For Tibetans, railroad brings doom

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Second of two parts

AMDO, Tibet -- This small town is in dire need of modernization. Like many others in Tibet after more than 50 years of Chinese rule, it still lacks paved roads, piped water and proper sanitation.

According to a report on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway by the International Campaign for Tibet -- a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is critical of China's rule in Tibet and seeks human rights and self-determination for Tibetans -- the budgeted cost of the railroad is more than three times the amount the Chinese government has spent on health care and education in Tibet during the past 50 years.

The neglect of Tibet hampered that region's social development. As recently as 1999, it had an illiteracy rate of 67 percent, compared with 11 percent illiteracy for China as a whole.

Critics also fear the railroad will accelerate the migration to Tibet of jobless Han Chinese from overpopulated urban centers. In Lhasa, which has about 200,000 residents, Han Chinese are already on the verge of becoming a majority.

This is a pattern seen elsewhere in China in the past century.

Between 1912 and 1949, the Han Chinese population of Inner Mongolia increased fivefold. Millions arrived after the railroad from Zhangjiakou to Hohhot was completed in the 1920s, and by 1949, the Han Chinese outnumbered the Mongolians by a ratio of 11-to-1.

The same process took place in Manchuria with the help of railroads built by the Japanese, who seized that region in 1931 after gaining Taiwan in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war.

Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, is already a predominantly Han Chinese city. In Kashgar, the Han Chinese population increased by 30 percent in 2001, the year after the railroad there was completed.

"In public, Tibetans will not voice any criticism. But in private, they will tell you that this is the end of Tibet," said Dr. Robert Barnett, lecturer in Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University in New York.