"LHOKA" AKA "SHANNAN": SINIFICATION OF THE CRADLE OF TIBETAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 06 CHENGDU 000015

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EAP/CM

E.O. 12958: DECL: 1/15/2021
TAGS: PHUM PGOV ECON EAID MCAP MOPS SOCI CH IN

SUBJECT: "LHOKA" AKA "SHANNAN": SINIFICATION OF THE CRADLE OF TIBETAN
CULTURE, AND DEFENSE OF TIBET FROM INDIA

REF: A) 09 CHENGDU 311; B) 07 CHENGDU 239; C) 09 CHENGDU 280; D) 09 CHENGDU 251; E) 09
CHENGDU 181; F) 09 CHENGDU 252; G) 07 CHENGDU 297; H) 07 CHENGDU 298

CLASSIFIED BY: David E. Brown, Consul General, U.S. Consulate
General Chengdu, Department of State.
REASON: 1.4 (a),(b)


1. (C) Introduction and Summary. Although considered the cradle
of Tibetan culture, the historical city and prefecture of Lhoka,
in southeastern Tibet, is in the midst of a silent cultural and
population invasion by Han Chinese, Consul General's November
22-25 visit there suggests. Lhoka's rapid growth is also driven
by the need to consolidate political and economic control along
China's disputed border with India. The PRC Government, the
three designated "Help Tibet" Provinces of Anhui, Hubei, and
Hunan, as well as Han businesspersons have all contributed to
the construction of a huge, new "China Town" in Lhoka. This has
moved the city center away from its traditional "Tibet Town,"
whose Nge Tse Tsogba monastery was largely destroyed during the
Cultural Revolution.


2. (C) Lhoka's infrastructure has improved markedly over the
last four years, including wide boulevards and improved
telecommunication. Empty buildings and roads, however, raise
questions about whether this in part reflects excessive capital
investment (as in many other places in China),or the need to
strengthen Lhoka as a rear military base should China and India
have another border clash. (After the 1962 border war, PRC
forces pulled back from a section of Lhoka (aka Shannan)
Prefecture, a disputed area that is now the Indian state of
Arunchal Pradesh.)


3. (C) While local officials estimated the permanent locally
registered ethnic Han population at less than four percent, the
many migrant workers from Sichuan and other provinces raise the
Lhoka city ethnic Han population to about one-quarter of the
50,000 wintertime total, and perhaps 40 percent during the rest
of the year, when many migrants arrive to work on construction
projects. Photos from the November Lhoka trip are available on
the Internet at tinyurl.com/lhoka-photos. With its political
and increasingly economic domination by ethnic Han Chinese, the
"sinification" of Lhoka is a microcosm -- on the municipal and
prefecture-levels -- of what is happening throughout much of the
Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). End Introduction and Summary.
Lhoka's Silent Invasion: Large Han Chinese Influx Leads to
"China Town," Marginalization of Traditional "Tibet Town"


4. (SBU) Satellite images, like those readily available online
from Google maps online (see tinyurl.com/lhoka-google and zoom
in) illustrate how this rapid development has left the "old
town" of Lhoka largely untouched. Lhoka is called Shannan in
Chinese; the Tibetan and Han parts of the city are adjacent, but
still under the same administration. The new city that we saw
has grown considerably from what was visible in the three-year
old satellite images currently available on Google maps. Like
many other Tibetan towns, Lhoka grew up around a monastery.
Only a small part of the huge Nge Tse Tsogpa monastery, leveled
to the ground during the Cultural Revolution, was rebuilt. (See
photo at tinyurl.com/lhoka-monastery.)


