The 'Tibetan' Hans

Wang Huning, Politburo Standing Committee member in the Tibetan delegation

In March, China will have a new government or State Council.
Its composition is already more or less known.
The always well-informed South China Morning Post announced the names of most of the State Council’s members.
It will however have to be ratified by the People’s National Congress (NPC) next March.
Some 20 ‘Tibetan delegates’ represent the Tibetan Autonomous Region at the NPC.
Among them are a few Hans.
In the last NPC, the most illustrious member of the Tibet delegation has been Wang Huning, today member of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee and Director of the Central Policy Research Center of the CCP Central Committee.
He will probably be re-nominated (incidentally, President Hu Jintao was also a member of the Tibet delegation).
Another Han member used to be Chang Xiaobing, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of China Unicom; since then he has been ‘investigated’ and he is today languishing in jail. He will be replaced by another corporate tycoon.
A third one has been in the news this week.
It is Prof Ding Zhongli, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has just been nominated Chairman of China Democratic League (CDL).
According to his biography, Ding Zhongli is a native of Zhejiang province. Born in 1957, he graduated from Zhejiang University, and received a doctorate from the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Since 2008, he became vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ding Zhongli has been researching paleoclimatology and the Chinese loess deposits for over twenty years. He and his co-authors systematically investigated the loess stratigraphy of the Loess Plateau, demonstrated the continuity of the loess-soil sequence by correlating the loess sections of the Plateau, and subdivided the loess deposits into 37 pedostratigraphical units in the past 2.6 Ma. He established an orbitally-tuned time scale for the loess sequence on the basis of the Baoji grain-size record. …By correlating the climate records of the loess with those of the deep-sea sediments, he showed that changes in global ice volume may have been a major factor in driving glacia-interglacial variations of the Asian monsoon system.
Why is Ding member of the Tibet delegation at the NPC?
One reason might be that the Chinese leadership wants to keep a tab on the environment of the plateau (Xi can keep an eye on the political developments through Wang Huning).
Prof Ding has now become Chairman of the China Democratic League (CDL).
What is the CDL?
It is a ‘political’ party founded in March 1941; it is headquartered in Beijing and it has a membership of 230,000. The ideology of the party is ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’.
The CDL (or Minmeng) is one of the eight legally recognised political parties in the People's Republic of China.
At the time of its formation (in 1941), it was a coalition of three pro-democracy parties and three pressure groups. Its two main goals were to support China's war effort during the Second Sino-Japanese War and to provide a ‘Third Way’ from the Nationalists and the Communists.
The party tilted towards the CCP during the Chinese Civil War.
According to Wikipedia: “Thereafter, two of its constituent parties, the China National Socialist Party and the Chinese Youth Party, left the League to join the Nationalists in Taiwan. The ‘Third Party’ eventually became the Chinese Peasants' and Workers' Democratic Party in 1947. It left the League, but remained pro-Communist.”
In 1997, it adopted a constitution, which stipulated that its program was "to hold high the banner of patriotism and socialism, implement the basic line for the primary stage of socialism, safeguard stability in the society, strengthen services to national unity and strive for the promotion of socialist modernisation, establishment and improvement of a market economy, enhancement of political restructuring and socialist spiritual civilisation, emancipation and development of productive forces, consolidation and expansion of the united patriotic front and realisation of the grand goals of socialism with Chinese characteristics."
We may have to wait next March to see if Prof Ding is still a member of Tibet delegation to the NPC, but there is no reason why he should not be.
The question remains what is/will be his contribution?
The CDL's program is probably fitting with Beijing’s objectives in Tibet.
A Chinese government website noted that in September 1949 the CDL attended the First Plenary Session of the CPPCC in Beijing. It took part in drawing up the Common Program and preparing for the establishment of the People's Republic of China: “Since New China was founded, the CDL has been sharing weal and woe with the CPC and making important contribution to the state political life, economic construction, culture and education.”
With Wang Huning and Ding Zhongli, Beijing can keep a close check on the political and environmental developments on the plateau.
Whether the Tibetans will benefit the presence of these two Han delegates is another issue.

