Racism Against Tibetan Students

Tibetan author Woser, who was forced from her home in Lhasa and had to move to Beijing because of official displeasure at her writings, recently wrote a blog post about the fate of Tibetan college graduates dealing with institutionalized racism in Tibet.

Her words speak for themselves and need no introduction. A rough, unofficial translation follows from the original Chinese. (The “iron rice bowl” she refers to was the idea that at one time, the government would provide the material needs of the people.)

不怕没有铁饭碗，就怕没有同等机会

We Are Not Afraid of Losing the Iron Rice-Bowl, But We are Afraid of Not Having Equal Opportunities

离开校园的时间越来越迫近了。对于即将从中国各高校毕业的大学生来说，人生中的一个重要关头已经降临。如何将学识、本事与理想、事业相结合，在充满风险的社会找到安身立命之地？是每个年轻的大学毕业生需要面对和解决的难题。曾几何时，比如多年前的我，虽然也有过这样的时刻，但毕竟面临的是选择什么样的一个铁饭碗的问题，与今天的大学毕业生截然不同。

The time to leave campus is coming closer and closer. As far as all those students about to graduate from universities throughout the country are concerned, an extremely important point in their lives is looming. How can they bring together their studies, their ideals and motivations and find a place to settle and establish themselves in a society full of risk? It’s a difficulty question that has to be faced and answered by all university graduate students. It wasn’t long ago – including for me many years ago – that even though this moment still happened, the problem was about what kind of iron rice bowl would we choose, a completely different problem to university graduates today.

只要成为大学生就能得到一个铁饭碗的日子已经结束了。从2006年起，西藏自治区开始实行专科毕业生不再计划分配；2007年，则是本科及本科以上的毕业生不再计划分配。而同样举措的改革，早在2000年左右，其他如青海、甘肃、四川、云南等省的藏地，已同中国各地一样实行。

The days of being able to get an iron rice bowl simply for being a university graduate are long gone. As of 2006, the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) no longer has planned allocated employment for graduates of vocational schools; 2007 was when no more planned allocated employment was available for university graduate and post graduate students. Similar reforms enacted around 2000 in Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan have also been enacted throughout China.

西藏自治区的这项改革，被称为中国“最后一个告别大学毕业生计划分配的省份”。尽管乃大势所趋，但在西藏各阶层反响强烈。去年十月有几百名从内地毕业的藏人大学生在拉萨游行示威，起因在于录用公务员的考试后，被录取的藏人考生寥寥无几，多数是来自内地的汉人考生。其中是否存在民族歧视还是另有“黑箱作业”，还是公平竞争所致？我所了解的一个事实是，西藏大学藏学系藏语文专业2002年招收的几十名汉人学生，原是为了培养懂藏语的基层干部，毕业后会分配到西藏乡级单位，但去年毕业时非但没有全都去当乡干部，反而全都分配到自治区级单位和地区级单位。从这个事例可以看出在西藏盛行的“潜规则”。

The TAR has because of this reform become known as China’s “last provincial administration to say farewell to planned job allocations for university students”. Even though this is only following with the trends of the times, there have been angry repercussions among all sectors of Tibetan society. In October last year, several hundred Tibetan students who had graduated in the interior demonstrated in Lhasa. The reason for the demonstration was that there were hardly any Tibetan candidates employed by examination as public servants, and the majority taken on were Han candidates from the mainland. Was this the result of racism and other shady dealings, or was it the result of fair competition? A fact that comes to my attention: the several dozen Han students recruited in 2002 who studied Tibetan language in the Tibetan Studies Department at Tibet University, were trained to understand Tibetan for working as grass-roots cadres, and upon graduating they were to go and work in township-level work units. However, when they graduated last year, not only did none of them go to work as township cadres, they all instead went to work at [higher] regional- or prefectural-level work units. It can be seen from this example that there are hidden rules at work in Tibet.

原本对这项改革，一些有远见的藏人知识分子为之叫好，认为许多年来，许多有理想、有才华、有热情的藏人青年，在进入旱涝保收的体制之后，由于受制于诸多客观因素生怕丢失铁饭碗，而变得庸庸碌碌、无所作为甚至同流合污，实际上是对一个民族生命力的戕害，因此不包分配、不吃皇粮而自谋职业、自己创业，将有助于改变目前西藏社会的畸形现状。当然，如果真的切实贯彻当局推行的双向选择，即“毕业生自主择业、用人单位择优录取”；同时针对少数民族地区的特殊情况，将就业机会有意识地倾向本土毕业生，而不是为又一轮的内地移民提供方便，那么这项就业制度的改革无疑值得认可。

At first there were a few far-sighted Tibetan intellectuals who were in favor of this reform. They considered that for many years there had been idealistic, talented and enthusiastic young Tibetans who having entered a system where they were rewarded no matter what happened, feared they would lose their jobs because of objective factors and so became shiftless, mediocre and even slovenly. In reality, this can be the death of a nationality, and therefore not to allocate jobs, and not to receive support from the government and instead find a job and find one’s own way could help to change Tibet’s prevalent imbalanced social situation. Naturally, if genuine two-way selection was practiced by the authorities, there would be “graduates choose their own profession, employers choose excellent recruits”; at the same time and with regard to the special circumstances in ethnic minority areas, employment opportunities should consciously favor local graduates, and not be for the convenience of yet another round of migrants from the interior. Such a reform to the employment system would without doubt be worthy of approval.

所以有藏人在网上对此尖锐批评：“它意味着你必须汉化到比汉人还要优异的前提下，才能以牺牲民族尊严、牺牲民族文化为代价，在歧视中得到当初应允的职业；意味着你不能再享受父辈在民族区域自治法规定范畴中的就业优先权，甚至没有同等的就业机会——机会分配者都是汉人或出卖民族利益者，你的机会甚至不如不断涌入的吸着氧气的垃圾移民。同时，由于高度的封闭统治，所有的资源都被官僚掌握，完全是官僚经济、腐败经济，没有公平的市场环境、市场机会，基本禁绝了外资，严格控制了各类社团和法人组织数量，那么到哪里去就业？（显然）与内地没有可比性。”

There are Tibetans on the internet who sharply criticize all of this: “It suggests the premise that you have to sinicize yourself and be more Han than the Han, and pay a price of sacrificing ethnic dignity and sacrificing ethnic culture for being approved for your first job in racist circumstances; it suggests that you can no more enjoy the priority rights of your father’s generation as stipulated in the regulations on regional ethnic autonomy, to the extent that you don’t even have equal opportunities – those who are allocated opportunities are all Han or ethnic minorities who have sold out. You have no more opportunities than the trash migrants who endlessly flood in and gulp their oxygen. At the same time, because of the highly closed system of rule, all resources are in the hands of the bureaucrats, and so the economy is a completely bureaucratic and corrupt economy, with no fair market environment or market opportunities; foreign capital is basically forbidden, social groupings and the number of organizations are strictly controlled, and so where do you go to find a job? Obviously, the interior is far worse.”