5. (SBU) Adjacent to this old part of town, however, the Chinese
government has laid out a vast grid of new streets and buildings
leading to the other side of the valley. (Note: When visiting
the valley where Kings of Tibet were buried in the 9th-11th
century, we observed in the distance the town of Chong Gye.
This town, like Lhoka, had a Gelug school monastery on the side
of the hill, with traditional, Tibetan houses below and around
it, running down the hill and into the flat plain. Tibetan
Foreign Affairs handlers told ConGenOff that we wouldn't be able
to go to this monastery, since "getting there on the road is too
difficult." As in Lhoka, the TAR government appeared to be
constructing a new "China Town," with modern buildings, away
from the "Tibet Town." (See photo at tinyurl.com/nedong-gelug.)
End Note.)



6. (SBU) Few Tibetans were visible on the streets of Lhoka's
new, "China Town," -- even the pedicab drivers are Han migrants
from Sichuan and elsewhere. We saw a few Tibetan farmers
driving their tractors and some weathered Tibetan laborers with
their skin wrinkled and darkened by the intense sunlight and UV
rays of the high, Tibetan plateau. In fact, all the
storekeepers in the central part of "Chinatown" near our hotel
were Han Chinese. Many were tending small stalls carrying a
minimal amount of food, alcohol, and tobacco products. One shop
had a Budweiser sign: "Drink Budweiser to Celebrate the Sixtieth
Anniversary of the PRC". All the shop owners claimed to be
doing well, although there were few customers when we stopped by
in the freezing weather of early November.


7. (SBU) Many of the migrants from neighboring provinces such as
Sichuan find the TAR to be a land of opportunity. One
shopkeeper from Sichuan said that, by coming to Lhoka, he became
his own boss. Across the street next to a small park under
construction; a sign promised a modern, functional, non-Tibetan
design. To judge by the names of the contractors, all of the
construction was being done by Han Chinese construction
companies: one each from Shanxi and Chongqing, and two local
companies led by people with ethnic Han names. (See photo at
tinyurl.com/lhoka-signs.)


8. (SBU) This river-side park led to "Hunan Street," which had a
bridge over a frozen, largely dry river bed. Surreally, the
bridge was adorned with 20-foot tall, coconut street lights,
complete with plastic palm fronds and fake nuts -- presumably to
make "Help Tibet" cadres feel more at home. Much of the
assistance that partner provinces provide to areas of the TAR is
in effect "tied aid" -- companies from the assisting provinces
get contracts and send equipment and personnel to build projects
undertaken in their designated areas of the TAR. This
assistance is often carried out between corresponding government
agencies (duikou guanxi),so that, for example, the education
bureau of an assisting province will help of its counterpart in
the assisted TAR county. Besides Hunan, two other provinces
assign cadres to help Lhoka: Anhui and Hubei -- both of which
also have main thoroughfares named in their honor. Consistent
with this, we noted signs on new buildings "constructed with the
help of the Anhui People's Government."

Two Kinds of Han Bureaucrats:

Shorter-Term "Help Tibet" Cadres, Longer-Term Officials


9. (SBU) Some of the Han cadres assisting in the local
government are also from these three provinces. One of the Han
Chinese party cadres that we met was Mr. Liu, a Help Tibet
(yuanzang) cadre from Hunan Province, the number two with the
Lhoka Prefecture Animal Husbandry Bureau (Ref A). Help Tibet
cadres, including the Help Tibet cadre from the PRC Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (profiled in ref B) who led the TAR FAO and
Lhoka officials shepherding our Chengdu group, typically serve
in the TAR for three years. A second Han cadre we met was Li
Gencai, a Party Secretary and Deputy Director of the Lhoka
Prefecture Religious and Ethnic Affairs Bureau. Mr. Li was not
a "Help Tibet" cadre, but instead was from Shandong Province and
had lived in Tibet for a couple decades. Many of the Han
officials who have lived for decades in the TAR settled there
when the PLA assigned their father to the TAR.


10. (SBU) The most notable part of our meeting with Mr. Li, who
skillfully deflected our questions and told us nothing new, was
viewing the ground floor of his office building. There, he and
dozens of other party cadres had pinned up, in neat rows on a
bulletin board, their lengthy, hand-written essays, all entitled
"My Heartfelt Experience in Studying the Viewpoint of Scientific
Development" -- a reference to a Hu Jintao's trademark themes.
(See photos at tinyurl.com/lhoka-study.)

