The
Chinese government is employing a unique strategy to reduce the
threat of terrorism in its historically unstable Tibet and Xinjiang
autonomous regions. By providing new jobs and better housing, the
government has managed to quell the threat of separatism.
by
Caleb T. Maupin
Part
3 - Stabilizing Tibet
Southwest
China’s Tibet Autonomous Region also has a history of instability,
the height of which was reached during the 1950s. Kenneth Conboy and
James Morrison’s 2002 book “The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet”
describes how the United States facilitated guerrilla warfare in the
region at the time.
Gyalo
Thondup, brother of the Dalai Lama, was given military training in
Colorado along with a group of his followers. They were airdropped
into the country with American-made weapons and attempted to reduce
the country to a state of full-scale war by 1956, hoping to drive out
the Communist Party of China and restore the feudal Buddhist kingdom.
It is not known how many people died in the bloodbath that followed.
The most
recent incident of violence and unrest in Tibet took place in March
2008. A riot that occurred that month left 18 people dead, as well as
left 382 civilians and 241 police officers injured. U.S. media
reports did not describe the incident as terrorism. But other reports
indicate that mobs of Tibetan separatists attacked people on the
streets of Lhasa, allegedly because they appeared to be of China’s
majority Han ethnicity. Over 120 houses were destroyed in the riot,
which was apparently inspired by calls from Tibetan separatists.
But Tibet
has been relatively calm since 2008. Guerilla warfare, ethnic
violence and arson seem to be on the decline. In recent years, Tibet
has been the focus of much of the Chinese government’s poverty
alleviation efforts.
Roughly 20
percent of Tibet’s population lives in poverty, according to
government estimates. China Daily describes the life of Dashon, a
52-year old Tibetan woman who used to live in a primitive hut. “Our
house could have collapsed at any minute, and we often feared for our
safety,” she said.
Dashon now
she lives in a modern two-story home with electricity and running
water. She is one of 236,000 people who have been resettled into
improved housing as the CPC works toward its stated goal of
eliminating China’s poverty completely by 2020.
Over the
next five years, the Chinese government intends to invest 18 billion
yuan (2.5 billion dollars) in over 1,216 anti-poverty programs in the
region. By moving impoverished Tibetans to more prosperous areas, the
government will provide them with access to new jobs. Construction is
under way on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which will connect the region
with other parts of the country.
Tibet’s
poverty alleviation office is making significant efforts to help
impoverished Tibetans start new lives and find good-paying jobs in
modern cities, far away from remote villages. “We have
identified 11 different factors that help to explain why these people
live in poverty, and different measures will be adopted for different
people and different households to help lift them out of poverty,”
said Lu Huadong, deputy head of the office.
Just as in
people in Xinjiang have become less likely to join extremist groups
with the arrival of new jobs, it seems that Tibetans who are provided
with better housing and employment will also be less likely to join
such groups and carry out terrorist attacks.
Source
and links:
It seems
that Taiwan and South China Sea are being used only as a pretext
by the US to provoke China continuously. The US ultimate
geopolitical interest resides in the Chinese mainland, close to
the Russian borders.
According
to a scenario, the US starts a war that ends quickly, changes the
regime in China, puts its puppet, and probably, break China (as
they want to do with Russia), using disputed provinces as a
pretext (e.g. Tibet, Xinjiang - No surprise that, recently, China
responded instantly to Trump, saying that the 'one-China' policy
is not negotiable).
The
US-friendly regimes will repay the US dollars that they will
receive for their 'color revolutions' by allowing US military
bases in their territories. With China dissolved and on its knees,
Russia will be fully encircled and left with no major allies. It
will be the next target.
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