Mining and the new colonization of Tibet
Vancouver-based mining companies implicit in government repression of villagers
by STEPHANIE LAW, DOMINION STORIES
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/mining-and-new-colonization-tibet/5523
In the next five to 10 years, there might be a change in what comes to mind when thinking about Tibet.
The 2008 Olympics in Beijing saw an international outcry against the Chinese government’s oppressive policies and practices in Tibet. Mass riots within Tibet and rallies across the globe informed the general public of human rights violations in the disputed area, Tibetans’ loss of culture and identity, and their desire for independence from China.
But the 2010 WikiLeaks have exposed something different.
A leaked U.S. Embassy cable showed that the Dalai Lama is urging the international community to focus on environmental issues in Tibet instead of political ones, for at least the next half-decade. He specifically referred to increasingly polluted water from mining projects in Tibet as a major problem that “cannot wait.”
Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan poet/blogger and recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism award this year, said the number of mines in Tibet has increased dramatically since 2006.
“For the past few years, Tibetan villagers have been protesting against the mines and writing letters to the Chinese government asking for their concerns to be addressed,” Woeser said. “But the government never cared.”
In 2006, only one-percent of discovered mines in Tibet were prospected due to limited infrastructure and investment. But mining operations boomed after the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, which connects all 72 counties in Tibet to the rest of China. There are now over 90 mining sites, with at least one in each county.
The impact of mining operations
The Chinese government announced plans in March to develop Tibet by exploiting over 3,000 mineral reserves, potentially worth more than USD 125 billion.
Dorje, director of the region’s Bureau of Geology and Mineral Exploration and Development, told state-run China Daily that exploitation of the mineral resources would boost Tibet’s development.
“We must make sure the exploitation serves the interests of the Tibetan people, and minimize its impact on the environment,” Dorje said.
The plan aims to boost the mining industry’s contribution to Tibet’s GDP from three to 30 percent by 2020. At the same time, the state government will continue to pour investment into the region to further develop it and provide over 1,400 new jobs for locals via mining operations.
But Woeser said compared to the few thousand Tibetan miners, migrant Han workers have flocked to Tibet on the railroad and have taken up over 10,000 mining jobs.
“This has caused a lot of resentment among locals, widespread discrimination against Tibetans, and a loss of cultural identity among locals,” she said.
Pempa Dondrup, a villager in Nanggarze County of Shannan Prefecture, told China Daily that the government must respect local customs and religious beliefs. “For example, they must not excavate into our holy mountains.”
But likely to the Dondrup’s dismay, there are at least six mining operations in the great Tibetan emperor Songtsan Gampo’s hometown, Gyama. It now has the highest daily output among all mining pits in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.
In Han Chinese culture, the hometown of any emperor is sacred and carries the ‘dragon’s pulse’ (lóng mài). It brings fortune and happiness to the nation, and warrants ritual sacrifices.
“According to this, Gyama should be protected from environmental destruction by the mining taking place today,” Woeser said. “But it’s not. And protests so far have been silenced by Chinese troops.”
Woeser added that local Tibetans have lost much more than they have gained from the wealth the government claims mining would bring. They have also received little to no financial compensation.
“There has been damage to both the environment and the lifestyles of Tibetan villagers, farmers and nomads,” Woeser said. “Now there are diseases that are new and untreatable for the villagers. The livestock, like lamb and cows, are also getting diseases and dying at alarming rates.”
Almost 20 years of mining in the Gyama valley has led to elevated concentrations of various minerals – including copper, lead, iron and aluminium – in the surface water and streambed, according to a study published in the September issue of Science of the Total Environment.
The Gyama stream water drains into the Lhasa River, which flows into the great Yarlong Tsangpo. Over a third of the world population lives downstream of the rivers flowing from the Plateau.
“Uptake of heavy metal into local agricultural products from
contaminated irrigation water may therefore pose a health risk to the
local population,” the authors of the study wrote.
