Larung Gar expulsions complete as demolitions continue
April 10, 2017
Radio Free Asia, April 7, 2017 – The forced removals by Chinese authorities of monks and nuns from Sichuan’s Larung Gar Buddhist Academy have now ended, with the last of a final group of 250 nuns having left the institute by April 6, according to a local source.
All had come originally from neighboring Qinghai province and were sent back to different areas there, RFA’s source said.
“Among them, some went to Golog [in Chinese, Guoluo] prefecture in Qinghai, where they are being allowed to stay at Tsida monastery, which is led by Khenpo Rigdar,” the source said.
“This was done at their own wish and was made possible with help from members of Larung Gar’s management committee,” he said, adding, “Other groups returned to their home towns and have joined local monasteries there.”
Around 5,000 monks and nuns have now been expelled from Serthar (Seda) county’s sprawling Larung Gar complex, which was founded in 1980 by the late religious teacher Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and is one of the world’s largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.
On March 30, a group of Chinese officials led by Sichuan provincial governor Yin Li arrived at Larung Gar to observe the ongoing state-ordered demolition of monastic dwellings there, another local source told RFA.
“He also convened a meeting of Larung Gar’s management committee and reminded them that the reduction in numbers of monks and nuns living there and destruction of their homes had been ordered by higher authorities,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“He added that anyone working against this plan would be breaking the law,” he said.
“He also pointed out that the houses remaining to be torn down would not be limited to the smaller dwellings, but would include some of the larger structures as well.”
The expulsions and demolitions at Larung Gar, along with restrictions at Yachen Gar, another large Buddhist center in Sichuan, are part of “an unfolding political strategy” aimed at controlling the influence and growth of these important centers for Tibetan Buddhist study and practice, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said in a March 13 report, “Shadow of Dust Across the Sun.”
“[Both centers] have drawn thousands of Chinese practitioners to study Buddhist ethics and receive spiritual teaching since their establishment, and have bridged Tibetan and Chinese communities,” ICT said in its report.
Reported by Lhuboom for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finn

China should halt re-education of monks and nuns evicted from Larung Gar
April 3, 2017
Human Rights Watch, March 29, 2017 – Chinese authorities should halt the expulsion and political re-education of monks and nuns from a major Tibetan religious institution, Human Rights Watch said today. According to a statement by an abbot of the institution, Chinese officials announced on March 12, 2017, that 3,225 homes at Larung Gar, the world’s largest Tibetan Buddhist institution, would be torn down by April 30.
Many of the monks and nuns already expelled from Larung Gar and the nearby religious community at Yachen Gar, both in Tibetan areas of Sichuan province, have been forced to return to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and subjected to exceptional restrictions on their liberty and to degrading treatment. In November 2016, the authorities forced at least one group to undergo political re-education and apparent public humiliation in Nyingtri (Linzhi in Chinese), in southeastern TAR.
“China is aggressively dismantling religious freedom along with religious life at Larung Gar by subjecting many expelled monks and nuns to forced re-education,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “The restrictions imposed on former residents should be removed so they can exercise fully their rights to religious practice, including freely joining religious institutions and observing religious rituals.”
A senior abbot said in a speech to the community on March 23 that the monks and nuns “who have left had never wanted to leave… And whether or not they had some place to go, they still had to leave.” He added that “the demolitions and expulsions come from the policy of the senior levels of government, and cannot be discussed” and called on all monks and nuns to “show great forbearance and not react with protest, suicide and the like.”
China is aggressively dismantling religious freedom along with religious life at Larung Gar by subjecting many expelled monks and nuns to forced re-education.
Foreign media reported that the TAR authorities subjected 100 monks and nuns, believed to have been expelled from Larung Gar, to political “re-education” in Nyingtri municipality in November. A video circulated on social media shows 25 young Tibetan women with shaven heads, who appear to be nuns, dressed in military jackets and standing in rows inside a police or government office decorated in Tibetan style. The women are chanting in unison, “The Tibetans and the Chinese are daughters of the same mother, the name of the mother is China,” part of a song often used by officials in Tibet to propagate the view that Tibetans are genetically or culturally Chinese. A photograph circulated at the same time shows the same women, dressed in full military fatigues, carrying out a military-style exercise inside a walled compound.
