Contact is taking a holiday!

Beneath the veneer of calm, Lhasa still remains a city divided despite Beijing’s grand development plans. And a silent prayer still goes out for the Dalai Lama

Ananth Krishnan, 2 July 2015, India Today

The Deyang Shar courtyard, or the courtyard of eastern happiness, sits right at the heart of the Potala Palace. The palace served as the home of Tibet ‘s Dalai Lamas-from the fifth to the current 14th-for more than 300 years, until the failed uprising of 1959 and the Dalai Lama ‘s exile to India. On a recent morning, the courtyard was full-groups of Chinese tourists posed for photographs under the looming tower of the White Palace, the residential section. Dressed in bright orange uniforms, the Chinese military’s firefighters patrolled the square. Standing watch from a corner was a People’s Armed Police officer in uniform.

That tourists outnumber worshippers in the halls of the Potala today is a result of China’s grand project in Tibet: a project of remaking Tibet in Beijing’s image. China says it is investing billions to uplift one of the country’s most underdeveloped regions. This investment is indeed evident: newly paved expressways sprout from Lhasa in every direction; roads that run all the way to the Indian border in Sikkim are in immaculate condition, enabling a 600-km journey in less than half a day; and Lhasa is connected to the Chinese hinterland with a geography-defying multibillion-dollar railway that cuts through “the roof of the world”-all unthinkable two decades ago.

Yet, interviews during a recent visit to Lhasa suggest that Beijing’s development efforts have not convinced many Tibetans, with the unresolved question of the Dalai Lama continuing to cast a long shadow. While many Tibetans continue to revere the Dalai Lama as their guiding spiritual leader, Beijing, in public statements, continues to vilify him as “a splittist”, banning images of a popular figure. By doing so, Beijing appears to be undermining the goodwill it may have otherwise engendered through its ambitious development plans for Tibet.

Underlining the Dalai Lama’s continued prominence, in recent days, Tibetans have defied restrictions and threats of jail to hold quiet celebrations to mark his 80th birthday, which is on July 6 (or June 21 in the Tibetan calendar), in many places in Tibet and nearby Gansu and Sichuan, as photographs made available show. As one Lhasa resident said, “For us, the Dalai Lama is most important.” Chinese officials dismiss the following for the Dalai Lama as a vestige of Tibet’s old “feudal” past. Yet in interviews, even younger Tibetans appeared just as proud of their religious and cultural history. Two young Tibetans said they planned to hold private commemorations for the birthday “even if we cannot do anything in public”.

At the Potala, there will be no commemorations on July 6, even if the 14th Dalai Lama’s presence still hangs heavily. As one Tibetan tour guide told a group of tourists one recent morning, “The greatest Dalai Lamas were the fifth, who made the Potala as it stands today, and the 13th.” What of his successor? “We think he is just as great,” the guide later said quietly with a smile, “but we cannot talk about him.” Since February 2009, 141 Tibetans-young and old, students and monks-have set themselves on fire to call for the Dalai Lama’s return. The Chinese government has accused exiled Tibetans of plotting the protests.

In the seven years since riots left Lhasa burning in March 2008, China has, with a carrot-and-stick approach, obtained a firmer grip on the city. In the city’s main squares, such as at the Jokhang, which was a centre of protest in 2008 and also witnessed two immolation protests in 2012, there is still a police presence: two large black buses for security personnel are parked beside the square. But gone are the snipers that until a few years ago were a permanent presence on overlooking rooftops. As a measure of its newfound confidence, the government for the first time allowed Indian correspondents based in Beijing to travel to Tibet, to witness the opening of a new route for the Kailash yatra. Journalists are still not allowed to travel freely to Tibet. They can only do so on controlled government-organised groups, where opportunities to speak freely with locals are limited.

Lhasa, the old capital, is today being transformed-from the lofty balconies of the Potala, a relentless sound of hammering and drilling fills the valley below. Outside the palace, the streets are not unlike any tier-two Chinese city. Beyond the ever-shrinking old city of Lhasa, wide avenues carry street signs written in large Mandarin Chinese characters; signage in Tibetan, written in much smaller script, hints at the government’s priorities.

“There is not much of the old city,” says Zong Kyi, a Tibetan who makes a living as a tour guide taking Han Chinese tourists around the Potala. The centre of Tibetan life in Lhasa is the Barkhor, a neighbourhood of old streets that spreads out around the Jokhang monastery that is at the centre of the city. The Barkhor, Tibetans say, is an ever decreasing speck in a fast-expanding Lhasa: a sprawling “new development zone” of factories is the priority project that is today being built on the city’s suburbs.

A government white paper published in April listed Tibet’s achievements: double-digit GDP growth; 99.59 per cent enrolment in primary schools; life expectancy reaching 68.2 years, doubling what it was in the early 1950s; ending illiteracy, prevalent in the 1950s, among the young and middle-aged; and providing free education and healthcare. China says since 1952-two years after the PLA occupied Tibet-it has pumped around 544 billion yuan (close to $90 billion) into the region.