Over 3,500 local inhabitants live in this valley just east of Lhasa city. There are also nomads who frequent the semi-agricultural area, which is used for growing crops and animal husbandry. But nearly 182,000 residents live in Lhasa city just downstream from the valley. The main drinking water source for the city is from wells located in the banks of the Lhasa River.
The authors of the study warned that large-scale mining activities in the valley “pose a great future risk for the regional and downstream environment.”
Tibetans have limited opposition power
Contaminated water, loss of lands and the heavy influx of Han migrants into Tibet caused by the mining industry boom have led to numerous conflicts and riots in the region in past 20 years.
Huatailong, China’s largest mining project in Gyama, used the villagers’ water during a drought in June 2010. This led to riots in the village to which a great number of military police, including special police forces, were allegedly sent from Lhasa, according to witness reports. The police arrested many villagers and three of them, including the village head, are still in jail.
Woeser said military forces and police always quickly crush any local dissent against mines.
“The problem is most mines are state-owned and backed by the government,” Woeser said. “So when the conflict erupted, it got politicized. The government decided the villagers weren’t protesting against the mine but were rioting for Tibetan independence.”
More recently, about 100 protesters carried Chinese flags outside government offices in a protest between Aug. 15 and 17 against the expansion of a gold mine in the Kham region of Tibet, administratively in China’s Sichuan province. They were upset about the heavy equipment being brought in and damaging their farmlands, according to U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia.
“The farmers were scared, so they carried Chinese flags to show that they weren’t protesting for political reasons or independence,” Woeser said. “They just wanted to point out that the mines were impacting their life.”
But despite taking extra precaution, the government still sent troops to quell their protest. According to various reports, at least three protesters were fatally shot, over 30 injured and more than 35 were arrested. Two police officers were also injured.
Almost two weeks after the incident, conflicting news reports appeared in China Daily, Xinhua News Agency and Reuters. They reported only one death from the incident and cited a different reason for the protests.
“The protest was sparked after police detained a businessman from the Sichuan city of Mianyang “for illegally exploiting gold mines with some villagers in Jiaxu village and damaging the grassland in the county,” according to Reuters.
Exerting pressure outside of Tibet
It is evident that local Tibetans are left powerless against large-scale mining operations. If they protest, they face disproportionate force from the military and police as well as imprisonment. Many face jail terms of seven to eight years, partly due to the politicization of their dissent.
Woeser said the conflict in August was one of very few protests covered in state and international media, albeit inconsistently.
“I think this really needs outside help and requires outsiders to understand the mining situation in Tibet,” she said. “Only through the outside, like international environmental agencies and human right organizations, and through international investigations might there be a positive impact on Tibetans’ lives that are affected by mining.”
In the recent years, there has been a growing presence of foreign-owned mining companies in Tibet.
“These operations have also faced local protests, but not to the same extent as Chinese-owned mines,” Woeser said. “This is in part due to minor improvement in environmental impact, but largely due to higher financial compensation offered by foreign firms to silence dissent.”
In addition to protests in Tibet, some companies have faced opposition from activists in their own countries. Pressure from the Australia Tibet Council and the Central Tibetan Administration, also known as the Tibetan government-in-exile, allegedly caused Australia-based Sino Gold to pull out of an exploratory gold mine in eastern Tibet in 2003.
Sino Gold was later acquired by Canadian-based Eldorado Gold in December 2009. Eldorado Gold is now the largest foreign gold producer in China and owns a mine in Tanjianshan, which is located in northern Tibet.
There are six Canadian-based mining companies currently or soon to be operating in Tibet: China Gold International Resources Corp Ltd, Inter-Citic Minerals Inc, Silk Road Resources Ltd., Eldorado Gold Corp, Maxy Gold Corp, Silvercorp Metals Inc., and Sterling Group Ventures Inc.
Vancouver-based China Gold International announced on Dec. 1 it completed the acquisition of Skyland Mining Ltd., formerly owned by Rapid Result Investments Ltd. and China National Gold Group Honk Kong Ltd., a subsidiary of China National Gold Group Corp. It is now the sole owner of the Jiama Mine, one of the largest copper poly-metallic mines in China, according to its website.
