China Pushes Tibet Tourism in Theme Park Project

Just outside Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, the Chinese government is building a $4.7 billion theme park that critics describe as a fairy tale universe that trivializes Tibetan culture and glosses over the nation’s troubles.

The construction gets into high gear as Tibetans continue to demonstrate and set themselves on fire to protests Chinese policies in the nation Beijing invaded 63 years ago. The 50th such self-immolation took place this week.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington refuses to comment on the theme park project, or the self-immolations. But Beijing’s official news agency, Xinhua, quoted the deputy mayor of Lhasa, Ma Xingming, as saying the project “is designed to improve Tibet’s tourism credentials and be a landmark of the cultural industry.”

Xinhua said the park, scheduled for completion in three to five years, will be centered on the theme of a Chinese princess who marries a Tibetan king. It said the park will include displays of Tibetan handicrafts, medicine and folklore.

Pilgrims and tourists visit Potala Palace in Lhasa in Tibet Autonomous Region, July 5, 2006. Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's traditional home, is more than 1,300 years old.

Tenzin Dorjee, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet in New York, is not impressed, noting that the project comes as Tibetan activists continue to protest Chinese dominance of their homeland.

“They are spending these billions of dollars in building a theme park in Tibet at a time when Tibetans are setting themselves on fire for freedom,” Tenzin said. “And this is China’s way of not addressing the problem, not addressing any grievances.”

Tenzin also accused Beijing of trying to distort Tibetan history by highlighting its own version of the nation’s past.

Stephanie Brigden, director of the London-based Free Tibet campaign, is another critic of the Chinese project.

“When you look at the proposed scale of the theme park, it’s vast and it’s … a strategy of ‘Disneyfication’ of Tibet,” Brigden said. “It’s not one of sharing and celebrating Tibetan culture.”

She said the park’s theme, intended to showcase harmony between China and Tibet, is insulting when so many Tibetans “have felt that their only recourse is to set themselves on fire, underlying that it’s far from a harmonious situation.”

But at least one Chinese commentator said it is about time for Tibet and its culture to catch up with the times.

“Over the past decades, breaking economic isolation and stagnancy has served as a basic prerequisite for cultural growth,” said Chen Chenchen, opinion editor of China’s Global Times newspaper, a part of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily group. “It’s increasingly impossible that a bulwark can be erected to ‘protect’ the Tibetan culture from external impact.”

"Younger generations of Tibetans are already making changes in their traditions,” Chenchen said, adding that ordinary Tibetans do not want to live in a backwater museum to be exhibited to foreign visitors...”

Brigden said Beijing apparently believes the theme park project will create enough jobs that it “will reduce Tibetan demands for freedom.” But she said previous Chinese projects “have not brought any economic benefit to ordinary Tibetans, whether that be in terms of employment opportunities or … money filtering down to ordinary people.”

Tom Grunfeld, professor of Central and East Asian Studies at the State University of New York, acknowledged that the project probably would create jobs for Tibetans, but that it was still self-serving.

“Most of the Tibetan economy is funded by the … central government of China,” he said, “So anything that can boost the economy is going to help the central government.”

The goal, Grunfeld added, is to boost tourism - the largest part of Tibet’s economy.

Chinese figures put the number of tourists visiting Tibet in 2011 at 8.5 million, and estimate that the first six months of this year brought in revenues of $381 million. And the Tibetan administration hopes to raise that figure to 15 million visitors annually by 2015, according to Xinhua.

But Grunfeld warned that a massive influx of tourists to a city like Lhasa is a double-edged sword that could produce ethnic hostility as well as make money.

“You’re flooding your 500,000 to 600,000 population – half that population is not permanent; half that population is probably Han [Chinese] who leave for several months a year during the coldest months when there’s no tourism,” he said. “So you’re flooding this with six to eight million people. It’s a tremendous strain on this city."

“And, it increases ethnic tension. The ethnic tension in a city like Lhasa is enormous,” he concluded, adding that so far Tibetans are afraid to speak out against the theme park project for fear of reprisal.

“They don’t feel secure enough to really speak their minds because of the polarization,” Grunfeld said, “so the chance of real Tibetan input into this theme park is zero.”

Exiles, like Tenzin in New York, do feel free to speak out. He is calling for worldwide campaign to block the project.

“This is going to destroy our history,” he said, “and this will not benefit the Tibetan people in the long-run.”

VOA

Tourism Threatens Tibet's Holy Lakes

An increase in visitors to Yamdrok Lake could destroy the ecology and religious traditions of the sacred site.

