Beijing to inject $29b into Tibetan economy
china.scmp.com
REUTERS
China plans a massive increase in state subsidies to Tibet over the next five years to boost the economy of the Himalayan region and maintain social stability, Xinhua reported yesterday.
The announcement followed a special meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee and the cabinet last week, when Chinese leaders unveiled a development blueprint to draw the barren but resource-rich region into the mainstream economy.
The central Government would invest 31.2 billion yuan (HK$29.3 billion) in 117 projects covering agriculture, infrastructure, technology, education and the environment. Other regions of China would spend a further 1.06 billion yuan on projects in the region.
The investment plan dwarfs that of the past five years, when subsidies to Tibet amounted to just 8.02 billion yuan, and reflects concerns about a growing disparity in wealth between China's eastern coastal regions and the impoverished west.
But Tibet activists say Beijing is also trying to strengthen its grip on the region by luring Chinese labourers to work on infrastructure projects such as a high-altitude railway linking the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, to the rest of China.
President Jiang Zemin told last week's conclave, the fourth such meeting on Tibet since the Communist Government took control of it in 1950, "the fate of Tibet and the Tibetan people is and will continue to be tightly linked with the motherland and the whole Chinese nation".
"We will continue to pay attention to two major issues in Tibet - economic development and social stability," he said.
Mr Jiang said the development, stability and safety of Tibet were of "extreme importance" for China. China has invested 50 billion yuan in Tibet in five decades of communist rule.
But Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and his supporters say the investment has merely attracted a flood of ethnic Han Chinese immigrants while doing little to benefit ordinary Tibetans.
The director of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign, Alison Reynolds, said: "They clearly hope that investment in those areas will provide the mechanisms to consolidate their political power." |