A second video, circulated a few days after the first, shows 12 Tibetan nuns dancing on the stage of a theater in front of what appears to be an audience of officials. The nuns, dressed in religious robes, perform a choreographed dance routine to the song, “The Song of the Emancipated Serfs.” The song is associated with official Communist Party celebrations and was originally performed in front of Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1959. A banner above the stage reads “Graduation Art Show for the Law and Politics Training Course for Buddhist Monks and Nuns, Kongpo Gyamda County.” Kongpo Gyamda county (Gongbujiangda in Chinese) is in Nyingtri municipality, and the video is believed to have been filmed there on November 10, 2016.
The women are chanting in unison, “The Tibetans and the Chinese are daughters of the same mother, the name of the mother is China,” part of a song often used by officials in Tibet to propagate the view that Tibetans are genetically or culturally Chinese.
The timing and circumstances of the two videos and the photograph indicate that the women pictured are Tibetan nuns expelled in 2016 from Larung Gar or Yachen Gar. Buddhist nuns usually make a commitment to “refrain from singing, dancing, and viewing entertainments” as the sixth of the 10 sramenerika or novice vows taken by nuns or monks when they are first ordained. This strongly suggests that these performances were coerced and that officials required these nuns to sing and dance to humiliate or embarrass them. The use of forced singing and dancing as part of political re-education for expelled nuns is not known to have occurred previously in the TAR.
The government’s apparent treatment of these nuns violates their rights to freedom of religion but also amounts to degrading treatment prohibited under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which China is a party.
In late summer 2016, two nuns known to Human Rights Watch, who had been expelled from Larung Gar and returned forcibly to the TAR, were not allowed to remain in Lhasa, where they had previously lived for many years, but were forced to return to the village of their birth in a rural area of southern Tibet. The authorities required them to report at regular intervals to the local police station and did not allow them to join any nunneries or institutions in the TAR or elsewhere.
Other sources have told Human Rights Watch that no former monks and nuns who have been returned to the TAR are allowed to join any monastery or nunnery there, which means they are considered to be “mobile religious personnel.” Since an official announcement in September 2012, such unaffiliated monks and nuns are not permitted to carry out religious rituals in the TAR outside their own homes unless they have a special permit. This means that the returned monks and nuns cannot carry out religious services for others, which would constitute their normal source of income, and that Tibetans in the TAR face increasing difficulties in finding religious practitioners to recite prayers at funerals and other family events.
In June 2016, the local government in Serta county, Sichuan, ordered the monks running Larung Gar to begin reducing its occupant numbers to a maximum of 5,000 by September 2017. The institution is estimated to have had between 10,000 and 20,000 occupants before evictions began. It is unclear whether the March 12 decision requiring the demolition of 3,225 homes includes the 1,500 or more homes that have already been demolished. So far, 4,500 residents have been forced to leave, according to the March 23 statement from a senior abbot.
Authorities appear to have made certain concessions in response to requests from the monastery regarding the demolition and eviction procedures at Larung Gar, including unconfirmed reports that some monks and nuns there were compensated for their demolished homes, and that approximately 1,200 expelled nuns have been rehoused in four temporary camps in neighboring counties within Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. But the demolitions and evictions remain a violation of the community members’ rights of religious freedom and practice.
In November 2016, seven experts from the United Nations wrote to the Chinese government requesting detailed information regarding the mass expulsion of Tibetan, Chinese, and other monks and nuns from the monastic settlements at Larung Gar and Yachen Gar. The statement also asked the government to provide information about the legal grounds for the demolitions and expulsions, and what steps had been taken to resettle or rehouse those made homeless. It also requested an explanation about the reported lack of consultation with local religious leaders, the rationale for involving government officials in monastic affairs, and what steps authorities would take to ensure the right of religious freedom.
The UN has said that the Chinese government replied to these requests on December 5, 2016. The UN should publicly release China’s reply.
“China’s conduct at Larung Gar and Yachen Gar shows a cruel and unyielding disrespect for religious freedom,” Richardson said. “Chinese authorities can undo some of the harm by halting the destruction of this community, fairly addressing the needs of the religious community, and providing transparent explanations about its conduct at Larung Gar and in Nyingtri.”

