GROWING UP A TIBETAN CADRE KID IN CHINA - DIALOGUE WITH HAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 CHENGDU 000065

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EAP/CM AND G
BANGKOK FOR USAID STIEVATER

E.O. 12958: DECL: 4/10/2033
TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI CH
SUBJECT: GROWING UP A TIBETAN CADRE KID IN CHINA - DIALOGUE WITH HAN
SOMETIMES POSSIBLE, NEVER EASY

REF: A. CHENGDU 42

B. CHENGDU 61

C. CHENGDU 17

D. CHENGDU 55

CHENGDU 00000065 001.2 OF 002


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




1. (C) Summary: While not going into detail about recent unrest
in western Sichuan and other Tibetan areas, a well-educated son
of Communist Party officials shared with Post his experiences as
a young ethnic Tibetan studying and working in inland China. An
admirer of the banned Tibetan-Chinese writer Woeser, our contact
described how he joined a foreign-funded organization to promote
Tibetan language development after Chinese security officials
ordered him to shut down an Internet site he established as a
forum on Tibetan issues. An example perhaps of how a new rising
generation of Chinese-educated Tibetans will not necessarily toe
the official political line, our contact complained that
societal prejudice and years of propaganda can make it very
difficult to have a real discussion on Tibet with Han Chinese.
End Summary.


2. (C) Congenoff met recently with a contact working for a
non-governmental organization in Chengdu to elicit his thoughts
on life as an ethnic Tibetan intellectual in today's China. The
contact was born near Lhasa to two Tibetan Communist Party
cadres and was one of the first group of young Tibetans to
benefit from the Party's policy of giving school opportunities
in the Chinese interior to specially selected -- often
politically connected -- students. After finishing elementary
school in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR),the contact went
to middle school in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, high school in
Chengdu and then to university at Beijing Normal University.
Like many young Tibetans educated in the interior of China,
including two university students Congenoff met in Lhasa during
February (ref a),the contact achieved native fluency in
speaking and writing Chinese but only a marginal level of
written Tibetan.


3. (C) Our contact described how during junior high school he
received several hours of Tibetan language instruction a week,
but that this was insufficient to achieve the level of an
educated person and he felt dissatisfied. Like other Tibetans
with his background, our contact stressed he feels he is as
Tibetan as those who have not studied in inland China. Since
language is the vehicle of culture, however, he and others like
him need to strive harder to achieve a good level of Tibetan
fluency. Our contact knows personally the most famous of a
rising generation of Chinese-educated Tibetans, writer and
journalist Woeser, and referred to her as, "widely revered."
(Note: the Tibetan-Chinese journalist and poet Tsering Woeser
is the author of "Notes on Tibet" and "Forbidden Memories:
Eyewitness Accounts of Tibet During the Cultural Revolution."
Both are banned in the PRC. Currently under restrictions in
Beijing, Woeser, who does not speak or read Tibetan well, still
posts to a Chinese language blog on a foreign server at
woeser.middle-way.net. Two blogs hosted inside the PRC,
however, have been shutdown. End note).

Internet Opens Up New World
--------------


4. (C) After finishing university, our contact had legal
training at a school in Nanjing. Fascinated by the Internet and
the world that it opened up to him, he ran the Internet website
Newtibet.com from 2002-2005 to explore ideas on politics and
government and how they could be used to help Tibetans. The
contact stressed repeatedly the importance of the Internet in
opening up his mind. He found on the Internet many ideas and
perspectives that were not available to him before. Although
Newtibet.com achieved some fame and success for a while,
government authorities closed it down three times. The first
two times, no government official would admit to having closed
it down and our contact was able to get it back on the Internet
relatively quickly. The third time, however, public security
officers visited him and threatened that if he persisted in
running his website he would face serious albeit unspecific
consequences. His website remained closed. Public security
visited him regularly to enquire if he had foreign financial
support. He stressed that he had none.


CHENGDU 00000065 002.2 OF 002


Teaching Tibetan in Western Sichuan
--------------


5. (C) For the past several years, our contact has worked in
western Sichuan Province's Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
(TAP) for a charity run by an overseas Tibetan family that is
registered as a private company. (Note: NGOs working as private
companies are common in China given the practical difficulties
of registration -- see ref b-- and the uncertain legal status of
NGO work. End note). The charity assists local educational
authorities to build schools and subsidize the salaries of some
teachers. The contact described how in Ganzi there are three
types of elementary and middle schools:

a) Schools that teach all subjects in Tibetan with the exception
of a course in Chinese as a second language.
b) Schools that teach all subjects in Chinese, with the
exception of a Tibetan language course.
c) Schools that teach all courses in Chinese and offer no
Tibetan.


6. (C) According to our contact, the great majority of the
schools in Ganzi are of the second type. The charity he works
for has been providing grants directly to localities of 400 RMB
a month per teacher. The charity is also working to improve
Tibetan language teaching materials. Our contact noted that
when Tibetan students are taught in their native language they
do much better, especially in math and science. He mentioned
the work of the scholar Tsering Dhudrup of Kangding (ref c) who
has shown in pilot studies the benefits of Tibetan language
education.

Trying to Get Through to the Han
--------------


7. (C) Consulate contact opined it is possible for Tibetans to
help Han Chinese understand Tibetan perspectives, although there
are two big barriers. The first barrier is to get a local Han
interlocutor to think differently and appreciate the true
meaning of democracy and the law. Quite a few Chinese
intellectuals have surmounted this barrier. The second barrier
of surmounting the extremely detailed and finely knit "Tibet
story" that the Chinese Communist Party has pushed since the
1950s is more difficult. Many Chinese do not understand or are
unable to believe, for example, that the Dalai Lama is
universally revered among Tibetans. The contact noted that some
of the criticisms of Tibet's old society are justified. A new
Tibet cannot be like the old. Years of Chinese belittling and
defaming Tibetans and their culture and treating Tibetans
differently, even from all the other Chinese minorities,
however, have made a deep mark on Tibetans. Although he has
been able to get through to some of his Han friends on Tibetan
issues and does not discount the value of dialogue, our contact
hopes Han Chinese will be able to change their thinking and
adopt a more "civilized" attitude towards Tibetans.

Comment
--------------


8. (C) Prejudice against Tibetans in Southwest China on the
individual and institutional level is not acknowledged
officially to be a problem (ref d). Most of our Han Chinese
interlocutors appear to share the view of a local school
official we recently spoke with who stressed that, since
Tibetans get "enormous" government subsidies and are treated
much better than Han Chinese, it can only be a tiny minority of
outside agitators who have been causing recent troubles. As in
religious affairs, where the explicit constitutional right to
propagate atheism is given emphasis over religious freedom,
minority rights are theoretically guaranteed by such political
arrangements as autonomous prefectures. Everyday practice,
however, is very different. The contempt and discrimination
that many ethnic Tibetans continue to feel against their culture
and religion, whatever their economic or educational background,
will likely continue to frustrate the Chinese Government's
conception of a harmonious melting pot.
BOUGHNER