The acquisition of the Jiama mine in Gyama completed in spite of protests staged in Toronto,Vancouver and Hong Kong.
Frank Lagiglia, investor relations spokesperson for China Gold International, said he does not share the concerns of the protesters. He said the company’s technical report shows the mine has full support of the local people, and that it is on track to becoming the most environmentally friendly mine in the world.
“They talk about contamination of water; we use a recycling water program so there is no contamination,” Lagiglia said. “I don’t know the issues that they’re talking about, when we were there, we went with Tibetan officials and we were talking to the Tibetan people there, and really everyone is glad to be working.”
But Raymond Yee, a Vancouver activist and member of the Canada Tibet Committee, said their worries go beyond environmental damages endured by local villagers.
“Our main concern is that the Chinese don’t seem at all concerned with the needs and the wants of the Tibetans,” Yee said. “And the Canadian firms will refuse, even though we know they know better, to get their heads wrapped around the whole concept of free, prior, informed consent
of the local Tibet people about what’s happening.”
Although China Gold International is based in Vancouver, the Chinese-owned China National Gold Group owns a 39 percent stake, according to a Bloomberg news report.
“We’re against this kind of activity that exploits people that are occupied,” Yee said. “It’s occupied land in an environment where there’s a real climate of fear because most people are pretty privy to how the Chinese government cracks down on dissent.”
Tibet enjoyed de facto independence between 1912 and 1951, before China annexed the region. Annexation became official when the Chinese government and delegates from the Tibetan administration signed the 17-point agreement.
But the agreement has been widely disputed and the annexation is widely viewed as an occupation. A report published by The International Commission of Jurists in 1959 supported claims that the agreement was signed under military pressure and significant duress.
Large mining companies such as Rio Tinto have reportedly ruled out mining in Tibet because it is too politically sensitive.
“We’d be more open to it if they, for example, had consultations with the Tibetan government-in-exile to talk about mining and to see what it would have to say,” Yee said. “We’re just against mining under these kinds of conditions.”
Looking to the future
The future of Canadian-based mining companies operating in Tibet might have been different if Bill C-300, known as the Corporate Accountability Act or Responsible Mining Bill, had passed the House of Commons vote on October 27. But the bill was defeated 140 to 134.
If passed, the Bill would have enforced financial and political sanctions against mining companies operating in foreign countries without free, prior and informed consultation from local indigenous peoples.
Catherine Coumans, a research coordinator at MiningWatch Canada, said that under the bill there could have been a strong case made against mining companies, like China Gold International, even if they claim to have support from local Tibetans.
“The free part is the part that we would be really addressing,” Coumans said. “How free were the people they talked to? Given the political realities in Tibet, it would be very difficult [to have free consultation].”
Since the bill was defeated, there is no legal or formal mechanism for complaints against foreign practices by mining companies. However, Coumans said the Canadian Network for Corporate Accountability, of which MiningWatch is a member, is currently discussing other options.
One alternative is private member’s Bill C-354, which was tabled by NDP MP Peter Julian and passed first reading on March 3. The bill had remained dormant after its first reading, but resurfaced on Oct. 21 when Julian submitted a petition in support of the bill to the house.
The Bill seeks to amend the Federal Courts Act to permit non-Canadians to initiate lawsuits against Canadian companies based on violations – in foreign countries – of international law or treaties to which Canada has ratified.
“The bill would ensure corporate accountability for Canadian firms operating abroad,” Julian told the house on April 1, 2009.
But regardless of what happens in the future, Coumans argues that the mining industry as a whole generally accepts International Finance Corporation’s performance standards as de facto international standards. These standards include having free, prior and informed consultation with local peoples.
“Based on these standards, one can definitely make the argument that a company cannot call itself a responsible mining company and mine in Tibet,” Coumans said, “because it cannot possibly poll the community in a free way.”
