TIBETAN TEACHER ON PACIFYING KHAM BY JOBS AND EDUCATION

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 CHENGDU 000117

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EAP/CM, DRL, G

E.O. 12958: DECL: 7/1/2034
TAGS: PHUM PGOV SOCI CH
SUBJECT: TIBETAN TEACHER ON PACIFYING KHAM BY JOBS AND EDUCATION

REF: A. CHENGDU 115

B. 08 CHENGDU 135

CHENGDU 00000117 001.2 OF 002


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




1. (C) Summary: According to an ethnic Tibetan teacher from
Aba Prefecture in western Sichuan Province, government job
programs begun there over the past few years aim to give young
people something to lose so they think twice about "stirring up
trouble." A new program that will send ten thousand ethnic
Tibetan middle school graduates per year to high schools outside
of Tibetan areas is another strategy aimed at keeping peace by
equipping youth for jobs through vocational training. The
teacher described how his brother, a monk, was tracked down and
detained by police after taking photographs of demonstrations
that were released on the Internet. Satellite dishes are
reportedly being removed in parts of Aba to prevent people from
listening to VOA and RFA Tibetan language programs broadcast by
satellite. End summary.

Tibetan Students to be sent to Han Areas of Sichuan
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2. (C) A former Tibetan middle school teacher, who now lives in
Chengdu, told us recently that a new program developed over the
past four months to send ten thousand students from the
predominantly Tibetan prefectures of Aba and Ganzi (ref A) is
not yet widely known to Tibetan parents. Some Tibetan teachers,
however, are already preparing for the move to the new schools
now under construction in the earthquake hit areas of Dujiangyan
and Wenchuan. Tibetan students are to be sent to many different
schools, including special programs for Tibetans within existing
schools, as well as to new schools. According to the teacher,
students will not be sent to Chengdu in order to mitigate the
possible influence of Chengdu Tibetans who hold "politically
incorrect" ideas. In the teacher's home county of Aba in Aba
Prefecture, 70 percent of middle school graduates will be sent
away for high school this September. The proportion will be
roughly 40 percent in two nearby Aba Prefecture counties.


3. (C) The teacher remarked the new program may have been
inspired by perceived recent successes in his home county of
Aba, a center of Tibetan culture, which has been relatively
quiet in comparison to other Tibetan areas. Over the past
several years, local authorities have been reaching out to
unemployed youth in their twenties offering many of them jobs
and a few years of vocational training in Chinese speaking parts
of Sichuan. Once they have jobs, the government assumes, the
young people will have something to lose, and so are less likely
to cause trouble. The education strategy, the teacher asserted,
is aimed at weakening Tibetan culture. Although this makes
Tibetans angry, there is not much they can do about it.


4. (C) The teacher commented it is possible the Chinese
government strategy will meet with some success. Wenchuan
County, where some of the Aba County Tibetan students are being
sent, used to be a Tibetan area but now local Tibetans have
assimilated to Han culture. Several years ago, Tibetans schools
in Aba County started teaching mathematics and science in
Tibetan rather than in Chinese. Tibetan students there have
been doing much better in math and science as a result. (Note:
poor training in math and science is viewed as a big problem in
the education of Tibetans in China, leaving them with few
options for higher education). The teacher fears that this
success of Tibetan language education will be lost when students
are sent to study in high schools in Chinese speaking areas of
Sichuan.

Monk Brother Pursued by Police for Photos
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5. (C) The teacher described how he was raised in a family of
thirteen, including the six children of his parents and four
children of his eldest brother. His youngest brother is a monk.
It is very common for at least one of the boys of Tibetan
families in Aba to become monks. The teacher's monk brother
took pictures during incidents of recent unrest and gave them to
someone who sent the pictures abroad via the Internet. The
police caught the man who sent the pictures overseas and
subsequently sentenced him to thirteen years in prison. Then,
the police began looking for his brother who fled his monastery
and went into hiding. The police even called the teacher in
Chengdu to asked him where his brother had gone -- the teacher
replied he didn't know anything.


6. (C) After the abbot of his brother's monastery intervened,
the teacher continued, the police made an agreement that they

CHENGDU 00000117 002.2 OF 002


would let his brother go free after interrogating him. His
brother surrendered himself to the police and the teacher hopes
he will be released soon. Security authorities have been
focusing great attention on the Kham areas of traditional Tibet
-- Ganzi and Aba Prefectures of Sichuan Province -- in the wake
of the March 2008 Tibetan areas protests. The teacher
speculated this is because of an old Chinese strategy -- "To
rule Tibet, first pacify Kham" (zhi zang, bi xian an kang)
which apparently dates back to military campaigns in the Kang
region of what is today western Sichuan during the early Qing
Dynasty. (Comment: Ganzi Prefecture officials now refer to
this in a modernized version "To stabilize Tibet, first pacify
Kang" (wen zang, bi xian an kang] probably, at least in part, as
a way to campaign for additional resources from the central
government).

Satellite Antennas Coming Down in Aba County
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7. (C) Satellite antennas, the teacher noted, are being
confiscated all over his home area of Aba. He remarked, "we
used to listen to hear the Dalai Lama sometimes on Radio Free
Asia on the satellite." (Note: Radio Free Asia and Voice of
America broadcasts are carried on a digital audio on the Asiasat
3 satellite which can be received throughout China). The
satellite dishes are being replaced by cable television systems
that will carry only government-approved programming.

Kham Carrot and Stick
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8. (C) Comment: It is possible that one lesson from the March
2008 outbreak of unrest in Lhasa for Chinese authorities was
that massive investment and rapid development, absent the
software of education to make local people competitive for jobs,
resulted in a flood of outside workers that only heightened
ethnic tensions. Substantial infrastructure investments are
currently being made in Sichuan Province's predominantly Tibetan
prefectures of Ganzi (ref B) and Aba that will inevitably result
in much greater contact with Han Chinese. Implementing a
massive scholarship system for Tibetan ethnic middle school
graduates appears to be one strategy of trying to pacify these
areas as they experience potentially dramatic change.
BOUGHNER