In Lhoka, Han Businessmen Help Themselves


11. (SBU) Finally, there are businesspersons from these three
"Help Tibet" provinces - including one likely from Anhui who
built the "Wanzhou Commercial Center," one of the largest in
Lhoka, and whose name includes the character "Wan" -- the
single-character in Chinese meaning Anhui. At an entrance to
the commercial center, there was a large, wall-length poster
recruiting hair stylists and other workers. Unlike an "Only Han
Need Apply" help-wanted sign witnessed that we witnessed in
Lhasa during our October visit (Ref C),this poster explicitly
stated a policy of no discrimination based on ethnicity.
However, the rest of the poster looked like a eugenics
experiment with age discrimination: Men and women hired as
stylists had to have minimum heights, and minimum and maximum
ages. There was also an explicit patriotism test: applicants
must "love country and party."

Han Cultural Invasion:

Speak Chinese and Make the Place Look Like the Rest of China


12. (SBU) A second dimension of the Han "invasion" is linguistic
and cultural. As in Lhasa, Tibetan children in Lhoka,
especially after elementary school, take most of their classes
in Chinese. Our three ethnic Tibetan handlers from the FAO
(supplemented by two Han males) included the local FAO head, who
was a middle-age man; his younger, woman assistant; and a second
young woman from FAO Lhasa. None of the three Tibetans could
read or write in Tibetan. (Note: Since the mid 1980s, the TAR
has sent many elementary school graduates, often the children of
Tibetan Party, military, and government officials to study
outside the TAR from middle school through university. They
return home with native speaker proficiency in Chinese, but poor
Tibetan language skills. In summer 2009, Sichuan province
started a similar program for its Tibetan areas (ref D). End
Note.) (See septel reporting on a Tibetan teacher's views on
Tibet efforts to maintain a Tibetan social identity despite
widespread and growing education in the Chinese language.)
Moreover, unlike "Shangri-La" (formerly Zhongdian in Deqing
Prefecture),an ethnic Tibetan tourist town in Yunnan Province
(ref E),Lhoka's new town makes no effort to incorporate the
colorful, distinctive Tibetan architecture into its new
buildings. Lhoka's "Chinatown" is filled with modern, boxy, and
ugly buildings.

China's Infrastructure Boom (and Overinvestment) Reach Lhoka


13. (SBU) According to ConGen Chengdu LES, who visited twice
before in 2003-4, there has been a huge improvement in the
city's infrastructure in the last five years, including new
telecommunication facilities and vastly improved roads. Some of
the newly built buildings appear to be nearly empty. Street
construction was shoddy, even by Chinese standards. For
example, a brand new sidewalk already had many cracked,
plasticized tiles, even though the wide street that it
paralleled was not even fully completed.


14. (C) Comment: One take on Lhoka's construction boom might
hold that the central government ordered the provinces to
promote economic growth and raise living standards in their
assigned Tibetan prefectures. Lhoka's new, haphazard
construction may simply reflect money being poured into the
prefecture without well thought out planning. A darker view
would be that the PRC government is investing massively in
Tibet, not so much to benefit Tibetan people living there, but
rather to consolidate its control over this vast territory on
its southern border. Development creates economic incentives
that are encouraging the migration of Han and other
nationalities to the TAR. One additional reason for the buildup
is to prepare Lhoka and its greatly improved infrastructure to
serve as a rear-base should there be another border clash with
India. (Note: Lhoka lies 50 miles SE of Lhasa and 120 miles due
north of what has been the line of control between China and
India since 1962. The disputed part of Lhoka now under Indian
control is also known as the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Tibetans Sweep Lhoka's Memorial to Han War Dead


15. (C) While this 1962 border clash may seem like a distant
memory, it can be imagined vividly when visiting the large
"Shannan Martyrs' Memorial Park" for China's war dead located at
the end of "Anhui Boulevard" -- an empty, four-lane street in
the central part of Lhoka's new part of town. The cemetery's
tombstones, framed by a stony massif that shoots up a thousand
feet, did not indicate the years or places of death of its
Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers. An ethnic Tibetan told
us that the cemetery itself is an insult to the Tibetan people
as the PLA soldiers there were not "martyrs," but rather
invaders and occupiers who had killed his ancestors. (Photos of
the cemetery are at tinyurl.com/lhoka-cemetery.)