Swiss parliamentarians vow continued support for Tibetan cause
April 3, 2017
By Lobsang Wangyal
Tibet Sun, March 31, 2017 – Six members of the Swiss parliamentary support group for Tibet on a visit to the capital of the Tibetan Diaspora in McLeod Ganj expressed their continued support for the Tibetan people’s quest for a free Tibet.
The parliamentarians, accompanied by members of the Swiss Tibetan community and the Swiss Tibet Friendship Association, met with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama with a 45-minute meeting on Wednesday. The delegation had met with Sikyong (the Tibetan political leader) a day earlier.
The delegation is on a week-long tour, and was impressed by what the Tibetans have achieved. “We are deeply impressed by how Tibetans have been successful in developing and implementing democratic processes and institutions. We don’t know any other so well-organised society in exile carrying such hardship but still going on hopefully with peace in mind and heart,” said Maya Graf, member of Swiss parliament and a former speaker.
Graf said that they support the “Middle-way” policy of the Tibetans to achieve freedom in Tibet, and will encourage restarting the dialogue between the Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama.
She further said that they are aware of the deteriorating environmental and climate change issues in Tibet, and that Switzerland could help raise these issues on a multinational level for immediate action.
After the signing of a Free Trade Agreement between Switzerland and China in 2013, the Swiss attitude towards Tibetans has changed to the extent of officially describing Tibetans as from China, as opposed to from Tibet as they did earlier. This started in June 2015, with many Tibetans objecting to it.
Bilateral trade between Switzerland and China totaled more than 22.5 billion USD in 2013.
Ms Graf said that the Swiss Government’s change could be due to greater pressure from China. “It’s the administration’s decision. We will try to find out why they did that.”
There are about 7,000 Tibetans in Switzerland today, with the majority of them having integrated into the Swiss system and taking its citizenship. However, a few hundred are facing trouble getting legalised in the country.
Last month a 27-year-old Tibetan woman named Yangdon Chorasherpa seeking asylum in Switzerland was deported to Nepal by the Swiss immigration authorities. She first came to Switzerland in 2014. She was said to be imprisoned in Kathmandu despite having a health problem.
“Tibetans coming directly from Tibet will not have trouble getting their asylum request approved, but it’s the Tibetans coming from India and Nepal who have a problem because they have already lived in these countries, and getting asylum approved is difficult as these two are safe states,” Graf said.
However, Graf assured the audience that Yangdon’s would be the last case of deportation.
The first Tibetans to have settled in Switzerland were in the early 1960s after the Swiss Red Cross made arrangements for 300 Tibetans refugees to resettle in Switzerland. In addition, about 150 Tibetan orphans were adopted by Swiss families at that time.

Dalai Lama arrives in India’s northeast fueling tension with China
April 3, 2017
By Sunil Kataria
Reuters, April 1, 2017 – The Dalai Lama arrived in India’s northeastern state of Assam on Saturday ahead of a visit to neighboring Arunachal Pradesh, a region run by New Delhi but claimed by Beijing.
The Tibetan spiritual leader’s trip is expected to fuel tensions between India and China over strategic issues such as China’s growing ties with India’s arch-rival Pakistan. China claims the region in the eastern Himalayas as “South Tibet”.
The Dalai Lama told Reuters TV at the airport in the Assam city of Guwahati that his visit was to promote religious harmony.
He said he was happy to be back in a region that revived his memories of escape from Tibet in 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
“I still feel the feeling of that time,” he said.
China, which considers the Dalai Lama a dangerous separatist, said on Friday it was “resolutely opposed” to the visit, and urged India to “avoid taking any actions that would further complicate the border issue”.
An Indian government official said on Friday that the Dalai Lama’s visit was religious, not political.
(Writing by Zeba Siddiqui, editing by Ed Osmond)

New video shows Tibetan pedestrians being attacked, beaten by Chinese security
March 27, 2017
Voice of America, March 24, 2017 – A new video is reported to have been taken today (March 24, 2017) in Sertar Dzong, a town located in a Tibetan region of Sichuan province. It shows what appears to be random Tibetan pedestrians being attacked, beaten, and taken away in a bus by Chinese security.
