Stability in Tibet a priority for President Hu

7 March 2011

President Hu made clear at the 11th National People’s Congress on Sunday 6 March that the Chinese administration will make “meticulous efforts” to maintain “stability” in Tibet, focussing on economic development as key to maintenance of stability.

Free Tibet Director Stephanie Brigden said:

 “Economic development clearly does not guarantee stability: in the first half of the last decade, government subsidies of over 310 billion Yuan doubled the size of Tibet’s economy, and yet in 2008 the biggest protests against Chinese rule in fifty years took place in Tibet.”

Economic development in Tibet is benefitting the Chinese regime and those close to it. Government contracts are mostly awarded to Chinese state-owned companies so that the income generated from projects in Tibet goes straight back into Chinese companies and Chinese pockets. Contracts are used as a means of rewarding those Chinese close to the regime, giving them good reason not to criticise the regime as they continue to gain financially from the system. 3,000 of the 3,500 people in China worth over 100 million Yuan are relatives of high-ranking government officials (1).

 Growth in Tibet is ethnically exclusionary growth; to participate in the ‘economic revolution in Tibet’ Tibetans must be fluent in Chinese, which the majority of Tibetans are not. In addition, Chinese work cultures exclude the vast majority of Tibetans, leaving them marginalised in their own country.

Hu also spoke about the development of transport and infrastructure across the Tibetan plateau to support growth. Transport and infrastructure are preconditions for development, but they are also the tools of any occupying state, allowing the occupier to transport troops and so maintain military control over a wider area. In the case of Tibet, an extended transport system will also enable more efficient removal of natural resources, with no benefit to Tibetans.

Ends

Free Tibet is an international campaigning organisation that stands for the right of Tibetans to determine their own future. We campaign for an end to the Chinese occupation of Tibet and for the fundamental human rights of Tibetans to be respected.

(1) Pranab Bardham, Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley.

For further information and interviews please contact Free Tibet’s Director Stephanie Brigden

E: stephanie@freetibet.org

T: +44 (0)20 7324 4605

M: +44 (0)7971 479515