16. (C) The local government compels ethnic Tibetan students to
visit the cemetery and sweep its tombs -- which our source said
would be like the Japanese government forcing Chinese students
to clean up Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. (Note: According to
"Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for
Survival," by John Knaus, many of these PLA soldiers died
fighting Tibet's resistance fighters. Some of these fighters
were trained by the CIA, whose aid reportedly started in the
late 50s and ended with the Nixon Administration's opening to
the PRC. Assistance reportedly included training of Tibetan
fighters in Colorado who returned to Tibet to train others, as
well as air drops of supplies into Lhoka Prefecture. End Note.)

Lhoka's Boom: Development in a Border Prefecture


17. (C) Comment: The city appears to serve as a rear base
(houjing) for the PLA should China need to supply its forces in
case of a conflict with India. We observed a medium-sized PLA
facility on side of the main, two-lane road leading south to the
Indian border, some three hours away. Further down the same
road, on the opposite side, we observed the construction of a
large, new military facility. Locals told us that the road
ended at a border checkpoint that was not authorized for
official border trade. Nevertheless, they added, local
residents continued to carry out "private" (minjian) trade
across the border with Nepal and Bhutan, but not across the line
of control with India.


18. (C) The PAP presence in downtown Lhoka was not as obvious as
it was in October in Lhasa near, for example, the Potala Palace
and Jokhang Temple (Ref F). Yet, there were other telltale
signs. Some telephone lines had signs posted in Chinese that
they belonged to the PLA -- perhaps to deter thieves. Many of
the streets were made with thick cement that could support the
weight of tanks. There were "Built Jointly by the Military and
the People" (junmin gongjian) signs on the outside of several
buildings. This slogan was created by Deng Xiaoping in 1980s to
mean "joint army-civilian efforts to promote socialist ethics
and culture." This same sign can be seen elsewhere in China,
most notably in buildings in post-earthquake Sichuan. This sort
of sign suggests a significant military presence. End Note.)

Return to Lhoka's Old Town -

Monastery at Center Stage Reflects Traditional Tibetan Town

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19. (C) After our lunchtime visit to the cemetery, still free of
the Tibetan Foreign Affairs Office, we also headed off to a
walking tour of Lhoka's old "Tibet Town." As in a traditional
Tibetan town, Lhoka's Nge Tse Tsogpa monastery had been the
town's focal point, built a hill side and flowing into the
valley's flatland. At the monastery, we found three monks, each
over 30 years old. One of the three monks told us that, before
1950, there used to be 300 monks - 100 times the current number.
This monk showed us a picture (tinyurl.com/lhoka-monastery) of
the monastery before it was destroyed; it was huge, perhaps 10
times its current size, and occupied much of the hillside above
its current location.


20. (C) We also visited a second, smaller monastery, Bengtsang,
also in Tibet Town. One monk there told us that he had become a
monk several years earlier, as a child, but that only last year,
when he turned 18, had he gain official government recognition
of his profession. This monk said he had been subject to
intense, often daily, political education by the Government's
Religious Affairs Bureau following the March 2008 uprising in
Tibet; in 2009, however, political education had fallen sharply
to only 1-2 times per month. The monastery, like any location
at which religious worship is officially permitted, posts a
registration certificate as a religious activities venue. (See
photo of certificate at tinyurl.com/monastery-reg.)


