Beijing, Jan 25 (IANS) China’s sedentarisation of Tibetan nomads in Amdo, Qinghai, and Sichuan, being showcased as modernisation and ecological protection, has become a story of displacement, cultural erosion, and contested hope, a report has stated. The policy demonstrates the tension between state-led development and the resilience of Tibetan identity, a report has stated.
“Beginning in the early 2000s, China accelerated the ‘Nomadic Settlement Project’ under the Opening of the West campaign. In Amdo areas of Qinghai and Sichuan, thousands of Tibetan nomads were resettled into newly built housing complexes. The official rationale was threefold: Environmental protection: reducing grazing pressure on fragile grasslands. Economic modernisation: integrating nomads into market economies. Social stability: aligning rural populations with the state’s vision of a ‘New Socialist Countryside’,” Khedroob Thondup, who has served as Member of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile for three terms and is the President of the Tibetan Refugee Self Help Centre Darjeeling since 1987, stated in a report in European Times.
The project has been presented as benevolent. However, it has affected Tibetan nomads as herding, central to Tibetan identity, is curtailed. Many resettled families face difficulty in finding stable income in urbanised settings. Furthermore, nomadic traditions like seasonal migration, communal herding, spiritual ties to land are curtailed as families are living in concrete settlements.
The abrupt shift from open grasslands to regimented housing projects results in people facing isolation, particularly elderly residents who see their way of life vanish. Scholars have emphasised that the project is less focused on ecology but more focused on standardising and subordinating Tibetan subjects, embedding them into state-controlled structures, according to the report in European Times. Some nomads have now started incorporating tradition into their livelihoods by selling dairy products in towns, teaching Tibetan culture or working in eco-tourism.
In the report in European Times, Khedroob Thondup stated, “The sedentarisation project is emblematic of China’s broader approach to frontier governance, development framed as benevolence, but experienced as control. The question is not whether nomads can survive in settlements—they can, and many will. The deeper issue is whether a people can preserve their identity when the very landscape that shaped it is denied to them.”
–IANS
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