Given the recent acquisition of the copper mine in Gyama by China Gold International, as well as the leaked U.S. embassy cable regarding the Dalai Lama’s concerns with widespread environmental destruction caused by mining project, there is hope of increased international and Canadian pressure against mining in Chinese-occupied Tibetan land.
But if the discussion around Tibet sees no change in the next five to 10 years, then the imagery one usually conjures when thinking of Tibet will change. What is often known as Shangri-La and rooftop of the world will be extensively mined away, and a culture with thousands of years of history will fade away along with the land.
“Tibet is the earth’s highest ecosystem and is extremely vulnerable: its rivers flow and are connected to many other areas and countries,” Woeser said. “But the mining companies are operating for their own profits and are blatantly neglecting any environmental concerns. Over time, the local area won’t be the only region affected; but a vast area of the world will be too.”

Finding the Facts About Mao’s Victims
Ian Johnson
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/dec/20/finding-facts-about-maos-victims/
Photo: Yang Jisheng, November 2010
Yang Jisheng is an editor of Annals of the Yellow Emperor, one of the few reform-oriented political magazines in China. Before that, the 70-year-old native of Hubei province was a national correspondent with the government-run Xinhua news service for over thirty years. But he is best known now as the author of Tombstone (Mubei), a groundbreaking new book on the Great Famine (1958–1961), which, though imprecisely known in the West, ranks as one of worst human disasters in history. I spoke with Yang in Beijing in late November about his book, the political atmosphere in Beijing, and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.
Tombstone, which Yang began working on when he retired from Xinhua in 1996, is the most authoritative account of the Great Famine. It was caused by the Great Leap Forward, a millennial political campaign aimed at catapulting China into the ranks of developed nations by abandoning everything (including economic laws and common sense) in favor of steel production. Farm work largely stopped, iron tools were smelted in “backyard furnaces” to make steel—most of which was too crude to be of any use—and the Party confiscated for city dwellers what little grain was sown and harvested. The result was one of the largest famines in history. From the government documents he consulted, Yang concluded that 36 million people died and 40 million children were not born as a result of the famine. Yang’s father was among the victims and Yang says this book is meant to be his tombstone.
Over the past few years, foreign researchers and journalists have used demographic and anecdotal evidence to arrive at similar estimates. But Yang has gone further, using his contacts around the country to penetrate closely guarded Communist Party archives and uncover more direct proof of the number of dead, the cases of cannibalism, and the continued systematic efforts of the state to cover up this colossal tragedy. This makes Tombstone one of the most important books to come out of China in recent years and led the government to ban it.
Ian Johnson: I wondered when reading Tombstone why officials didn’t destroy the files. Why did they preserve all this evidence?
Yang Jisheng: Destroying files isn’t up to one person. As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you can’t so easily destroy it. Before it is in the archives, it can be destroyed, but afterwards, only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed. I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intact—how many people died of hunger, cannibalism, the grain situation; all of this was recorded and still exists.
How many files did you end up amassing?
I consulted twelve provincial archives and the central archives. On average I copied 300 folders per archive, so I have over 3,600 folders of information. They fill up my apartment and some are in the countryside at a friend’s house for safekeeping.
As a Xinhua reporter did you have more latitude to explore the archives?
When I started I didn’t say I was writing about the Great Famine. I said I wanted to understand the history of China’s rural economic policies and grain policy. If I had said I was researching the Great Famine, for sure they wouldn’t have let me look in the archives. There were some documents that were marked “restricted” (“kongzhi” in Chinese)—for example, anything related to public security or the military. But then I asked friends for help and we got signatures of provincial party officials and it was okay.
Were people sympathetic to your task?
Yes, there was an elderly staff member in one archive, for example. My guess is that he also lost family members in the Great Famine; when I asked for relevant archives, he just closed one eye and let me look. I reckon he held the same view as I: that there should be an accounting of this matter. Like me, he’s a Chinese person, and people in his family also starved to death.
Why are you the first Chinese historian to tackle this subject seriously?
