While China’s central government has spent billions of Yuan on new infrastructure in Tibet, urban-centric investment strategies, focussed on integrating Tibet into the Chinese economy, have in many instances reduced the wellbeing and prospects of Tibetans.

Coercive displacement of nomadic communities from areas designated for industrial agriculture is driving more and more Tibetans to the cities. Unable to speak Mandarin and lacking familiarity with Chinese work culture, they are unable to gain employment in new growth industries such as tourism.

With the completion of the Beijing-Lhasa railway, a new wave of skilled economic migrants, lured by high wages, is further reducing employment prospects for Tibetans. Education initiatives for “closing the gap” between Tibetans and Han Chinese are grossly insufficient. Official figures up to 2005 do not show any improvement in education levels, with 45% of Tibetans still illiterate and only 11.5% having the benefit of secondary education. These combined trends have entrenched a pattern of “ethnically exclusionary growth” in Tibet, resulting in by far the widest rich-poor divide of anywhere in China.

While there are many winners among foreign investors and Han Chinese, Tibetans are being progressively marginalised.