integration. These consequences echo those faced by members of North America’s indigenous communities, who were forced into designated reservations with few economic opportunities and experienced trauma from the cultural genocide waged in the residential schools; this is also occurring in Tibet today.

The Central Tibetan Administration representing the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala referred to China’s mass relocation policy as “state-engineered destruction of a culture and way of life”. In its 2021 report on International Religious Freedom in China, the US State Department claimed that these newly built villages were intentionally constructed close to “township and county government seats” without monasteries nearby. This move is considered a purposeful attempt to “dilute religious belief and weaken the ties between monasteries and communities”. On top of that, government regulations prohibit the setting up of new places of worship in these areas.

In place of religiously and culturally significant sites, the CCP stated it would set up new teams of party cadres in Tibet to assimilate the herders into society. In practice, this means the implementation of a system of surveillance for the Tibetan community. Traditional villages are being destroyed to preclude the nomads from ever returning to their homes. The lands are transformed into nature reserves and national parks, which feeds into the other major CCP narrative behind this relocation policy: ecological protection and preservation.

Lucrative land
Tibet is extremely important in terms of its natural resources, so much so that former leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile Lobsang Sangay has called Tibet the blueprint for the Belt and Road Initiative. The region has been termed the planet’s “Third Pole” as it contains the largest repository of fresh water outside the North and South Poles. The Chinese government has stated that these relocation policies are intended to protect the sources of the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers. The idea, according to the CCP, is that nomadic communities are harming the land by overgrazing, which leads to desertification, and reserves must be created to prevent further environmental damage. However, government documents show that while herders have been forced to vacate the land in question, state entities are still allowed to patrol there: “The public security organ of the region where the nature reserves are located may set up its dispatched agency within the nature reserves to maintain public security if necessary”.

Scientific studies, including those carried out by Chinese researchers, have debunked the myth of nomads causing environmental damage. Rather than overgrazing by Tibetan herders, whose movements have been limited, a changing climate and Beijing’s resource extraction activities are the main drivers of ecological harm. Environmentalists have argued that Tibetan nomads actually sustained the environment, having upheld an eco-friendly approach to the land for centuries, and are needed to maintain the environment’s well-being and to combat climate change. In other words, their relocation has not resolved environmental degradation but accelerated it. Over 200 papers contesting the CCP’s narrative have been published in China alone.

Some Western media outlets reporting on this matter appear to frame the government’s intentions behind the initiatives as genuinely focused on the environment alone, thus painting the resulting cultural impact as merely an unfortunate side effect. In statements to such publications, Chinese officials have denied that the relocations are forced, saying, “In principle, there is no large-scale relocation of nomads….We respect the will of the herders and guide them to relocate voluntarily”.

Systematic mass displacement
In February, the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Committee (UN ECOSOC) discussed concerns surrounding China’s Tibetan relocation policy. The Chinese delegation verified that 260,000 Tibetans had been relocated as part of the programme’s most recent incarnation, which concentrates on “very high-altitude” areas across Tibet. According to this plan, 130,000 people from 20 countries are set to be resettled between 2018 and 2025, and last year Chinese state media reported that over 17,000 Tibetans would be relocated under this scheme, with the next phase set to be completed by 2025. Human Rights Watch’s China director commented in 2013 that “the scale and speed at which the Tibetan rural population is being remodelled by mass rehousing and relocation policies are unprecedented in the post-Mao era”.

It should be noted that some Tibetan nomads have stated that they may appreciate the idea of development, but remain frustrated because they are not properly consulted or asked about their needs. Instead, policies and changes are imposed by out-of-touch hierarchies that lack the intimate knowledge of the land and ecological issues in which the herders are so well-versed. This leads to further impoverishment and disruption of their hitherto self-sustaining lifestyles. If the CCP truly cared about preserving ecosystems, they would ask the experts: the Tibetan pastoralists themselves. Instead, the government’s primary ambitions behind these relocation policies are exploiting natural resources to suit its needs and undermining any sense of a collective Tibetan identity.

Tibet’s strategic, territorial, economic, and cultural importance to China cannot be overstated. The 2018 programme is merely the latest example of the relocation policy the government has been implementing. A closer examination reveals the CCP’s underlying aims beneath the cover of environmental protection. There are only two consistent throughlines that remain traceable across this wider resettlement plan and its various manifestations. The first is exerting government control over Tibetan land resources. The second is a desire to crack down on a demographic the state deems a latent threat that could challenge its authority — or inspire others to do the same. (9DASHLINE)