Chinese Hans from 'Tibet'

Dr. Ding Zhongli of the Chinese Academy of Science

A Chinese official publication yesterday asserted: "Tibet, the snow-covered holy land in southwest China, topped a survey of residents’ sense of happiness in Chinese inland areas, with the most satisfying index of air condition."
This was found during a survey, 'China Happiness Index Map', conducted by Tencent.com together with 34 local media involved 10 million voters from 34 provinces, cities and autonomous regions.
The outcome of the survey was: "Tibet was graded with 6.7 points (full marks for 10 points), followed by the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region with a score of 6.2 points and three other provinces including Hainan, Liaoning, Jiangsu Fujian ranking third with the same score of 6.0 points. While Guizhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, with 5.0 points, became the least happiness areas of Chinese inland."
The website added: "Happiness index shows social systems and people’s life, and it is also the indicator of the social development and people's opinion. The survey clearly showed that the 'happiness map' was affected by the pace of life, environment and many other factors a city."
So, why so much resentment against the Central Government of China, if Tibet is such happy place. One could give a long list of reasons. 
Look at this one!
As the Two Meetings are being held in Beijing, I came across the list of delegates from Tibet to the National People's Congress (NPC). 
Tibet is entitled to a meager quota of 20 delegates on nearly 3000 members 'elected' to the rubber-stamp Parliament.
You may be under the impression that the 20 'Tibetan' delegates are born and live on the Roof of the World. You are wrong! 
Amongst them are many Han Chinese as the Bloomberg article posted below shows.  
What is the connection between Chang Xiaobing, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd, a company dealing in wireless carrier and Tibet?
It is a billion yuan question.
And Prof Ding Zhongli, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences?
Though Ding is certainly aware of the environmental problems facing the Himalayas as a Board Member of ICIMOD, the Kathmandu-based organization, is it a criteria for representing Tibet?
According to Prof Ding's CV:

Ding Zhongli, Professor at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was born in Shengzhou, Zhejiang Province in 1957. He was elected as Academician of CAS in 2005, as Chairman of the Chinese National Committee for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (CNC-IGBP) in January 2008, and as a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China in March 2008. He became Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in January 2008, following nearly seven years as Director of the CAS Institute of Geology and Geophysics. For the past two decades, Professor Ding has focused his research on the Quaternary climate change and associated forcing mechanisms, and made systematic observations and a pedostratigraphic correlation of the loess sequences over the Chinese Loess Plateau, laying a foundation for later study. For the fi rst time, he established a 2.6-Ma orbital timescale of stacked grain-size records for Chinese loess that is highly compatible with the marine isotope record. He found that the East-Asian
winter monsoon intensity registered in the loess grain-size was in phase with the Milankovitch cycles, particularly the 100 ka eccentricity cycle, and that the winter monsoon intensity is closely related to global ice volume changes. A recipient of many awards, his achievements and many innovative results have been published in numerous highly-ranked international journals and are widely cited. He has also contributed to textbooks that have been published in America and England. Professor Ding has a PhD in Quaternary Geology from the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Master of Science in Geochemistry from the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Well, he could perhaps help to suggest measures to stop the melting of the glaciers and as a geologist, he could advise his colleagues in Beijing about the danger of building too many dams on the Tibetan plateau.
Another  'Tibetan' is Wang Huning, mentioned a couple of times on this blog.
He is one of the rising star of the Party and recently accompanied Xi Jinping in in his 'inspection tour' in Gansu province.
Already a member of the Politburo, he will probably make it to the Standing Committee in 2017.

Wang Huning

I had thought that he would become a 'super' Foreign Minister in Li Keqiang's government, but now it appears that Yang Jiechi, the present Minister will be promoted as State Councilor and will seat in Dai Bingguo's chair, while Wang Yi, a former China's ambassador to Japan from 2004 to 2007 will take Yang's place in the ministry.
Can Wang Huning, with his proximity to Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping do good to Tibet? It has to be seen.
Other Han 'Tibetans' are Chen Quanguo, who was appointed Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region in 2011 and Wu Yingjie, the Deputy Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region.
By the way, Hu Jintao himself used to be a member of the Tibet delegation.
No comment!

China Unicom Chief Joins Congress as Tibet Representative
Bloomberg News
March 4, 2013
China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. (762), the nation’s second-largest wireless carrier, said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Chang Xiaobing has joined the National People’s Congress as a member of the Tibet delegation.
Chang is not ethnically Tibetan, and China Unicom has no information on why he was chosen for that delegation, Zhou Xiaoke, Unicom’s Hong Kong-based director of investor relations, said in an e-mailed response to questions today. Chang has previously served on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which advises the legislature, he said.
“Many large state-owned enterprises are headquartered in Beijing and their heads cannot be all elected to the Beijing delegation,” Zhou said in the e-mail. “There is some mechanism to allocate the qualified candidates to other delegations.”
Chang joins the Tibetan delegation at a sensitive time as a rising number of activists from the region are setting themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule. Chang is part of the nation’s ethnic Han majority and is from the northern province of Hebei that surrounds Beijing, according to a biography posted on the online encyclopedia Baike run by Baidu Inc., the nation’s largest search engine.
Last year, 83 Tibetans died after setting themselves ablaze, and at least three more died in January, the Tibetan government-in-exile said in a Jan. 25 statement.
The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, has lived in northern India since fleeing in 1959, when China’s military took over the region. China accuses the Dalai Lama of waging a campaign for independence while the spiritual leader says he is seeking autonomy for Tibet.