Traditional historians face restrictions. First of all, they censor themselves. Their thoughts limit them. They don’t even dare to write the facts, don’t dare to speak up about it, don’t dare to touch it. And even if they wrote it, they can’t publish it. And if they publish, they will face censure. So mainstream scholars face those restrictions.
But there are many unofficial historians like me. Many people are writing their own memoirs about being labeled “Rightists” or “counter-revolutionaries.” There is an author in Anhui province who has described how his family starved to death. There are many authors who have written about how their families starved.
The government admits the fact that some people starved to death. Is mentioning starvation really a sensitive topic half a century later?
The government says the famine was caused by “three difficult years” (natural disasters), the Sino-Soviet split (of 1960), and by political errors. In my account I acknowledge that there were natural disasters but there always have been. China is so big that there is some kind of natural disaster every year. I went to the meteorological bureau five times, looked at material and talked to experts. I didn’t find that climate conditions in those three years were significantly different from that of other periods. It all seemed normal. This wasn’t a factor.
What about the Sino-Soviet split?
It had no impact. The Soviets’ break with China was in 1960. People had been starving to death for more than a year already. They built a tractor factory and that was finished in 1959. Wouldn’t that have been a help to Chinese agriculture rather than a hindrance?
So what can account for starvation on such a vast scale?
The key reason is political misjudgment. It is not the third reason. It is the only reason. How did such misguided policies go on for four years? In a truly democratic country, they would have been corrected in half a year or a year. Why did no one oppose them or criticize them? I view this as part of the totalitarian system that China had at the time. The chief culprit was Mao.
In your introduction to Tombstone, you said that the Chinese Communist Party destroyed traditional values. Did this facilitate the Great Famine?
Traditional values involve valuing life, valuing others, not doing unto others what you don’t want done to yourself. All of these values were negated. From 1950 onward, the Communists criticized the passing down of traditional values. There was a moral vacuum.
When do you think we might see Cultural Revolution-era archives opened up?
It is still early to talk about that. Overseas, many good books have been written about the Cultural Revolution. I have bought many and brought them back. Within China, there’s not a single good book on the topic.
That seems like something you should pursue.
In fact, I am planning a book on the Cultural Revolution. I am collecting material but don’t yet know exactly how I will write it. I am still trying to figure that out.
You also work for Annals of the Yellow Emperor. People say it has been under pressure.
There is some pressure of late. There were the events surrounding Wen Jiabao’s recent speeches and the Liu Xiaobo prize. There has been a backlash. They did not allow Wen’s interview with CNN to be published in the domestic media. [In the interview, which was published on September 29, Wen stated that “for any government, what is most important, is to ensure that its people enjoy each and every right given to them by the constitution,” which many reform-minded Chinese took as a signal that the country would try to live up to its constitutional protections on free speech and democracy.] We ran the full text in our magazine—we didn’t miss one word—and were censured. But that issue of our magazine was not banned; it continued to be distributed.
Why do you think your magazine seems to enjoy more leeway than other Chinese publications?
Because we know the boundaries. We don’t touch current leaders. And issues that are extremely sensitive, like 6-4 [the June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre], we don’t talk about. The Tibet issue, Xinjiang, we don’t write about them. Current issues related to Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin and their family members’ corruption, we don’t talk about. If we talk just about the past, the pressure is smaller.
Do you feel this year’s political climate is tighter?
Usually when the Communist Party feels a sense of crisis, it will spark a backlash. Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Prize is a slap in the face for the Chinese government. On the date of the announcement of the prize, October the 8th, Voice of America called me for an interview. I said it was a good thing for the long-term prospects of democracy in China. It’s a good thing, I said, but also don’t over-estimate the impact; China doesn’t yield to external pressure, and there will be a backlash. And now what we are seeing is the backlash.
From a long-term perspective, it might have some inspiring effect on the progress of democracy in China. But within China, Liu is not well-known. He won’t have the same effect as Gorbachev or Havel did, for instance. And the backlash is strong. Many Chinese intellectuals can’t leave the country now, and their family members too. They’re being very strict.
December 20, 2010