A new Canadian from mainland China, Lee is of Han stock and has kin from his homeland who have migrated to work and do business in Tibet.

“This you see is the biggest problem . . . The Tibetans are angry that the Hans are taking over their country and their businesses . . . they are fighting back.”

“I agree,” says Lee’s friend, who asks that his name not appear in this editorial as he fears trouble when seeking a visa to visit his homeland. “But this problem is not a problem for the Chinese people . . . it is a problem for the Communist Party of China,” he says.

Both Lee and his friend were invited to give their views of the on-going crisis in Tibet, which has triggered a worldwide chorus of condemnation against China’s ruthless crackdown in the “Roof of the World.”

Unlike pontificating pundits, Lee and his friend have dissected their way through the two most explosive issues that compose the Tibet question. When the smoke cleared on Lhasa’s Beijing Road and its arterial alleyways last week, the anger against the Hans was evident
Their shops were attacked and burnt and the Lhasa taxi service dominated by Hans was stoned.

Spontaneous crowds chanting “Free Tibet” vented their anger at the imported Hans who for them epitomize Chinese rule and repression. They had listened to the Dalai Lama who has targeted Han migration as one of the greatest threats to Tibetan culture.

Beijing’s hidden agenda is to populate Tibet with Hans, and the Communist Party of China has worked diligently on a migration effort to “cleanse” Tibet of its indigenous values.
It is part of the “thousand grains of sand” approach which involves China convincing all Chinese going overseas, and all those of Chinese ancestry living outside the motherland, to work for China.

As part of this grand plan, China enlisted Canada’s Bombardier and Nortel to build the Qinghai-Tibet Railway that has brought tens of thousands of Hans to remote Tibet.

The new rail connection was aimed to benefit Han migrants, Han merchants and Han officials who have controlled the levers of Tibet’s political and economic power over the past 56 years of rule by Beijing.

More than 90 per cent of the 100,000 workers hired for the mammoth railway project were Han Chinese, many of whom have made Tibet their new home. China says that Hans make up only three per cent of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region, but Tibetan exiles say that the figure is in fact over 50 per cent and growing.

Leading the Han charge into the Himalayan nation is Tibet’s new party secretary Zhang Qingli. Zhang made a name for himself by moving thousands of Han families into Xinjiang, another troubled zone which China claims as its own.

He was appointed by the benign looking president of China, Hu Jintao, who in 1988 as party secretary in Lhasa brought in 170,000 extra troops to Tibet and declared martial law.  

 

Both Hu and Zhang have professed that the long-term solution to China’s Tibet problem is to change the demographics of the stubborn nation.

They cannot afford to lose anymore face within the Communist Party by allowing the troubles in Tibet to overshadow the upcoming Olympics. They have come too far to turn back, and will use their economic might to ensure that Western platitudes, protests and prayers subside.

They will pour Han Chinese into Tibet to negate the indigenous quest for independence and autonomy by claiming the migration is needed to boost the resident economy.

The unfortunate reality is that when Lhasa stops burning, the West will allow the world’s biggest factory to continue its repressive rule of Tibet because money matters and Chinese money matters more because there is simply so much more of it to be had.

 

The influx of Hans into all matters Tibet has already seen the Dalai Lama lose traction in global political forums.

The Communist Party of China knows the only way to rule Tibet is to make Tibetans an ethnic minority in their own land.