- Title: CHINA-TIBETANS/HERDERS China seeks hearts and minds with Tibetan resettlements
- Date: 3rd August 2015
- Summary: NGABA, SICHUAN PROVINCE, CHINA (JULY 31, 2015) (REUTERS) YAKS IN DISTANCE ON GRASSLAND YAK CHEWING VARIOUS OF 14-YEAR-OLD PALDRON AND HER SISTERS PREPARING DRIED CHEESE TENT WHERE SISTERS LIVE (SOUNDBITE) (Mandarin) DAUGHTER OF TIBETAN HERDER, 14-YEAR-OLD PALDRON, SAYING: "We get up, then milk the yaks, then eat, then my mum and older sister go to the mountains to dig for
- Embargoed: 18th August 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVADYBLBAFJWZD9135P557R2XPOC
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: PART AUDIO QUALITY AS INCOMING
Deep in the grasslands of Ngaba in China, 14-year-old Paldron and her sisters live a life that has remained largely unchanged for centuries.
During the summer months the Tibetan girls survive off the land with their mother and brother in a traditional yurt, relying on a herd of yaks to provide most of their daily needs, in a heavily Tibetan part of China's Sichuan province that is traditionally strongly defiant of Chinese rule.
"We get up then milk the yaks, then eat, then my mum and older sister go to the mountains to dig for bugs, so the four of us (stay here)," said Paldron.
But a sea-change is under way in the lives of many Tibetans like Paldron. Most of the region's herders are for the first time becoming property owners under a government resettlement programme.
Spanning a period from 2009 to 2012, the local government in Ngaba, or Aba as it is known in Chinese, spent 2.9 billion yuan on getting nomadic Tibetan herders to build homes.
On one of the newly built settlements, 18-year-old Jiahuazeda said he was happy to have left the grassland and be living in a new house.
"It (where we lived) before was pretty basic. Now living here is pretty comfortable, it's quite cosy," he said.
It's a positive image China wants the world to see, one aspect of a controversial programme that has been rolled out across most of the Tibetan plateau.
While not officially off limits to foreign reporters, unlike what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region where all reporting trips need government permission, visits to Ngaba are very difficult due to tight security.
Late last week, the government took a small group of foreign journalists to the area, arranging interviews with officials and resettled herders, though all in the presence of government minders.
Officials have encouraged many of the new villages to take advantage of China's booming tourism industry and Han Chinese fascination with what they see as exotic minority cultures.
One village that has managed to cash in on tourism is Chuanpan. Lying five kilometres from a regional airport, the villagers have traded in herding yaks for putting on traditional Tibetan dances and selling nick-nacks for busloads of tourists passing through, on their way to the Jiuzhaigou national park.
It took a while to convince the herders, many of whom didn't know what a tourist was, that the village could make money in this way said Xago, who heads the Chuanpan village committee, a local government organisation.
"A lot of people didn't understand the idea of tourism, they didn't understand. So the village committee organised some briefings, then they understood. After they understood, they all wanted to join the tourism plan," he said.
In the first year of opening as a tourist village, Chuanpan made 200,000 yuan (32,200 USD) in profit, Xago said.
But not all of the resettled herders are located in areas where they are able benefit from tourism.
Though also a participant in the resettlement programme, 60-year-old Leswoko still makes a living through herding his yaks, the income from which he has found increasingly insufficient to satisfy a new urban lifestyle.
"How can I put it? Some families were already poor and now everything has become more expensive (because) now you have to buy everything. The food and clothes we used before don't satisfy people now. Because of this, in some areas there's a lack of money now, so some things are a bit more difficult," he said.
Activists have expressed concern that China's main aim with such programmes is to control a restive population.
But Bai Yingchun, deputy head of the Ngaba prefecture's propaganda office, said "absolutely nothing was forced" in the resettlement programme.
"The government did not directly take part in deciding this resettlement issue, it's based on the masses being willing and (carrying it out) spontaneously. The construction was done with the unique aspects of this area in mind and through understanding what the masses want, and through the masses telling (us) their needs," he said.
But Kate Saunders, a spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet, said Tibetans have been given little option but to cooperate.
"There's no doubt that it's part of China's overall political objectives of enforcing control. It's much easier to enforce administrative control over settled communities than over nomads in the grasslands, and also the Chinese authorities have aligned the policy with specific political objectives of eliminating separatism and eliminating expressions of Tibetan nationalism," she said.
China has ruled Tibet with an iron fist since troops took over the region in 1950, and those controls often extend to ethnic Tibetan areas in other parts of China.
The government rejects criticism that it has repressed Tibetan religious freedom and culture, saying its rule has ended serfdom and brought development to a backward region. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None