SOUTHEAST TIBET: ETHNIC HAN TOWNSHIP FLOURISHES ON

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 CHENGDU 000287

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EAP/CM, G, DRL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/15/2033
TAGS: PGOV ECON PHUM CH
SUBJECT: SOUTHEAST TIBET: ETHNIC HAN TOWNSHIP FLOURISHES ON
SUBSIDIES

CHENGDU 00000287 001.2 OF 004


CLASSIFIED BY: James A. Boughner, Consul General, U.S. Consulate
General, Chengdu.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)




1. (C) Summary: Massive government subsidies and military
infrastructure improvements have doubled the size of Bayi
Township (80 percent ethnic Han) in the southeast of China's
Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) over the past decade. Large
contributions on infrastructure and in kind "Help Tibet Cadre"
personnel from Fujian and Guangdong provinces have supplemented
over the years hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
assistance from the Chinese central government. Tibetan
religious sites and gathering points are remarkable for their
absence in the township and surrounding areas that are, however,
filled with new houses for local residents built with government
assistance. End Summary.

Linzhi Prefecture: Borderland with Burma and India
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2. (SBU) Local government officials, "Help Tibet Cadres," and
TAR Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) handlers accompanied ConGenOff
in late November on a week of visits to local sites in the TAR's
Linzhi Prefecture. Linzhi encompasses seven counties, 45
townships and 526 villages with a total population of about
178,000 people. According to the 2005 census, Linzhi Prefecture
had a population of 158,000 people including 127,000 Tibetans as
well as 17,000 Han and others people belonging to China's 56
officially recognized "nationalities." Seventy-four percent
(117,000) of the population is rural. The prefecture, which
borders Burma and India, is overall 80 percent Tibetan. Moist,
warm winds blowing northwards from India through the world's
deepest grand canyon gives relatively low lying Linzhi
Prefecture -- average altitude 3100 meters versus Lhasa's 3600
meters -- the mildest climate in the TAR. Nearly all of Linzhi
Prefecture's 26 inches of annual rainfall, and with it flooding,
comes between June and September. The combination of mild
climate, 46 percent forest coverage, and abundant vegetation
along with massive government investment and incentives for
businesses coming to the area -- no taxes the first two years,
reduced taxes the third year -- appear to make it a relatively
comfortable and attractive land of opportunity for many migrants
from inland China.


3. (C) The Linzhi capital, Bayi Township, is a five-hour, 400 km
drive from Lhasa and lies on the Sichuan-Tibet highway. Daily
two-hour nonstop flights bring businesspeople, affluent Chengdu
residents who own villas in Linzhi, and military personnel from
Chengdu to the Linzhi Airport, which opened in 2007, and nearby
Bayi Township. Bayi Township is an important center for the
Chinese military on China's southern border. ConGenOff saw the
entrances to several military bases from the road. He also
frequently saw soldiers in green or brown camouflage uniforms on
the streets in Bayi. Local Tibetans say some valleys are
reserved for military purposes. The Linzhi Guesthouse where
ConGenOff stayed (coordinates below) is adjacent to a military
depot (bingzhan) and near the 77675 Military Hospital.

Tibetans Joke Bitterly that Bayi Means Eight Han For Every One
Tibetan
-------------- --------------
--------------


4. (C) Brag Yul, or "rocky place," the Tibetan name for Bayi,
now the capital of Linzhi Prefecture, refers to the rocky
glacial soil of the region -- much like the soil of northern New
England. Greenhouses are a common sight in the countryside.
The transliteration of Brag Yul into Chinese was officially
adjusted to "Bayi 8-1" to mark the birthday of the Communist
Party's People's Liberation Army in order to "promote harmony"
between the military and local Tibetans. Tibetans joke bitterly
that 8-1 really means that there are eight Han for every one
Tibetan in Bayi. Linzhi Prefecture Secretary-General Xie Yaxing
refused to give ConGenOff a population estimate for Bayi
Township, saying that this year's census was not complete.
Published sources put the township permanent population at
35,000, a figure that does not include many migrant workers who
might stay for several years or seasonal workers.

Bayi Township: Just Like a Sichuan City
--------------


5. (U) A Chinese tourism website, dreams-travel.com, says the
following about Bayi Township: "Bayi Township was once an
ordinary township in Linzhi Prefecture. However with the steady
increase in its importance as a transport hub for troops
stationed in the TAR, the completion of the Lhasa to Linzhi

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highway, and especially the assistance given to Bayi Township by
some coastal provincial and city governments, has made Bayi
Township the administrative center of Linzhi Prefecture and the
heart of Linzhi County. Bayi Township has become a modern
Tibetan city, wanting for nothing, with prosperous commerce, a
thorough blending of migrant workers with local people,
well-developed transportation, and a growing tourist industry.
The gradual increase in the migrant population, however, has
made Bayi Township lose its own special character. Now Bayi
Township resembles a county seat in Sichuan Province, and not a
Tibetan county seat. This change is happening in Bayi Township
just as it is happening in other Tibetan cities." The Chinese
text is at the URL: www.tinyurl.com/linzhi-sichuan.