View the video at: http://www.voatibetanenglish.com/a/3779999.html
In order to protect the individuals VOA has removed the audio of voices expressing shock and sadness with one person saying over and over again that, ‘they are doing this for no reason at all.’ Sertar Dzong is in the same county as Larung Gar, the world’s largest Buddhist institute where thousands of students have been evicted by the Chinese authorities since last summer, and their personal living quarters demolished systematically demolished by bulldozers.

Dalai Lama visit to Arunachal Pradesh angers China as it seeks to control succession
March 27, 2017
by Lucy Hornby in Beijing and Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
Financial Times, March 24, 2017 – The ageing Dalai Lama’s upcoming trip to a Himalayan settlement under Indian control has angered China just as its Communist rulers seek to exert control over the mystical process of reincarnating a successor to the Tibetan Buddhist leader.
“The Indian government allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Tawang is not friendly to China,” Lian Xiangmin, director of the Institute of Contemporary Tibetan Studies at the China Tibetology Research Centre, told journalists in Beijing on Thursday. “Only bad can come of the Dalai Lama going to Tawang, nothing good.”
In Tibet’s unique strain of Buddhism the succession of senior lamas, who also wield temporal power, is determined by reincarnation. The 81-year-old Dalai Lama, who has gained global celebrity during a life in exile, is the 14th of his lineage. He has said he will not be reincarnated in territory controlled by China, while the officially atheist Communist government in Beijing has declared that he will.
His planned trip in early April to Tawang, a Tibetan community in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Himalayas, has raised alarm in Beijing. It follows his visit in November to Mongolia, which practises a similar form of Buddhism.
China’s foreign ministry said this month it had expressed “grave concerns” to India about the Tawang visit. The Asian giants have a prickly relationship, although ties have warmed under Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister.
Disputed borders in the Himalayas were roughly agreed in the late 19th century between the Qing dynasty in Beijing and the British in India, before being reset during brief border wars between China and India in the 1960s. China claims Arunachal as part of Tibet, which it invaded in 1950, and also vociferously objected to a recent visit by Richard Verma, former US ambassador to India.
In Tawang, the Dalai Lama will be met by Kiren Rijiju, Indian home minister, who is himself a practising Buddhist and comes from Arunachal. Mr Rijiju said the Tibetan spiritual leader’s followers in Tawang had requested his visit, and there was no reason not to permit it. Asked if the move would antagonise China, he said India would not capitulate to foreign pressure.
“We are neither going to be dominated by anyone nor shall we dominate any of our neighbours,” he said. “We give prime importance to India’s interest.”
A senior Indian official in New Delhi told the Financial Times that the Dalai Lama “is a respected religious leader, and he is free to choose where he wants to travel. He is a guest here. No political connotation need be attached to any of his activities.”
Robbie Barnett, Tibet scholar at Columbia University, said the visits opened the possibility that the successor could be sought in India or Mongolia. That is a problem for Beijing’s efforts to stifle separatist sentiment among the 6m Tibetans who inhabit the Tibetan plateau, source of most of China’s major rivers.
“China’s Dalai Lama watchers are trapped in a reincarnation sandwich nightmare,” Mr Barnett said. “This is deeply worrying to the Chinese. They’re caught in a pincer movement of the metaphysical.”
Tawang happens to be the birthplace in 1683 of the sixth Dalai Lama, whose sensuous love poems have become popular among Chinese today. The Dalai Lama’s previous visit in 2009 also triggered friction between Beijing and New Delhi.
China’s Dalai Lama watchers are trapped in a reincarnation sandwich nightmare. This is deeply worrying to the Chinese. They’re caught in a pincer movement of the metaphysical
Tibet was an ally of the Qing dynasty and “liberated” by the Chinese army after the Communists won the Chinese civil war in 1949. The Dalai Lama fled Lhasa along with 70,000-80,000 refugees after a failed Tibetan uprising in 1959 at the height of China’s forced collectivisation drive. Chinese scholars estimate there are now 200,000 Tibetans in the diaspora. Some boys born outside Tibet have already been identified as reincarnations of minor lineages.
