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RUEHCN/AMCONSUL CHENGDU 3957

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 CHENGDU 000117 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EAP/CM, DRL, G 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  7/1/2034 
TAGS: PHUM PGOV SOCI CH
SUBJECT: TIBETAN TEACHER ON PACIFYING KHAM BY JOBS AND EDUCATION 
 
REF: A. CHENGDU 115 
     ¶B. 08 CHENGDU 135 
 
CHENGDU 00000117  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: James A. Boughner, Consul General, U.S. Consulate 
General, Chengdu. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1.  (C) Summary:  According to an ethnic Tibetan teacher from 
Aba Prefecture in western Sichuan Province, government job 
programs begun there over the past few years aim to give young 
people something to lose so they think twice about "stirring up 
trouble."  A new program that will send ten thousand ethnic 
Tibetan middle school graduates per year to high schools outside 
of Tibetan areas is another strategy aimed at keeping peace by 
equipping youth for jobs through vocational training.   The 
teacher described how his brother, a monk, was tracked down and 
detained by police after taking photographs of demonstrations 
that were released on the Internet.  Satellite dishes are 
reportedly being removed in parts of Aba to prevent people from 
listening to VOA and RFA Tibetan language programs broadcast by 
satellite.   End summary. 
 
Tibetan Students to be sent to Han Areas of Sichuan 
--------------------------------------------- -------------- 
--------- 
 
¶2. (C) A former Tibetan middle school teacher, who now lives in 
Chengdu, told us recently that a new program developed over the 
past four months to send ten thousand students from the 
predominantly Tibetan prefectures of Aba and Ganzi (ref A) is 
not yet widely known to Tibetan parents.  Some Tibetan teachers, 
however, are already preparing for the move to the new schools 
now under construction in the earthquake hit areas of Dujiangyan 
and Wenchuan.  Tibetan students are to be sent to many different 
schools, including special programs for Tibetans within existing 
schools, as well as to new schools.  According to the teacher, 
students will not be sent to Chengdu in order to mitigate the 
possible influence of Chengdu Tibetans who hold "politically 
incorrect" ideas.  In the teacher's home county of Aba in Aba 
Prefecture, 70 percent of middle school graduates will be sent 
away for high school this September.  The proportion will be 
roughly 40 percent in two nearby Aba Prefecture counties. 
 
¶3. (C) The teacher remarked the new program may have been 
inspired by perceived recent successes in his home county of 
Aba, a center of Tibetan culture, which has been relatively 
quiet in comparison to other Tibetan areas.  Over the past 
several years, local authorities have been reaching out to 
unemployed youth in their twenties offering many of them jobs 
and a few years of vocational training in Chinese speaking parts 
of Sichuan.  Once they have jobs, the government assumes, the 
young people will have something to lose, and so are less likely 
to cause trouble.  The education strategy, the teacher asserted, 
is aimed at weakening Tibetan culture.  Although this makes 
Tibetans angry, there is not much they can do about it. 
 
¶4. (C) The teacher commented it is possible the Chinese 
government strategy will meet with some success.  Wenchuan 
County, where some of the Aba County Tibetan students are being 
sent, used to be a Tibetan area but now local Tibetans have 
assimilated to Han culture.  Several years ago, Tibetans schools 
in Aba County started teaching mathematics and science in 
Tibetan rather than in Chinese.  Tibetan students there have 
been doing much better in math and science as a result.  (Note: 
poor training in math and science is viewed as a big problem in 
the education of Tibetans in China, leaving them with few 
options for higher education).  The teacher fears that this 
success of Tibetan language education will be lost when students 
are sent to study in high schools in Chinese speaking areas of 
Sichuan. 
 
Monk Brother Pursued by Police for Photos 
--------------------------------------------- ---------------- 
 
¶5. (C) The teacher described how he was raised in a family of 
thirteen, including the six children of his parents and four 
children of his eldest brother.  His youngest brother is a monk. 
 It is very common for at least one of the boys of Tibetan 
families in Aba to become monks.  The teacher's monk brother 
took pictures during incidents of recent unrest and gave them to 
someone who sent the pictures abroad via the Internet.  The 
police caught the man who sent the pictures overseas and 
subsequently sentenced him to thirteen years in prison.  Then, 
the police began looking for his brother who fled his monastery 
and went into hiding.  The police even called the teacher in 
Chengdu to asked him where his brother had gone -- the teacher 
replied he didn't know anything. 
 
¶6. (C) After the abbot of his brother's monastery intervened, 
the teacher continued, the police made an agreement that they 
 
CHENGDU 00000117  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
would let his brother go free after interrogating him.  His 
brother surrendered himself to the police and the teacher hopes 
he will be released soon.  Security authorities have been 
focusing great attention on the Kham areas of traditional Tibet 
-- Ganzi and Aba Prefectures of Sichuan Province  -- in the wake 
of the March 2008 Tibetan areas protests.  The teacher 
speculated this is because of an old Chinese strategy -- "To 
rule Tibet, first pacify Kham"  (zhi zang, bi xian an kang) 
which apparently dates back to military campaigns in the Kang 
region of what is today western Sichuan during the early Qing 
Dynasty.  (Comment:  Ganzi Prefecture officials now refer to 
this in a modernized version "To stabilize Tibet, first pacify 
Kang" (wen zang, bi xian an kang] probably, at least in part, as 
a way to campaign for additional resources from the central 
government). 
 
Satellite Antennas Coming Down in Aba County 
----------------------------------------- 
 
¶7.  (C) Satellite antennas, the teacher noted, are being 
confiscated all over his home area of Aba.  He remarked,  "we 
used to listen to hear the Dalai Lama sometimes on Radio Free 
Asia on the satellite."  (Note:  Radio Free Asia and Voice of 
America broadcasts are carried on a digital audio on the Asiasat 
3 satellite which can be received throughout China).  The 
satellite dishes are being replaced by cable television systems 
that will carry only government-approved programming. 
 
Kham Carrot and Stick 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (C) Comment:  It is possible that one lesson from the March 
2008 outbreak of unrest in Lhasa for Chinese authorities was 
that massive investment and rapid development, absent the 
software of education to make local people competitive for jobs, 
resulted in a flood of outside workers that only heightened 
ethnic tensions.  Substantial infrastructure investments are 
currently being made in Sichuan Province's predominantly Tibetan 
prefectures of Ganzi (ref B) and Aba that will inevitably result 
in much greater contact with Han Chinese.  Implementing a 
massive scholarship system for Tibetan ethnic middle school 
graduates appears to be one strategy of trying to pacify these 
areas as they experience potentially dramatic change. 
BOUGHNER