Many Han Businesses; Few Tibetans Run Shops
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6. (C) Mild Linzhi winters make it much easier for migrants from
the interior provinces to stay in Linzhi all year round than in
other parts of the TAR. A professor at the Animal Husbandry
College, a Tibet University campus in Linzhi, said that 80
percent of the students at the college are ethnic Han. The
college, which has a distant relationship with the university,
is strongly resisting a proposal by the university to move the
animal husbandry college to Lhasa because the great majority of
students would find it a much less congenial climate. On a main
commercial street ConGenOff walked down perhaps two out of the
roughly one hundred shops were operated by ethnic Tibetans, the
rest by Han or Hui people from inland provinces. Among 30 help
wanted signs ConGenOff read on various walls around Bayi
Township, two notices -- one for a restaurant and the other for
vegetable garden workers -- said that ethnic Han only need apply
(photo at www.tinyurl.com/tibet-han-only-jobs
). Nearly all the
public notices posted in Bayi Township were in Chinese only.

Caterpillar Fungus: Fragile Pillar of Rural Tibetan Economy
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--------------


7. (C) During a visit to a pharmacy in Bayi Township, local
officials commented that many rural Tibetans make much more from
harvesting caterpillar fungus, "chong cao," in the countryside
than they could make by doing business in the city. Caterpillar
fungus is literally a fungus infested with dead caterpillars
that has become popular for medicinal purposes over the past 20
years in China. The Tibetan caterpillar fungus economy
(discussed in detail at www.danielwinkler.com
) provides income to many people
in Linzhi, although the prefecture in general has a lower grade
of caterpillar fungus. Thus far in 2008, the price has dropped
by 30 percent from RMB 70,000/jin (approximately USD
10,000/pound) to 50,000/jin. Local officials attributed this
to the 80 percent or so decline in tourism to the region this
year after the unrest that broke out in Tibetan areas of China
during March. Many buyers, according to local officials, did
not want to travel to the Tibet Plateau and were not willing to
buy possibly fake caterpillar fungus outside of Tibetan areas.
(Comment: a continued decline in the price of caterpillar
fungus, should the fad fade, would economically devastate many
rural Tibetan households).


8. (C) In the countryside around Bayi Township for two hours in
each direction (the roads run along very wide riverbeds,
tributaries of the Brahmaputra River) many newly-built homes for
local Tibetans could be seen. Officials said that Tibetan
households get a 30,000 RMB (USD 4000) subsidy from the Chinese
government. This, together with inexpensive local timber and
help from other villagers, enabled Tibetans to put up solid and
attractive looking new houses. Local officials claimed that
subsidies from the central government for funding this program
to improve the housing of peasants and herders ("nongmu anju
gongcheng") is distinct from the TAR's herder settlement
program, as Linzhi herders are only semi-nomadic and have long
been "settled."


9. (C) NOTE: According to a 2008 Master's thesis by Tibet
Minorities College student Chen Pu, since the peasant and herder
housing program began in 2006, new housing has been built for
47,000 households including 257,000 people throughout the TAR.
The very large number of new houses ConGenOff saw, including
some on less-traveled roads on trips up to 100 miles in either
direction from Bayi Township along very broad river valleys was
quite notable. During a trip to Tibetan areas of northern Aba
Prefecture in Sichuan Province in December 2007, ConGenOff also
saw large numbers of new houses under construction financed by a
similar heavily subsidized housing program. In areas around
Bayi, ConGenOff also saw construction crews at work building new
houses. The remarkable cookie cutter similarity of these

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standardized houses in the countryside makes professional
construction -- rather than that done by individual Tibetan
families -- most likely. ConGenOff visited a village close to
the Linzhi Airport that had been moved from back in the hills to
an area more convenient to the roads. At the center of the
village stood a conference hall building with a recreation room
with pool table. There was no stupa near the village. During
ConGenOff's week long stay in the Bayi area, he did not see in
the city or surrounding countryside any of the stupa which are
common in other Tibetans areas.