In 1995 Beijing selected the 11th Panchen Lama, the second-most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism, after a failed attempt by senior Tibetans within China to anoint a mutually agreed choice. The six-year-old boy who was the Dalai Lama’s selection disappeared and has never been heard from again. That experience hardened the Dalai Lama’s desire to keep his succession out of Chinese hands.
However, the Mongolian option seems impractical given China’s economic dominance. The Dalai Lama’s visit there coincided with an indebted Chinese border town raising fees on copper and coal trucked from Mongolia’s biggest mines. The Mongolian foreign minister agreed that the Dalai Lama would not visit again before the Chinese reopened the border, a concession that many Mongolians, devout or not, regarded as a violation of their sovereignty.
China last year created an online database of government-certified reincarnations to solidify its “undeniable endorsement right over the reincarnation system” before the Dalai Lama’s death. The move to regulate reincarnations came after a Han Chinese actor declared himself a “living Buddha” and began collecting donations from Chinese attracted to Tibetan spirituality.

China’s urbancide in Tibet
March 20, 2017
By Rinzin Dorjee
The Diplomat, March 17, 2017 – The State Council of China unveiled the National New Type Urbanization Plan (NUP) in 2014 to increase the percentage of urban residents in the total population of China from 52.6 percent in 2012 to 60 percent by 2020. The ratio of citizens with urban hukou (resident permit) will increase 35.3 percent to approximately 45 percent. After many decades of deliberations and halt in reforms to the strict urban hukou system, the Chinese government has finally loosened procedures for rural migrants to transfer their household registrations to urban areas.
This policy has a unique impact on Tibet, where urbanization has become a major burden. Ethnically Chinese migrants coming from China’s densely populated coastal provinces have started moving to Tibet and the reformed hukou system has made it easier to transfer their household registration in Tibet.
By “urbancide,” I refer to the extinguishing of Tibetan culture and identity through an influx of millions of Chinese migrants in Tibet. At the same time, Tibetans in rural regions are made landless through expropriation of their land. As suggested by Emily T. Yeh in her book, Taming Tibet, this is part of China’s state territorialization of Tibet.
The policy is already taking effect, as seen in the growth of Tibetan cities. As of 2016, Lhasa, Shigatse, Lhoka, Nyingtri, Tsoshar, Siling, and Chamdo were recognized as prefecture-level cities in Tibet. According to recent reports from China, two more will soon join that list: Nagchu and Ngari are to be upgraded from county-level cities to prefecture-level cities.
Hukou Reform in Tibet: An Influx of Migrants
Apart from government officials and military personnel who are transferred to Tibet, there has been a huge influx of ethnically Chinese migrants due to highly subsidized aid and investment in infrastructural development in Tibet. Chinese migrants, many of whom are facing a lack of employment opportunities in their home regions, are attracted to jobs and opportunities to start a business in Tibet. The population transfer from China to Tibet is following the same policy implemented in China-occupied Mongolia (today’s Inner Mongolia) during the Qing Dynasty, where Mongolians were already a minority in the end of the 19th century. The agrarian focus of such policies meant that Chinese migrants settled in the countryside and they became dominant in rural as well as urban populations. The policy has continued through modern times: the number of cities in Inner Mongolia has increased from 193 in 1979 to 668 in 1997.
The Western Region Development (WRD) Office of the State Council has suggested that no government authorities should collect urban population surcharge fees or similar fees from people moving their hukous to the Western Region. This suggestion has further incentivized Chinese migrants to settle in Tibetan cities. In the coming decades, Tibet could witness a population growth of millions of Chinese migrants in various cities.
Rural Tibetans’ (Forced) Migration to Cities and Towns
Urbanization in Tibet has also encouraged many Tibetans living in rural areas to take up non-agricultural professions in Tibetan cities. Their ancestral lands are sold to land developers to build industries to attract migrants entering Tibet. As Straits Times reported recently, “Out of China’s 31 provinces, regions, and municipalities, only the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) still maintains a distinction between rural and urban residents.” Because of the rural/urban classification scheme, Chinese migrants coming from outside Tibet are particularly encouraged to resettle in Tibetan cities, where they will have access to social welfare schemes.