Conversations with half-a-dozen Lhasa residents suggested that beneath the veneer of calm, Lhasa still remains a city divided. While there is agreement that things have improved since the riots of 2008, there are, among Tibetan residents, deep anxieties about the nature of China’s development. A continuing influx of Han Chinese temporary workers and tourists has changed the nature of the city, residents said, with the perception that Tibetans are now a minority in Lhasa.

Zheng Wei, who, like others in this article did not want to be identified by his real name for fear of retribution by authorities, is among the growing number of migrant Chinese who have been encouraged by the government to move to Tibet to “help development”. From Sichuan province, Zheng said there was high ethnic distrust when he moved in 2009, a year after riots. “Things are better now,” he said. But that wasn’t a feeling shared by Drolma, a Tibetan, Lhasa native and mother of one. “More and more Han people are coming here, so many locals feel there are not enough opportunities,” she said. “We cannot talk about this issue,” she added, covering her mouth with her hands.

Chinese census data shows that 90 per cent of Tibet’s 3 million population of permanent residents are Tibetans. It does not, however, reflect the growing floating population of Han Chinese migrants in cities such as Lhasa. The number of Han permanent residents is also growing: between 1990 and 2000, while the total Tibetan population increased by half a million, in percentage terms the population fell by 2.7 per cent. Han people today account for 8 per cent or quarter of a million of the population. The floating population in Tibet is also growing, up from 151,000 to 262,000 between 2000 and 2010 according to census figures. “There are more Han people than Tibetans in Lhasa now,” one Lhasa resident said.

Tsering Woeser, a one-time Lhasa resident who is a writer living in Beijing, says the Chinese-led development process is having a deeply negative impact on Lhasa. Woeser highlights the shrinking of the old city-for centuries a centre of Tibetan life-as underlining Lhasa’s difficult transition. “The large-scale rebuilding of the old city,” Woeser wrote in a recent essay published on her blog, “is killing two birds with one stone”-not only bringing in the Beijing style of development catered to tourists, but enabling “stability maintenance” by redeveloping old neighbourhoods. A new 150,000 square metre shopping plaza set to come up in the Barkhor area near the old Jokhang temple is one among several new projects that Woeser has campaigned against. “The Barkhor,” she argues, “which was originally a place of religious significance, won’t turn into a deserted street. On the contrary, it will become a bustling street, existing only for the benefit of tourists.”

Beijing holds up Tibetans such as Luo Bu Ci Ren, who manages a sprawling brewery in Lhasa’s new development zone, as beneficiaries of its development model. Luo says his factory employs 135 people-“all local Tibetans”. Thirty-five per cent of the brewery’s start-up investment came from the local development zone. The company produces 250,000 tonne of different beers every year-a symbol, the government says, of the new Lhasa.

Yet it is to the frustration of the Chinese government that there remain grievances about its mode of develop-ment. As one official puts it, “However much we do, there will always be people who are dissatisfied.” But what is a cause for concern is that there appears little introspection in Beijing about the issues that aggrieve Tibetans, such as the influx of migrant workers. While the Han can travel freely, Tibetans still face numerous restrictions. In interviews, a wide complaint was that authorities do not give Tibetans passports. “Most of us are not given passports,” said a monk in the Potala. “We cannot leave.”

While Tibetans who work for the government or state companies are expected to speak Chinese, few officials from Beijing who work for the local government make the effort to learn Tibetan. The government counters that Tibetans are given other benefits such as jobs on preferential basis. In Tibet, there is little room for protest. Beijing’s default reaction to any protest, whether against a development project or a mine, is to crack down on “separatists” supposedly instigated by the “Dalai Lama clique”. Beijing’s officials appear to hold a worryingly simplistic view of Tibet’s problems: dissenters are seen as “separatists” or members of the “Dalai clique”.

The Dalai Lama issue continues to cast a long shadow. Lian Xiangmin, an official at the government-run Tibetology Research Centre in Beijing which advises the government, says that the problem for Beijing is essentially twofold: the Dalai Lama internationalising the Tibetan issue and calling for changes that violate China’s constitution. “If the Dalai Lama wants to come back,” he says, “he can talk directly with the central government. History has proven that things will get worse if he attempts to involve those foreign forces in finding a solution to this problem.”

The other issue is the Dalai Lama’s call for creating an administration to ensure genuine autonomy in language and religion for all Tibetans-including the three million who live in neighbouring Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan provinces, essentially redrawing China’s provincial map. “No Chinese will agree to this as it runs counter to China’s constitution. So I always tell people, do not only focus on what the Dalai says he does not want (independence). Focus on what he wants,” adds Lian. The result is an enduring stalemate. And as long as it persists, the fact is that Beijing will find it difficult to bring about a lasting resolution to the question of Tibet’s future.