The Nation / Real estate boom in Tibet, the roof of the world

Under the mountains, cranes and apartment blocks soar into the sky in Lhasa. The capital of Tibet is experiencing a real estate boom thanks to Chinese investments, but the market evolves at two speeds: that of civil servants and that of the rest of the population.

Hoping to bring Tibet closer to the rest of China, Beijing has invested massively in infrastructure (airports, roads, railways) since the 2008 riots, following the principle of economic development against separatism. Its stated goal: to facilitate life on the roof of the world, modernizing it.

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But the works in Lhassa modify the urban fabric of this axis of Buddhism and accentuate wealth disparities, in a region whose inhabitants are divided over Chinese sovereignty. Near Potala Palace, occupied by the Dalai Lama until he went into exile in 1959, workers are building towers of buildings for the Chinese property developer Country Garden.

These high-end apartments sell for prices similar to homes in some Chinese cities where median incomes are far from Tibet, with one of the lowest rates in the country.

As a consequence, the real estate frenzy polarizes the city of 860,000 between public sector employees, who have the means to settle in these new apartments, and the rest of the population. Many civil servant positions are held by Tibetans, but also by people of other ethnicities, especially the Hanes Chinese, who make up more than 90% of the population in the rest of China.

In the autonomous region, with one of the highest economic growth rates in the country, almost a million m2 of new homes were sold in 2020 in Lhasa alone, 28% more than the previous year. The documentation of the real estate agencies shows more than thirty programs that currently sell houses, as the AFP found during a visit organized by the government (foreign journalists are not allowed to travel alone to the region).

To have access to a property you need a civil servant job “because there are not many other ways to earn so much money”, says Andrew Fischer, professor at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (Netherlands). “The real estate market only opens if this door has been crossed,” he says.

Under these conditions, poorly educated immigrants from rural Tibetan are unlikely to live a day in the new neighborhoods, stresses Emily Yeh, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder (United States).

Many of them do not speak Chinese well, one of the conditions for working in the civil service. Illiteracy also exacerbates the social divide. “On the one hand, around 10% of the population (of the region) has a higher education degree; on the other, a third are still illiterate, ”says Andrew Fischer.

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The other side of the coin is the Tibetans with an official position. Entering the civil service in China often means giving up religious faith, heartbreaking for many. Having good training is not a guarantee.

“Most of them work for the state, but more and more well-trained young Tibetans cannot find a civil servant position,” explains a Tibetan who lives abroad and asks to remain anonymous. No data are available on the ethnic origin of officials in Tibet. According to official figures, the Hanes, whose mother tongue is Chinese, represent 12% of the regional population, increasing competition for employment.

In the old town, the inhabitants usually leave their habitat to make room for shops or hotels for tourists and end up living in the suburbs. Tibetans in exile acknowledge that the population benefits from the new infrastructure, but fear the visible changes around the Jokhang Temple, the spiritual heart of Lhasa.

The street leading to it is home to American fast food chains such as KFC and Pizza Hut. Tourists from other parts of China pose dressed in traditional Tibetan costume. Seventy years after the communist army invaded Tibet, the city is littered with Chinese flags, red lanterns and portraits of President Xi Jinping.

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Lhasa, the former capital of the Dalai Lamas, “is not only a holy city, it also has an important political significance for Tibetan identity,” says Tenzin Choekyi, a researcher at the Tibet Watch association. “But when Tibetans look at Tibet, what is left of its past?” He wonders.

Filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen, who served six years in prison for filming a documentary on the complaints of the population against the Chinese government, believes that “the sole objective of infrastructure development is to benefit China.”

“A change imposed on Tibetans with the aim of eradicating their identity and culture can never be compensated with a few real estate programs,” he declared from the United States.

Source: AFP.

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