Chinese Tibetologist denounces media hype on Tibet population

BEIJING—A prominent Tibetologist on Wednesday denounced what he termed media hype regarding population movements to Tibet, saying that Tibetans remained the majority in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.
Figures from the last two national census surveys, conducted in 1990 and 2000, showed that Tibetans accounted for 95 percent and 92 percent, respectively, of the region, said Prof. Tanzen Lhundrup, the deputy director of the Institute of Social and Economic Studies with the China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC).
Only 3 percent and 6 percent of the autonomous region’s population were of ethnic majority Han descent respectively in the two surveys, he told a press conference here.
Since China’s economic reform and opening-up, the entire country has seen large-scale population movements and Tibet has been no exception, Tanzen Lhundrup said. “Economic development in Tibet has attracted some non-native people to engage in commerce and construction businesses in the region,” he said. “Their activities have greatly enriched and facilitated the region’s market economy.”
“In fact, the issue of the transient population in Tibet has been hyped up by foreign media for many years,” he said. According to Tanzen Lhundrup, he and several colleagues from a leading university — Peking University — published Chinese and English reports on the issue following investigations.
“A professor at the University of London has pointed out that the media hype on the issue was the ‘last card’ to play in asking for terms from the Chinese government,” he said. The economic output of Tibet, with an average altitude above 4,000 meters, was 34.2 billion yuan (4.78 billion U.S. dollars) last year. The region has a population of about 2.61 million. Thus, economic output per capita exceeded 12,000 yuan in 2007.
The per capita net income of farmers and nomads reached 2,788 yuan.—Xinhua