China Exploiting Tibet’s Resources

Fortune Magazine has posted a revealing, conclusive analysis showing how the recent discoveries of natural resources in Tibet is driving the Chinese development of transportation and mining infrastructure to allow the speedy exploitation of Tibetan resources. The China-Tibet railroad is allowing for faster extraction of iron, copper, natural gas, and oil from Tibet – and making it easier for China to bring in tens of thousands of Han workers to do the work.

When China opened its controversial new railway to Tibet last July, international critics howled at the prospect that the region’s culture and environment would be ravaged in search of resources. China repeated a solemn refrain, its officials insisting that the $4 billion project was aimed not at plundering the disputed territory but at bringing prosperity and economic development to Tibetan society.

So much for that. Now China’s Ministry of Land and Resources is disclosing monumental new resource discoveries all across Tibet, and it turns out the findings are the culmination of a secret seven-year, $44 million survey project which preceded the railway construction in the first place.

Tibet’s resources are going to make (and in fact already are making) millions of Chinese settlers rich. Tibetan resources are going to fuel the Chinese economy, yet Tibetans will not be benefiting from this boom. They have no control over how the resources are extracted and what infrastructure will be put in place to grow the Tibetan economy for Tibetans. In fact, this past June Tibetans living near Continental Minerals mine in Shegthongmon held a protest and demanded that the mine be shut down and the Canadian company leave Tibet for good.

The new copper reserves are no less substantial. A 250-mile seam of the metal has been found along Tibet’s environmentally cherished Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge. One mine there called Yulong, already described as the second-largest reserve in China, is now estimated to hold as much as 18 million tons according to the government news site Xinhua and could soon become the largest copper mine in the country, helping to feed China’s hyper-charged metabolism for the metal used for electrical wiring and generation.
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While transportation development continues – a fresh set of satellite images on Google shows a large increase in road construction branching off the new railway route – education and health care spending in Tibet continue to lag far behind the rest of China, provoking the ire of human rights advocates.

“Clearly China’s leaders have never intended the railway to benefit Tibetans,” says Matt Whitticase at the London-based organization Free Tibet Campaign. And future development priorities do little to alter that image. Last March China announced – among the national priorities listed in its 11th Ten-Year Plan – an extension of the railway from its present terminal in Lhasa to the western city of Shigatze, and beyond.

Tibetans would not destroy Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge to pull out copper for the Chinese economy. Tibetans would put the fruits of their wealth of natural resources towards things that benefit Tibetans – health care and education. China has failed to do that for the duration of their occupation of Tibet. The Fortune article makes clear that this latest round of mining and development is clearly for the sole benefit of the Chinese economy – and at the expense of Tibet’s natural resources, precious ecosystem, and sustainable, Tibetan-led development.

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