Rapid Infrastructure Growth Funded by Fujian and Guangdong
Provinces
-------------- --------------
--------------


10. (C) Bayi Township has doubled in size over the past decade,
in part the result of a decision taken at the 1995 Central
Committee's Third Tibet Work Meeting to give Linzhi Prefecture
priority in TAR development projects. According to a Linzhi
Development and Reform official, seventy percent of the 1.2
billion RMB in government assistance to the prefecture during
recent years has come from the central government which supports
local government finances directly. However, another 30 percent
in the form of infrastructure assistance to Linzhi comes chiefly
from Guangdong and Fujian Provinces. There is also considerable
private investment from Guangdong Province.


11. (C) The half of Bayi that has been built over the past
several years is filled with tall administrative buildings, new
apartment buildings and broad avenues paid for by provincial and
city governments in Fujian and Guangdong in direct
agency-to-agency relationships ("dui kou guanxi"). For example:
-- The Linzhi Employment Center building was built by and
received staff training from a counterpart agency in Guangdong
Province.
-- The Linzhi Environmental Protection Bureau building was built
and received staff training from the Guangdong Province
Environmental Bureau.
-- The Linzhi Reform and Development Bureau was also in a new
building paid for by outside assistance.
(Comment: Chinese provinces and municipalities are often tasked
by the central government with providing large amounts of
assistance to poorer provinces and counties. These relationships
have been set up not only between various regions of Tibet and
the wealthier coastal provinces. In June 2008, the State
Council set up similar assistance partnerships between wealthy
provinces and counties in Sichuan Province hard hit by the May
2008 earthquake).

Rapid Changes in Bayi Apparent on Google.cn Satellite Photos
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12. (C) The Google.cn map database now provides high resolution
satellite photos as well as detailed Chinese language maps of
many localities in China (see technical note below). The Bayi
Township photos on Google.cn, which have a resolution of perhaps
two meters, shows nearly, complete a bridge that was finished in

2006. These two year old photos, at the URL
tinyurl.com/bayi-2006-satphoto, provide dramatic evidence of
Bayi Township's explosive growth. The two year old photos show
a large blank area where the outlines of broad avenues have been
bulldozed out of the soil. All the roads and large buildings
were finished when ConGenOff and LES visited Bayi Township in
mid November 2008.

Development Challenges
--------------


13. (C) Comments: Bayi Township is a base of Han dominance of
the countryside, reversing Mao's old formula of taking power by
the countryside engulfing the cities. It appears that Tibetan
communities in Linzhi are being reoriented from monasteries or
religious sites towards the secular authorities in the Party-run
townships. Local Tibetans do see some material improvements
from development. Deng's dictum that "Development is an Iron
Law" is here reinforced by a strong military presence and
massive subsidies. Government expenditures in the TAR averaged
58 percent of TAR GDP during 1980-2006 and hit 80 percent during
2002 - 2003. This "blood transfusion" from the central
government and development partner provinces may force the pace
of development to a much faster pace than what Tibet's internal
circumstances and the educational level of ethnic Tibetans might
otherwise likely permit. While the uncertain caterpillar fungus
economy enriches some rural Tibetans in Linzhi, the younger
generation of Tibetans has not been included in the wave of
commercial development that has swept Bayi Township and the
surrounding areas in the past decade. Large subsidies to
Tibetan communities and moves to areas more accessible to the

CHENGDU 00000287 004.2 OF 004


market economy improves housing. This does not seem, however,
to have yet translated into significant business opportunities
for local Tibetans. The lack of a business tradition in many
Tibetan families, lack of access to capital, and ethnic
discrimination are high barriers to the growth of Tibetan
entrepreneurship. Poor attitudes towards the local population
on the part of the Han majority are likely to continue to be a
catalyst for stronger national feelings among Tibetans.

Technical Note: Google, Google.cn, Maps
--------------


14. (SBU) Geographical coordinates are easily extracted from a
Google.cn URL -- click on a point, then either click on email or
create a link. The geographical coordinates of ConGenOff's
hotel, the Linzhi Guest House, for example, appeared in the link
URL for the photo centered on the Guest House as
29.665597,94.364968 . Google Maps can be used to convert this
to standard form -- 29 degrees, 39 minutes, 56.15 seconds North
Latitude, 94 degrees, 21 minutes, 53.88 seconds East Longitude.
Geographical coordinates can be directly inputted into Google
Maps at maps.google.com. The PRC version of Google Maps at
ditu.google.cn does not accept geographical coordinates
directly, but they can be inputted by comparing URLs for
maps.google.com and ditu.google.cn and then inserting the
geographical coordinates in decimal form from google.com into
the corresponding portion of a ditu.google.com map link URL.
The maps on Google Maps database are often a year or two old --
this can be used to advantage when examining how an area has
changed in the several years before a site visit.
BOUGHNER