In addition to natural migration patterns, a greater number of Tibetans from rural areas are being moved to towns through the government’s forced resettlement policy. Pastoral Tibetans who live scattered with their herds in mountains and valleys are moved into compact and fenced towns. This allows the government to control the movement of these rural residents in the name of social stability. As Sophie Richardson, China director at the Human Rights Watch, pointed out, “Tibetans have no say in the design of [relocation] policies that are radically altering their way of life, and – in an already highly repressive context – no ways to challenge them.” Human rights violations during this process range from lack of consultation to failure to provide adequate compensation. Both are required under international law for evictions to be legitimate. After the move, the sudden shift from nomadic life to cities has increased unemployment in Tibet.
A field study conducted by Tibetan researcher Gongbo Tashi (aka Gonpo Tashi) and Marc Foggin in 2009 shows the empirical impact of ecological resettlement in Lhoko prefecture. The researchers interviewed more than 300 individuals in this survey. They found that forced resettlement deprived the residents of Dekyi village of their livestock, which was the main source of their livelihood. The new town where the villagers were resettled provided insufficient space to rear livestock. New farm training is supposed to be given to the resettled Tibetans to help them begin their new lives but most of the families complain about not receiving any of the training promised by the government before resettlement. As a result, the size of their livestock decreased dramatically, thereby making previously self-sufficient rural Tibetans heavily dependent on government subsidies. The table below indicates the shrinking size of livestock populations in Dekyi village after the resettlement.
Another experience of residents in two resettlements in Qinghai province from 2005-2009 could be taken as a case study. Residents were interviewed by a Chinese researcher, Xu Jun, with a group of other researchers. The group spent one month in each year in Yushul and Na-Gormo prefecture in Amdo. In his study of these prefectures, where resettlement took place, Xu concluded that resettled nomads faced an intense sense of displacement: “We saw firsthand their struggle to make a new life as they resettle in a new place, puzzling over their future. Some are disappointed. Some are shameful, as they talked about their lives and having to rely on their relatives who remained in grassland. Some have to return to grassland to do some odd job to earn a living for their children.” This five-year investigation showed that most of those resettled in or near cities during the period of the San Jiang Yun protection and rebuilding program have not been able to make a living without access to grassland resources. On the other hand, no clear data exists to prove that such immigration had been helpful to the grassland ecosystem, which is the stated motive behind the relocations.
Urbanization and Social Stability
In cities, unlike in remote areas of Tibet, people’s movements and contacts can be monitored through a grid system. China carried out its first urban grid management experiment in Dongcheng district in Beijing in October 2004. Down the road, if China remains devoid of real democratic checks and balances, there is little doubt that the continued development of grid management will only lead to a model for a modern police state in Tibet. This in part lends confidence to President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang’s urbanization plan.
Human Rights Watch released a comprehensive report in 2013 on how the urban grid management system in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, has proven to be efficient in monitoring the movement of residents. In this new grassroots-level of urban administration, each “neighborhood” or “community” in towns will be divided into three or more grid units. At least eight pilot units were set up in Lhasa in April 2012, and in September they were declared to have “achieved notable results.” In October of the same year, the regional party secretary stated that because “the Lhasa practice has fully proved the effectiveness of implementing grid management to strengthen and innovate social management [i.e., controlling mass protests],” the system should be made universal in “the towns, rural areas, and temples” of the TAR.
Land Expropriation
Nearby towns and remote villages in Tibet are now connected to extended cities. Land originally used for cultivation is increasingly seeing construction of vast infrastructure projects as well as residential and commercial buildings. According to the World Bank, rural land requisition and conversion for industrial use in China has been particularly inefficient because the decisions have been largely driven by administrative decisions rather than market demand.
China’s urbanization has consumed significant land resources as urban boundaries are continuously expanding outward and the territorial jurisdictions of cities are increasing, primarily through the expropriation of surrounding rural land and its integration into urban areas. As indicated in the graph below, the demand for urban requisition of land has soared over the past few years in China due to the urbanization project.
