20140830b
Date: 30Aug., 2014
Subject:HKSE: Diluting blood and culture
Hong Kong Sunday Examiner 30 August 2014Diluting blood and culturePARIS (Agencies): Early in August, the Communist Party of China issued instructions for intermarriage in the Tibet Autonomous Region that have sparked outrage among rights groups.The move is being denounced as a new phase in the destruction of traditional Tibetan identity, Églises d’Asie, an agency of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, reported on August 21.After decades of propaganda portraying Tibetans as a backward race with whom the blood of the true Chinese (Han) should not be mixed, Beijing has now adopted a policy that advocates assimilation through marriage.This peaceful unification, denounced by pro-Tibetan non-governmental organisations as a silent process of annihilation of an ethnic minority, does not preclude the use of violence, as authorities have violently suppressed at least one peaceful demonstration since its proclamation.Officials in charge of the Tibet Autonomous Region have in recent weeks ordered local newspapers to publish articles that encourage mixed marriages.Chen Quanguo, a Party secretary in Tibet, recently organised a photo shoot featuring 19 mixed marriage families.“Nothing is stronger than ties of blood,” Quanguo was quoted as saying in a report by the Tibetan Daily.Quanguo said the government had decided to actively promote mixed marriages and urged other officials in Tibet to act as matchmakers to support the Great Fatherland, Chinese culture and the way of socialism.In a report published in August, the Research Office of the Communist Party in Tibet said that intermarriage has increased significantly in the last several years.According to the study, mixed marriages grew from nearly 700 in 2008 to more than 4,700 in 2013.The report ascribes the cause of the increase to management excellence by Beijing in the Tibetan region, with emphasis on progress in social security and family planning, among other things.Quanguo also addressed the importance of benefits associated with mixed marriages, including allowances for children and better access to employment.These marriages bring with them financial and social benefits for the couples while also circumventing the country’s one-child policy, which is still in place, but has been less strictly enforced.Han-Tibetan couples are allowed up to three children, but parents must report the ethnicity of each of their children at birth and the adoption of Han names has been incentivised to prevent children from facing discrimination and to secure access to schools and jobs.The policy allows for the further dilution of Tibetan culture in favour of the Han majority with each new generation.Many Han settlers in Tibet make no secret of their reasons for relocating—financial benefits and the greater possibility of finding a wife.Tibetan rights advocate, Tsering Woeser, compared the promotion of such marriages with the worst practices of colonisation in an interview with the Washington Post in mid-August.She said there is nothing wrong with couples from different backgrounds getting married because they love each other. Woeser is herself married to Han Chinese dissident Wang Lixiong.But she pointed out that the situation is entirely different when authorities use such marriage as a tool for assimilation.“This is nothing less than an attempt to dissolve the Tibetan identity in the Han Chinese culture.”Statistics on the exact number of Tibetans in the autonomous region are difficult to come by, but the government in exile in Dharamsala says there are between three and six million.They comprise between 80 to 90 per cent of the population in the region. The capital Lhasa is about 50 per cent Tibetan, with the other half made up of Han Chinese and other ethnic groups.
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