Using Aid as a Political Weapon


By Gabriel Lafitte*

UNTIL recently the modernization of Tibet has been exclusively determined by China. Tibetans have had no say and the global development community no involvement. In the 1990's the major aid agencies, and many smaller non-governmental agencies, have developed an interest in extending their work to Tibet, especially Tibetan areas beyond the ŒTibet Autonomous Region'.

Foreign aid to Tibet is now at least US$20 million a year, and growing fast. The pace is being set by the World Bank and various agencies of the United Nations, which are gearing up for major interventions which will impact on Tibetan lives and land use. Some of the projects in the pipeline are designed to halt degradation of the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau.

However these large-scale projects may have negative consequences for the herders whose home has always been the grasslands. The model of development, poverty alleviation, and commercialization of agriculture used by the multilateral development agencies fits closely the current Chinese model for accelerating the urbanization of Tibet. This model may have negative impacts on the future viability of rural life.

Increasingly the major international aid agencies are involving themselves as China's partners in the development of Tibet, and increasingly their goal is the improvement of the Tibetan environment. In the coming decade international intervention in Tibetan development is likely to accelerate beyond the present level of tens of millions of dollars a year, to hundreds of millions of dollars a year, much of it in the name of environmental protection.

Some of these projects may attempt to regenerate forests. Others will tackle the extensive degradation of the grasslands of Tibet, which have for many centuries sustained nomadic pastoralism, the heart of Tibetan civilization. The aid agencies acknowledge that the quality and area of grassland available to yaks, sheep and goats have deteriorated considerably in recent decades, and is likely to deteriorate further unless decisive action is taken.


Good News? Bad News?

The biggest of the international agencies - the World Bank and the United Nations - have been keen to demonstrate their commitment to environmental improvement. The result is a willingness to invest large amounts in projects, in Tibet and immediately downstream of Tibet.

This would seem to be good news. If the UN and World Bank are beginning to engage with these issues, in partnership with China, then the situation might improve. These international institutions have spent billions of dollars in China, becoming major partners in fostering China's modernity and globalization, so they are uniquely positioned to persuade China to adopt standards attuned to the realities of the Tibetan plateau's environment. China might realize that its logging, mining and land use practices are far behind the best practice standards of the rest of the world.

The good news seems to be even better. The World Bank and UN agencies, as they steadily move their projects closer to Tibet, define their goals as twofold: poverty eradication and environmental improvement. Their projects are designed to achieve both objectives, helping Tibetan drogpa (nomads) and samadrog (semi-nomads) herders and farmers to simultaneously raise their income and reduce their grazing pressure on the grasslands. So the overall benefits might be twofold: herders incomes will rise, the natural environment will be protected, China will learn to respect Tibet's environment, and tens of millions of dollars will be poured into Tibet to achieve these results.

This attractive picture is not the whole story. Altogether different outcomes are possible. On closer examination, the strategy of the multilateral agencies makes many assumptions about the nature of poverty, progress, environmental degradation and its causes, Tibet's sustainability, land management practice and objective truth. These assumptions actually disempower the Tibetans whose home is the rangelands, transferring power over land use to Beijing, Washington and New York. The operating definitions used by these agencies make Tibetan herding families seem irrational, ignorant, greedy, short-sighted and the root cause of environmental degradation. The way the projects are designed is grounded in concepts which oppose traditional Tibetan knowledge against scientific knowledge, pitting the human population of Tibet against the needs of the environment.

Assumptions determine project design, and outcomes to be achieved. The planned end result is a higher rate of slaughter of herders' animals, a reduction of herd size, and a reduction of the size of human population on the grasslands, with herders encouraged to leave the grasslands, instead to find paid employment in distant Chinese towns and cities. The result could be depopulation of the Tibetan Plateau in order to "save the environment."

Amelioration of the environment is central to the logic of these projects; in fact it drives the planning process. Environmental benefit has become a major tool for major international institutions to renew their legitimacy and win support. Yet their definitions of environmental problems and solutions sometimes exclude the people in whose name projects are designed. The planners in Beijing and Washington define the problems and the external interventions which constitute the solutions. Tibetans, already under the illegal occupation of the People's Republic of China lack any public voice, are excluded from involvement in projects in whose name they are being designed.

At the worst, these projects, in the name of environmental protection, could make nomadic pastoralism unviable as a sustainable way of life. They could make Tibetans depend on the Chinese economy in which producers are unable to control the terms of trade, many nomads intensify production, slaughter and commercial return, while others leave for the cities. If Tibetans settle in towns integrated into the Chinese economy, with less use for Tibetan ways or even Tibetan language, but able to buy colour television sets and motorbikes, China may confidently foresee the end of Tibetan nationalism. That scenario is by no means certain to happen, but it is plausible.


Where the millions go

To test which is likeliest, we can take a closer look at aid projects in Tibet, past and present. Until very recently the projects have been small, with limited impact. The latest comprehensive survey of aid is the United Nations' Development Programme report published in June 1997 "Development Co-operation: The People's Republic of China: 1995". The UNDP issues this comprehensive compendium of all aid activity each year. In TAR and Amdo (Ch. Qinghai), 35 projects are listed, although some overlap. Only 15 involve the spending of US$1 million or more. The 15 biggest projects in TAR and Amdo emphasize increasing the productivity of herds, pastures, fields and irrigation; telecommunications, industrial processing of rural commodities; geothermal and hydro power; water supply; education and health.

The biggest project under way is the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) project in Tsolho prefecture, south of Lake Kokonor, started in 1995 to increase the productivity of animals and pasture at a cost of US$20 million to the UN.

The second and third biggest projects, in dollars, are German government projects to supply Amdo with the latest telecommunications technologies and the Lhasa valley with a boot factory supplying the needs of Chinese soldiers. The first cost US$10.47 million, the latter US$9.9 million. The money for telecommunications is a part of the competition between industrialized states to subsidize their manufacturers so as to boost exports by providing concessional finance to Chinese state organs purchasing equipment. The loan is paid off out of the profits generated by the technology once in use. The Australian government spent tens of millions of dollars in 1993 to 1996 subsidizing companies exporting sophisticated telephone switchboards and optical fibre cables across Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Xinjiang which were installed by the People's Liberation Army. A further US$13.85 million was loaned by the Canadian government, as technology exporting nations competed to get their equipment installed.

The fourth largest aid project was the UN World Food Programme/ Food & Agriculture Organisation project in the valleys of southern Tibet providing US$6.75 million worth of food as payment to Tibetans to improve irrigation and intensify farm production. This project, begun in 1989 and concluded in 1997. This was the first multilateral project in TAR. It was extensively criticized for its emphasis on achieving China's goal of intensifying wheat production to meet the demands of Chinese towns in Tibet.

Fifth largest is US$5.69 from the UNDP for geothermal energy in TAR, and US$3.45 million from the German government for small hydropower plant rehabilitation, and to foster private enterprise.

The European Union is spending US$3.78 million on improving the productivity of animals in Amdo, and US$9.1 million on irrigation and agriculture intensification in Panam county in central TAR, attracting much critical comment. In Qinghai, the beneficiary is the Qinghai Province Animal Husbandry Bureau, which blames Tibetan herders for overgrazing. The Italian government spent US$2.39 million on veterinary training in Qinghai, and in 1995 Australia began a US$4 million pasture and agriculture intensification project in eastern Qinghai.

Social sector projects have been smaller. UNICEF spent US$3.24 million on primary education in Qinghai and elsewhere, US$2.59 million on a women's project in TAR, US$2.07 million on primary education for girls in Qinghai; while the UN agency which promotes birth control, the Fund for Population Activities, spent US$1.64 million in Qinghai on women's empowerment, and US$1.25 million in Qinghai on training family planners. The Italian government spent US$2.4 million on a TAR hospital.

All the above projects were funded and initiated by western governments or multilateral agencies and not by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Formal partnerships with Chinese state agencies were contractually responsible for the implementation of the projects. Of the projects above US$1 million, only the smallest was implemented by a non-government organization, the Save the Children Fund (SCF), which spent US$1,016 million ensuring the availability of water and education to poor Tibetans. Only SCF committed sufficient staff in Tibet to implement its project directly.

These projects committed foreign donors to spend over US$100 million over several years. Many projects required Chinese state agencies to commit considerable amounts to providing staff, resources, facilities for implementation, in some cases doubling the total amount spent on projects.

There were a further 20 projects in TAR and Amdo spending under US$1 million each. Of the smaller projects, many were for earthquake and blizzard emergency relief, education, safe drinking water, maternal and child health, training health workers, curing blindness.

As well as these 35 projects underway in 1995, the UNDP provincial index lists a further 12 TAR projects and 16 Amdo (Ch. Qinghai) projects on which no information is available other than the title of the project. These earlier projects in Amdo include seed testing, earthquake and dam burst emergency aid, tele-communications, solar energy, fisheries development, maternal and child health, iodine deficiency disorder treatment, flour milling and irrigation. In TAR the early projects were in earthquake disaster relief, tourism planning, solar and geothermal energy, tuberculosis control, a health survey and the translation of official Chinese texts for use in Tibetan schools.

New trends are emerging. Projects in Amdo are getting bigger, with an emphasis on income generation, industry, agricultural intensification, integrated with China's development strategy for remote provinces which lack behind the material wealth of the Chinese coast. Projects in TAR tend to emphasize education and health as well as development, and be much smaller. This reflects the hesitation of development agencies to enter a contentious, politicized space, where their actions are subject to scrutiny. Amdo is seldom recognized by development agencies as Tibet, only as one of the many areas of China with a diverse scatter of ethnic minorities in need of poverty alleviation. The projects in Amdo are concentrated in north-east Amdo, in areas of maximum Chinese settlers, or in adjacent to Tibetan areas which have infrastructural connections to the overwhelmingly Chinese areas and thus the potential for economic integration into the Chinese market economy.

Aid projects in Amdo have considerable impact, socially and environmentally. This is part of a wider trend, in which remote regions are assimilated into the Chinese economy. One needs to look at other regions which Beijing is making Chinese; Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang were until recently outside the Chinese economy, except for extraction of key resources for use in the Chinese heartland. In recent decades they have received massive investments in infrastructure in order to assimilate them, providing livelihoods for a massive influx of Chinese settlers. Now all indicators demonstrate the extent of their absorption, as China gradually converts its empire into a state. Income per capita, literacy, urbanisation, industrialisation, transport infrastructure are among the indicators which show how China's economic reach is now meeting its political grasp. The fate of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang may soon be the fate of Tibet, especially Amdo, and international aid will be instrumental in achieving it.


Tibetans as Targets

The causes and conditions have come together for a rapid rise in aid to Tibet; planned, implemented, controlled and assessed by bureaucracies in Beijing, Washington, New York and Tokyo. There has been a steady convergence in recent years between Chinese and World Bank's definitions of development. China's nation building agenda and its position in global diplomacy as leader of the Third World are boosted by eradicating poverty along China's borders with its Russian, Islamic and South Asian neighbours. The trend is clear: first Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, then Amdo, and last, TAR are to be fully assimilated, acquiring modernity with Chinese characteristics.

The current level of about US$20 million a year in aid to Tibet is likely to rise sharply, much as aid to coastal China rose in the early 1980's. Aid is governed by many rules, policies and standards of best practice. Donors are willing to contribute only to a specific range of purposes. The largest of aid providers such as the World Bank have been under steady pressure to curtail their activities, leaving development finance to market forces. In response, they have redefined their objectives, giving greater emphasis to environmentally sustainable development. Aid must not compete with private investment, and must serve some social good, such as environment protection or poverty alleviation.

In project planning documents of the aid agencies the Tibetan people are called targets. Sometimes they are called recipients or beneficiaries. When aid money is a loan, not a grant, it is the responsibility of the individual Tibetan families to repay those loans. But there are few rights accompanying those responsibilities. Especially lacking is the right to actively participate in the planning and design of the future of Tibet, as the Chinese Communist Party insists it is the sole incarnation of the will of the masses. Tibetans may not speak; they are spoken for. For the aid agencies this simplifies project planning. They need not fear popular resistance, civil society mobilizing against ill conceived projects.

The key projects providing a model which in future may be applied to Tibet are the US$486 million South West Poverty Reduction project, begun by the World Bank in 1995 in Yunnan, Guanxi and Guizhou, due for completion in 2001; the US$360 million Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction project in upland Sichuan, Ningxia and Shaanxi, starting in 1998; the US$341 million Anning Valley Agricultural Development project, immediately downstream from south east Tibet, due to start in 1999; and the US$321 million Gansu Hexi Corridor project begun in 1996 and due to end in 2005.

These four projects, partly in Tibetan areas or just beyond, are spending over US$1,500 million, which is 75 times current annual international spending of US$20 million on aid to Tibet.

The IFAD, EU, AusAID and World Bank projects can be considered together, as a cluster, because they share many common assumptions and development practices. All aim to transform rural life, a sector much neglected by China, which financed its industrial development by extracting as much as possible from the farmers. Until now, especially in Tibet, a subsistence economy has been the preferred choice of farmers, who have shown little inclination for commercialization, intensification, dependence on loans and technological inputs. This is interpreted by these major development agencies as poverty and backwardness.

In their view, not only are the ethnic minorities inhabiting the mountains poor, they are poor because they live in the mountains, where low population densities and rugged terrain make it uneconomic to extend urban services to remote areas. Thus a major solution is to encourage labour mobility, the migration of substantial numbers to work in factories far away.

This prescription for ending poverty of cash incomes depopulates the land, splits families, urbanizes a large part of the population and promotes intensive commercial cash crop production, on larger farms suited to mechanization, for the remaining rural population. The logic of such projects neatly brings together China's development strategy, poverty alleviation and ecologically sustainable production. The projects contribute substantially to China's goals of nationbuilding, economic integration, border security, assimilation of minorities, reduction of central subsidies, access to remote resources, and poverty eradication, the last being a diplomatic goal of demonstrating to the world China's superior civilization. Ecological sustainability is a key rationale for the interventions in Tibetan areas, as all projects share the assumption that the ongoing degradation of Tibetan grasslands is due not to decades of Chinese policy mistakes but to the greed and ignorance of herders who foolishly maximize herd size unsustainably.

The traditional ecological knowledge, land management and risk management strategies of Tibetans and other minorities are routinely ignored, treated as if non-existent. All the projects are implemented by Chinese government departments, at provincial, prefectural or county level, with minimal involvement by the international agencies financing the projects and the beneficiaries - Tibetans.

The international development agencies understandably are proud of their model, where it has worked well in regions of China where populations wanted to commercialize production, raise their material living standard, and integrate more fully into the Chinese economy. The big question is whether the same model is beneficial or harmful in Tibet.

The willingness of aid donor states to contribute to China's development of Tibet coincides with China's strategy of development as the long-term answer to Tibetan nationalism. China's investment in modernizing

Tibet is accelerating rapidly, and international aid is a major part of China's capacity to intervene decisively in many sectors of Tibetan life. Aid paves the way for private investment in later years, as it did for coastal China. It may also be used as the final solution to Tibetan nationalism and identity.

*Gabriel Lafitte is the Research Officer at Australia Tibet Council. He is the author of several publications on environmental and development issues of Tibet.


He can be contacted at:

41 Campbell St.
Collingwood
Victoria - 3066, Australia
Email: glafitte@techinfo.com.au

Editor's Note:

Under China development projects on the Tibetan Plateau on the whole have marginalised Tibetans and is encouraging the influx of more Chinese into the Tibetan homeland. Tibetans in Tibet have no power to freely participate in these so called development projects, eventhough they are meant to benefit Tibetans.

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