AP News, March 27th, 2007
China will pour billions of dollars into an airport, power plants, roads and education to help raise the standard of living of Tibetans over the next three years, state media said Tuesday.
Beijing has been aggressively developing Tibet for more than a decade in an effort to improve livelihoods and win popular support in a region that is chronically impoverished and stubbornly resistant to Chinese rule.
Over the next three years, the government will spend more than $12.9 billion on 180 projects in Tibet, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The budget was approved by China's State Council, or Cabinet, in January, it said. It did not say how much of an increase the new allocation represented but said the government invested more than $8.13 billion on large projects there between 1994 to 2005.
The investment program has raised incomes for some but it also has brought a massive influx of migrant Chinese laborers who critics say take work away from local Tibetans. There also are concerns that traditional ways of life and the region's fragile ecosystem are being damaged by Chinese development.
The new investment will go to ensuring that 80 percent of Tibet's villages are connected by road and ensuring free education for all children through middle school and safe drinking water, Xinhua quoted the region's vice chairman Hao Peng as saying.
It also will be used to pay for power plants and telecommunications facilities in remote villages and to protect natural forests, it said. An airport in northern Tibet's Ngari prefecture also will be build with the money, it said.
The mainland claims to have ruled Tibet for centuries, although many Tibetans say they were essentially an independent state for most of that time. Chinese communist troops occupied Tibet in 1951 and Beijing continues to rule the region with a heavy hand.