A rapid increase in tourism is damaging the environment around a high-altitude Tibetan holy lake, environmentalists have warned, amid a tide of growing concern over the exploitation of the region's sacred natural sites.

Local officials announced in June they would begin tourist boat trips on Yamdrok Lake, which lies less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, and is one of the three holy lakes of Tibet.

Local media reports at the time said that the local-government-backed Tibet Qomolangma Tourism Development Company had inaugurated a sightseeing boat called "Qomolangma I," as well as transported two ferries and several small-sized speedboats from inland China, according to media reports.

"We will put all our effort into attracting tourists to come and experience for themselves what it’s like to tour the lake," company chairman Dawa was quoted as saying at the time.

The news sparked a public outcry, with environmental campaigners winning widespread support on China's popular microblogging services, according to Liu Jianqiang, deputy editor of China Dialogue.

"It is the largest inland lake in the northern Himalayas—a beautiful natural landscape of mountains and water, a rare sight in this world," Liu wrote in a recent article.

Liu said the fragile ecosystems of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau had already suffered serious damage from mining, dam construction, sand excavation, poaching, and grassland degradation.

"But without a second thought, the tourism industry has joined their ranks," he wrote. "The only difference is that tourism, rather than acting covertly, has swaggered in and brazenly harmed this beautiful and sacred place."

Crucial to traditions
According to Kunga Tashi, Chinese Liaison Officer in the Dalai Lama's Office of Tibet in New York, Tibet's holy lakes and mountains are a crucial feature of the Himalayan region's Buddhist and folk religious traditions.

"When the 13th Dalai Lama  went to visit Yamdrok Lake, signs appeared on the surface of the lake indicating Qinghai and the 14th Dalai Lama," he said.

"It was only possible to find the child successor to the 13th Dalai Lama after viewing this writing on the surface of the water."

Tibetans can put up with any amount of economic hardship, Kunga Tashi said, but they will tolerate no disrespect to their religious traditions, or desecration of their holy lakes and mountains.

"The legacy left by every self-immolation revolves around three points: firstly, that there is no religious freedom; secondly, that there is no cultural freedom; and thirdly, that the Dalai Lama should be able to return to Tibet," he said.

Former news photographer and environmental activist Huo Daishan, who received one of the 2010 Ramon Magsaysay Awards for reporting the massive pollution of China's third-largest Huai River, said that any human activity could result in environmental damage.

"Wherever you have people doing things, there you will also have pollution," Huo said. "Particularly when you have large numbers of tourists attracted to an area, this can cause huge damage to the ecosystem."

"As soon as there are large numbers of tourists going there, this will spawn a whole set of other industries in the vicinity of Yamdrok Lake" he said.

"Of course this will destroy the local environment."

Huo called on local authorities, who have reportedly already scrapped the cruise-ship project for the time being, never to open up Yamdrok Lake to full-scale tourism development.

"There is growing support for environmental protection among the people, and this will have an effect on policy-making," he said.

Preserving ecology
According to China Dialogue deputy editor Liu, ecologically friendly tourism won't be enough to preserve Tibet's ecology, while religious traditions have done a very good job until now.

"Local beliefs in 'holy mountains and sacred lakes' play an important role in conserving the Tibetan plateau’s natural resources; their 'environmental ethics' have provided a kind of invisible protection," Liu wrote.

According to China Dialogue, the "Save Yamdrok Lake" campaign on the Sina Weibo microblogging service that followed the tourist company's announcement soon gained the attention of millions of netizens, with celebrities from the worlds of film and music boosting its profile.

On June 18, it reported, @SaveYamrokLake received a private message from @Tibet Daily: “We are reporting in our morning paper that this project has already been suspended.”

Chinese citizens are becoming increasingly active in support of environmental issues in recent years, putting pressure on governments to implement the country's comprehensive environmental protection laws.

Activists say, however, that environmental officials lack the power to impose the legislation on powerful vested interests at the local level.

Last month, authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan promised to permanently scrap a high-profile copper-processing plant after two days of violent protests from local residents.

Tensions have gripped Tibet since Beijing occupied the Himalayan region six decades ago.

And these have been underscored in recent years by widespread protests—brutally suppressed by Chinese security forces—and by a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans: 51 since February 2009, mostly in Tibetan regions of western China.

But despite Beijing’s harsh policies in Tibet, there is a “growing understanding” of Tibet and sympathy toward Tibetans among the Chinese people, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said in January.

RFA