Thursday, May 5, 2011

Hardly any Chinese in Tibet?



According to Chinese statistics, the number of "permanent residents in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region has topped 3 million, at least 90 percent of whom are native Tibetans."
In other words, hardly 10% belong to the Han majority and minorities such as Hui Muslims.
Xinhua reports: "According to figures from the sixth national census conducted last year, the number of Tibet's permanent residents has reached 3,002,166, up 14.75 percent from the previous census in 2000."
In 1993, after a short visit to Tibet, I wrote an article Shangrila no more for Blitz
"To go back to the hotel (I was already late), I decided to experiment with a rickshaw drive. After bargaining the price with a rickshawalla, I had a relaxed journey to the hotel some 3 km away. While watching my Chinese rickshaw driver pedaling I was in deep thought: there are now tens of thousands of such Chinese men doing petty work in Lhasa. For many years, the Chinese in Tibet were only PLA personnel and bureaucrats posted by Beijing, but since a few years the Chinese .policy seems to have changed and now there is an organised transfer of population from China to Tibet. This population occupies even the lowest jobs in the society, which in practical terms leaves very little scope for the local Tibetan people. If the Chinese are tailors, shoemakers, rickshawallas, coolies what is left for the Tibetans to do except to beg? A recent census shows that out of 12,500 shops surveyed in Lhasa more than 12,000 are Chinese. For me, it was interesting that I had read this article just before leaving for Lhasa, but like many articles one reads, one does not really realise concretely what it implies. It sank home in Lhasa and in particular in Jokhang when I 'saw that the people selling Khatas (Tibetan ceremonial scarves) were Chinese; that the tailors stitching Prayers Flags were Chinese. It is very frightening to think of the future of the Tibetan civilisation."
This was in 1993. Today the Chinese want us to believe that there is only 10% of non-Tibetans in Tibet. 
They really take the rest of the world for fools.

Tibet's Population Tops 3 Million; 90% are Tibetans
2011-05-04
Xinhua   
The number of permanent residents in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region has topped 3 million, at least 90 percent of whom are native Tibetans, the regional government said Wednesday.
According to figures from the sixth national census conducted last year, the number of Tibet's permanent residents has reached 3,002,166, up 14.75 percent from the previous census in 2000, Tibet's regional bureau of statistics said in a press release.
It said Tibet's population had witnessed an annual 1.4 percent growth rate, faster than the national average growth of 0.57 percent.
However, the average number of people per household dropped slightly compared with the 2000 figure, it said.
The latest census found Tibet's 670,835 households had an average of 4.23 people each, down from the average 4.75 people per household in 2000.
China's one child policy does not apply to Tibetans, and farming and herding Tibetan families often have two children or more.
The 2.716 million Tibetans make up about 90.48 percent of Tibet's total population, whereas the Han, China's most populous ethnic group, account for 8.17 percent. Other ethnic groups make up 1.35 percent of the permanent residents in Tibet.
Xigaze is the most populated Tibetan prefecture, with 703,292 residents, followed by Qamdo, Lhasa, Nagqu, Shannan, Nyingchi and Ngari.
The latest census also found that people living in Tibet were better educated compared with the 2000 census result. The number of college graduates per 100,000 residents soared from 1,282 to 5,507, and at least 17,200 out of every 100,000 finished secondary school, as opposed to 9,891 in 2000.
Tibet is China's least-populated provincial-level region. Its population was only 1.23 million in 1959, the year the Chinese central government launched democratic reform there.

No comments: