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RUEHCN/AMCONSUL CHENGDU 3388

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 CHENGDU 000065 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EAP/CM AND G 
BANGKOK FOR USAID STIEVATER 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  4/10/2033 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI CH
SUBJECT: GROWING UP A TIBETAN CADRE KID IN CHINA - DIALOGUE WITH HAN 
SOMETIMES POSSIBLE, NEVER EASY 
 
REF: A. CHENGDU 42 
     ¶B. CHENGDU 61 
     ¶C. CHENGDU 17 
     ¶D. CHENGDU 55 
 
CHENGDU 00000065  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: James A. Boughner, Consul General, U.S. Consulate 
General, Chengdu. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1. (C) Summary:  While not going into detail about recent unrest 
in western Sichuan and other Tibetan areas, a well-educated son 
of Communist Party officials shared with Post his experiences as 
a young ethnic Tibetan studying and working in inland China.  An 
admirer of the banned Tibetan-Chinese writer Woeser, our contact 
described how he joined a foreign-funded organization to promote 
Tibetan language development after Chinese security officials 
ordered him to shut down an Internet site he established as a 
forum on Tibetan issues.  An example perhaps of how a new rising 
generation of Chinese-educated Tibetans will not necessarily toe 
the official political line, our contact complained that 
societal prejudice and years of propaganda can make it very 
difficult to have a real discussion on Tibet with Han Chinese. 
End Summary. 
 
¶2. (C) Congenoff met recently with a contact working for a 
non-governmental organization in Chengdu to elicit his thoughts 
on life as an ethnic Tibetan intellectual in today's China.  The 
contact was born near Lhasa to two Tibetan Communist Party 
cadres and was one of the first group of young Tibetans to 
benefit from the Party's policy of giving school opportunities 
in the Chinese interior to specially selected -- often 
politically connected -- students.  After finishing elementary 
school in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), the contact went 
to middle school in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, high school in 
Chengdu and then to university at Beijing Normal University. 
Like many young Tibetans educated in the interior of China, 
including two university students Congenoff met in Lhasa during 
February (ref a), the contact achieved native fluency in 
speaking and writing Chinese but only a marginal level of 
written Tibetan. 
 
¶3. (C) Our contact described how during junior high school he 
received several hours of Tibetan language instruction a week, 
but that this was insufficient to achieve the level of an 
educated person and he felt dissatisfied.  Like other Tibetans 
with his background, our contact stressed he feels he is as 
Tibetan as those who have not studied in inland China.  Since 
language is the vehicle of culture, however, he and others like 
him need to strive harder to achieve a good level of Tibetan 
fluency.  Our contact knows personally the most famous of a 
rising generation of Chinese-educated Tibetans, writer and 
journalist Woeser, and referred to her as, "widely revered." 
(Note:  the Tibetan-Chinese journalist and poet Tsering Woeser 
is the author of "Notes on Tibet" and  "Forbidden Memories: 
Eyewitness Accounts of Tibet During the Cultural Revolution." 
Both are banned in the PRC.  Currently under restrictions in 
Beijing, Woeser, who does not speak or read Tibetan well, still 
posts to a Chinese language blog on a foreign server at 
woeser.middle-way.net.  Two blogs hosted inside the PRC, 
however, have been shutdown.  End note). 
 
Internet Opens Up New World 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶4.  (C) After finishing university, our contact had legal 
training at a school in Nanjing.  Fascinated by the Internet and 
the world that it opened up to him, he ran the Internet website 
Newtibet.com from 2002-2005 to explore ideas on politics and 
government and how they could be used to help Tibetans.  The 
contact stressed repeatedly the importance of the Internet in 
opening up his mind.  He found on the Internet many ideas and 
perspectives that were not available to him before.  Although 
Newtibet.com achieved some fame and success for a while, 
government authorities closed it down three times.  The first 
two times, no government official would admit to having closed 
it down and our contact was able to get it back on the Internet 
relatively quickly.  The third time, however, public security 
officers visited him and threatened that if he persisted in 
running his website he would face serious albeit unspecific 
consequences.  His website remained closed.  Public security 
visited him regularly to enquire if he had foreign financial 
support.  He stressed that he had none. 
 
 
CHENGDU 00000065  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
Teaching Tibetan in Western Sichuan 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  (C) For the past several years, our contact has worked in 
western Sichuan Province's Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture 
(TAP) for a charity run by an overseas Tibetan family that is 
registered as a private company.  (Note: NGOs working as private 
companies are common in China given the practical difficulties 
of registration -- see ref b-- and the uncertain legal status of 
NGO work.  End note).  The charity assists local educational 
authorities to build schools and subsidize the salaries of some 
teachers.  The contact described how in Ganzi there are three 
types of elementary and middle schools: 
 
a) Schools that teach all subjects in Tibetan with the exception 
of a course in Chinese as a second language. 
b) Schools that teach all subjects in Chinese, with the 
exception of a Tibetan language course. 
c) Schools that teach all courses in Chinese and offer no 
Tibetan. 
 
¶6. (C) According to our contact, the great majority of the 
schools in Ganzi are of the second type.  The charity he works 
for has been providing grants directly to localities of 400 RMB 
a month per teacher.  The charity is also working to improve 
Tibetan language teaching materials.  Our contact noted that 
when Tibetan students are taught in their native language they 
do much better, especially in math and science.  He mentioned 
the work of the scholar Tsering Dhudrup of Kangding (ref c) who 
has shown in pilot studies the benefits of Tibetan language 
education. 
 
Trying to Get Through to the Han 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (C) Consulate contact opined it is possible for Tibetans to 
help Han Chinese understand Tibetan perspectives, although there 
are two big barriers.  The first barrier is to get a local Han 
interlocutor to think differently and appreciate the true 
meaning of democracy and the law.  Quite a few Chinese 
intellectuals have surmounted this barrier.  The second barrier 
of surmounting the extremely detailed and finely knit "Tibet 
story" that the Chinese Communist Party has pushed since the 
1950s is more difficult.  Many Chinese do not understand or are 
unable to believe, for example, that the Dalai Lama is 
universally revered among Tibetans.  The contact noted that some 
of the criticisms of Tibet's old society are justified.  A new 
Tibet cannot be like the old.  Years of Chinese belittling and 
defaming Tibetans and their culture and treating Tibetans 
differently, even from all the other Chinese minorities, 
however, have made a deep mark on Tibetans.  Although he has 
been able to get through to some of his Han friends on Tibetan 
issues and does not discount the value of dialogue, our contact 
hopes Han Chinese will be able to change their thinking and 
adopt a more "civilized" attitude towards Tibetans. 
 
Comment 
---------- 
 
¶8.  (C) Prejudice against Tibetans in Southwest China on the 
individual and institutional level is not acknowledged 
officially to be a problem (ref d).  Most of our Han Chinese 
interlocutors appear to share the view of a local school 
official we recently spoke with who stressed that, since 
Tibetans get "enormous" government subsidies and are treated 
much better than Han Chinese, it can only be a tiny minority of 
outside agitators who have been causing recent troubles.  As in 
religious affairs, where the explicit constitutional right to 
propagate atheism is given emphasis over religious freedom, 
minority rights are theoretically guaranteed by such political 
arrangements as autonomous prefectures.  Everyday practice, 
however, is very different.  The contempt and discrimination 
that many ethnic Tibetans continue to feel against their culture 
and religion, whatever their economic or educational background, 
will likely continue to frustrate the Chinese Government's 
conception of a harmonious melting pot. 
BOUGHNER