21. (C) As we strolled around "Tibet Town," part of which is
known as "Naidong" in Chinese, we saw other signs of government
control. In one compound, we passed by as PLA soldiers emerged
from the inside. We saw signs for the "Naidong Community
Residents Committee," and the "Naidong Community (Communist)
Party Branch." On some houses, plaques over the door wells
boasted that the home had been recognized as "Peaceful Homes"
(ping'anhu) by the Prefecture's Comprehensive Management
Committee (xianzongzhiwei),or as "Cultured Homes" (wenminghu)
by the Party Branch of Naidong Residents' Committee. (See
photos at tinyurl.com/lhoka-plaque.) One ethnic Tibetan
explained that the Communist Party had made, since around 2000,
a conscious effort to recruit wealthier, entrepreneurial
Tibetans into its ranks. The better maintained, more prosperous
homes with these plaques were often inhabited by these Tibetan
Party members, he explained. We also observed a sign for the
PRC Commerce Ministry's nationwide "Ten Thousand Villages, 1000
Townships Market" construction program (wancun qianxiang shi),
which helps shopkeepers in smaller towns to start businesses.

Lhoka and Lhasa Population: Migrants Not Included

-------------- --------------


22. (C) Comment: The populations of Lhasa and Lhoka include both
a permanent population of people registered locally, which are
used in the published population counts, plus a poorly
understood floating population of migrants, soldiers, tourists
and businesspeople. Even to the extent to which the size of the
floating population is understood (public security and family
planning authorities try to keep track of migrants),release of
this politically sensitive information is controlled. Some
estimates of the floating population in different areas appear
in Chinese scholarly articles available through the enormous
scholarly article database at cnki.net. Different Chinese
government offices such as family planning and public security
have different population counts. The migrant population swells
in the summer, and shrinks during the winter months (refs G and
H).


23. (SBU) Our FAO handlers were uncertain about Lhoka's total
population, but estimated it to be 96 percent ethnic Tibetan
(and the large majority of the remaining four percent Han
Chinese). We estimate Lhoka's minimum population to be about
50,000, with 25 percent Han Chinese during the winter months,
and 40 percent Han during the rest of the year, when the Han
"liudong renkou" (floating population) works on many
infrastructure and construction projects. While in Lhoka, we
met an ethnic Han taxi driver whose family was from Jiangsu
province, although he had actually been born and grew up in
Tibet. This Han likely has a permanent household registration
in Tibet. By contrast, when we visited the Bangso Marpo Temple,
Han workers repairing a road to it told us that they were from
Sichuan Province, and just temporarily in Tibet doing
construction work.


24. (SBU) Official statistic released in 2008 indicated that
Lhasa's population at the end of 2007 was 622,316 of which
long-term residents numbered 464,736, and "temporary residents"
(zhanzhu renkou) were 157,580. Of the permanent residents, 88.9
percent, or 413,077 were Tibetans, and 10.5 percent, or 48,760,
were Han Chinese. China's last national census was conducted in
2000, with statistical sampling since then to estimate newer,
yearly figures. The TAR's population in 2008, as estimated in
the "2009 China Statistical Yearbook" at 2.87 million, of which
650,000 was urban and 2.22 million rural. The population of the
TAR with long-term residents was estimated at 2.576 million,
which would suggest that the population living in the TAR with
residency in other provinces is about 294,000. The statistics
are unclear, however, because a separate breakdown in the
statistics says that there are only 17,000 people in the TAR
with permanent registrations elsewhere.


25. (SBU) We estimate Lhasa's population at 700,000 of which
about 40 percent are Han, including long-term Han residents and
the "liudong renkou" (transient population) of shorter-term,
mostly Han laborers. In October 2009, Consulate visited a new
district in Lhasa under construction; according to news reports,
it will house 100,000 residents, the large majority of whom we
expect to be Han. One need only visit Lhasa's newly expanding
areas where ethnic Han live, and compare it to "Tibet Town"
around the Barkhor to see how the ethnic Han-to-Tibetan ratio is
increasing.
BROWN