Tibetan urban land graph
Between 2001 and 2011, the amount of land in China classified as urban construction land had increased by 17,600 square kilometers (sq km), reaching a total area of 41,805 sq km in 2011, an increase of 58 percent over a decade. About 90 percent of demand for urban land was met through the expropriation of rural land, while only 10 percent was supplied from the existing stock of undeveloped urban construction land. Following this trend, as Tibetan cities grow, a sizable amount of rural land in Tibet will be expropriated by the Chinese government.
The government and, to an extent, the academic community in China, have largely overlooked the implication of rapid urbanization for millions of farmers or villagers who have been made landless (legally or illegally) over the years. According to an official statistic, three million people become landless farmers every year in China. The total number is expected to double in 2020 because of the current pace of urbanization.
The growth of cities has another consequence. In her book Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh stated that according to China’s Law of Regional National Autonomy (LRNA), when regions, prefectures, and counties are upgraded to cities, the autonomous status of these areas will be lost. Uradyn Bulag, an anthropologist who researches Inner Mongolia, advanced the argument that the benefits of an administrative promotion from county to city, particularly for local leaders, “checkmates ethnic sensitivity” about the loss of ethnic autonomous status.
Conclusion
China’s urbanization in Tibet (and across the country) is aimed as a solution to China’s slowing economy. The policy is intended to bring millions of Chinese migrant workers to settle and do business in Tibet. As part of this process, Tibet’s cities have gone through demographic shifts, resulting in the strong influence of Chinese culture. The projected rate of 30 percent urbanization in Tibet in the coming few decades would mean that all cities in Tibet will be dominated by ethnic Chinese. As a result, Tibetans lose the language rights associated with autonomous status. Meanwhile, mobility and communication for urban residents is monitored strictly whenever the government deems it necessary.
To feed the growth of cities, land, which is the only asset that many rural Tibetans inherit from their ancestors, is bought by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign companies. Tibetans from rural areas who lose their land must look for unskilled, usually temporary work. If the current rate of urban land requisition by the Chinese government continues, the ownership of land in many areas in Tibet will be transferred to Chinese migrants, businesses, and the state.
In response to these changes, Tibetan resistance will grow stronger. Urbanization in Tibet, with the resulting damage to traditional ways of life, cannot win the hearts of Tibetans as explicitly called for by Xi Jinping at the last Work Forum held in Tibet. It has only created more resentment among Tibetans.
Dr. Rinzin Dorjee is a Research Fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute, a think tank affiliated with the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala, India.

Young farmer stages first Tibetan self-immolation of 2017
March 20, 2017
Radio Free Asia, March 19, 2017 – A 24-year-old Tibetan man set himself on fire Saturday in a protest against Chinese rule in the Himalayan region, the first reported self-immolation of 2017, sources told RFA’s Tibetan Service.
Pema Gyaltsen, from Nyagrong (in Chinese, Xinlong) county in Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, set himself on fire around 4 p.m., and police swiftly removed his charred body from the scene, Tibetan sources told RFA.
Two sources from the Tibetan exile community said Gyaltsen, an unmarried farmer, was taken to a hospital in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. One source said the man later died, but the other said his contacts in the region believed he was still alive in hospital.
In a one-minute video clip that was circulating on Tibetan social media, Chinese police are seen dispersing Tibetan onlookers from a scene of commotion, with women crying. Sources told RFA that authorities blocked the popular smartphone application WeChat following the self-immolation.
“In the evening around ten close relatives of Pema Gyaltsen from Nyagrong went to Kardze county police station to see self-immolator Pema Gyaltsen. But the Chinese beat them severely and detained them for the entire night, and forced them to stand up the whole night,” a Tibetan exile source with contacts in the town told RFA.
“Today some of them could barely walk from the beating, but they were released under the guarantee of a Nyagrong official,” the source added.
“He called for the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet and said there is no freedom in Tibet at the time of self-immolation,” another source told RFA.
Gyaltsen was the eldest of five children of his father Wangyal and mother Yullha, and “the main breadwinner of his family and had not attended any school,” the second source added.
The Kardze police station did not answer repeated calls by RFA seeking details of the incident.
Saturday’s protest brings to 147 the number of self-immolations by Tibetans living in China since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009. The previous known self-immolation was on Dec. 8, when Tashi Rabten, 33, a husband and father of three, set himself on fire and died in Gansu province.
