Dramatic Decrease in No. of Tibetan Cadres in “TAR”, Statistics Show
Dharamsala 27 January 2005: The number of Tibetans employed in the public sector of the “Tibet Autonomous Region” has nosedived since the onslaught of Western Development Programme began in 2000, reports Tibet Information Network.
The disturbing trend is in sharp contrast to the official pronouncements claiming that the majority of the state sector workers, including the government cadres, to be Tibetans.
According to recent official statistics, published in the Tibet Statistical Yearbook of 2004, the number of Tibetans in the state owned units has dropped from 106,756 (constituting 71 percent of the total) in 2000 to 88,301 (61 percent) in 2003.
The staff and workers in the state-owned units are divided between permanent and contractual. Among the permanent workers, Tibetans fell far more sharply: from 71 percent in 2000 to 53 percent in 2003.
The most drastic was the fall in the number of cadres, higher brass of the government. Although the total number of cadres swelled from 69,927 in 2000 to 88,734 in 2003 (including Chinese), the number of Tibetan cadres has shrunk from 50,039 (72 percent of the total) to 44,069 (less than 50 percent).
According to TIN, “the streamlining of the public sector conceals the substitution of Tibetan employees with Chinese” for, “the new leadership does not trust the loyalty of Tibetan cadres”.
Corollary policy tools like the introduction of exams in Chinese for public sector employment have crippled the prospective Tibetans for even the official estimates count 80 percent of the rural Tibetans as not literate in Chinese, the report adds.