Gyaltsen’s protest was the second case of self-immolation in Nyagrong, following the death of 18-year-old Kalsang Wangdu in March 2016.
Most protests feature demands for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama from India, where he has lived since escaping Tibet during a failed national uprising in 1959.
Reported by Lobsang Choephel, Sangyal Dorjee, Dawa Dolma and Pema Ngodup for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Paul Eckert.

China warns India over invite to Dalai Lama to Buddhist meet
March 20, 2017
Times of India, March 20, 2017 – China on Monday warned India not to go against its “core concerns” to avoid “disruption” in bilateral ties after New Delhi invited the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama to an international Buddhist seminar in Bihar.
“In recent days the Indian side, in total disregard of China’s stern representation and strong opposition, insisted on inviting the 14th Dalai Lama to attend the international conference on Buddhism held by the Indian government,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters here.
“China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposed to it,” she said.
“We urge the Indian side to clearly see the anti-China splittist nature of the Dalai group and honour its commitment on Tibet and related questions, respect China’s core concerns and avoid China-India relations from being further disrupted and undermined,” she said.
The 81-year-old Dalai Lama inaugurated an international seminar on Buddhism on March 17 in Rajgir in Bihar’s Nalanda district, about 100 km from the capital Patna.
Buddhist monks and scholars from various countries participated in the seminar ‘Buddhism in 21st Century’.
Earlier this month, China had objected+ to India permitting+ the Dalai Lama to visit Arunachal Pradesh which it regards as Southern Tibet.
China is strongly opposed to the Dalai Lama visiting disputed areas, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang had said.
“China’s position on eastern section of China-India border dispute is consistent and clear. The Dalai clique has long been engaging in anti-China separatist activities and its record on the border question is not that good,” he had said.

Internet blocked in parts of Tibet in run-up to national uprising anniversary
March 13, 2017
Radio Free Asia, March 10, 2017 – Authorities in southwestern China’s Sichuan province are blocking internet access in a Tibetan prefecture in the run-up to a sensitive political anniversary, fearing Tibetan residents may organize protests inspired by exiles living outside the country, sources say.
The move blocks service in 10 counties of the Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and remains in effect through March 17, according to a document issued by prefecture authorities and obtained by RFA’s Tibetan Service.
“Now, because of the March 10 anniversary of National Uprising Day, the authorities are concerned that residents of Tibetan areas could create problems under the influence of activities organized outside the country,” one resident of the area told RFA.
“The authorities have therefore blocked internet service so that Tibetans cannot see, hear, or read about protests or other activities organized by Tibetans [living in exile],” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Counties affected by the ban include Dartsedo (in Chinese, Kangding), Tawu (Daofu), Draggo (Luhuo), Kardze (Ganzi), Sershul (Shiqu), Dege (Dege), Palyul (Baiyu), Nyagrong (Xinlong), Lithang (Litang), and Bathang (Batang), according to the order, titled Document 24 of 2017.
Other, unspecified areas will also have service blocked, the order says.
“Based on past experience, the Ngaba [Aba] Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture will also be affected,” a second Tibetan source told RFA.
Military parade held
Meanwhile, government employees in the neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) are being assigned in rotation to guard their offices around the clock, “and security is probably being heightened in [the TAR capital city] Lhasa,” the source said.
On March 10, 1959, Tibetans in Lhasa rose up in protest of Beijing’s tightening political and military control of the formerly independent Tibetan region, sparking a rebellion in which thousands were killed.
Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in the midst of the uprising, and Beijing has repeatedly accused exiled Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, of stoking dissent against its rule ever since.
On March 3 this year, Chinese troops staged a military parade in Lhasa that appeared “intended to discourage public protests or expressions of dissent,” New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a March 9 statement.
In addition, foreign travel to Lhasa has been closed for all of March, with the entire region placed on a security alert, HRW said.
“Chinese authorities are once again shutting off travel and holding military parades to bully the Tibetan population into silence,” HRW China director Sophie Richardson said.
“Progress on human rights is only going to happen if the Chinese government replaces its intimidation tactics with a more open approach to information, expression, and peaceful dissent,” Richardson said.
Reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.