China's Big Push To Stoke Economy Rattles Rural Tibet
Meatpacking Modernization
Threatens Beloved Yaks;
New Train Brings Suspicion
Ni Ma's Quiet Resistance
NAGQU, China -- China is trying to revive poor rural regions through economic development. In Tibet, the plan has hit a snag: Ni Ma won't slaughter his yaks.
Duan Xiangzheng, a Chinese Communist Party official charged with stimulating the economy here, is pushing for the systematic slaughtering of yaks to kick-start a meat-packing industry. Mr. Duan says exporting the beefy tasting meat and the animals' black wool to markets elsewhere in China makes economic sense and is an "inevitable" development.
China's government is trying to commoditize the business of raising yaks, to kick-start a meat-packing industry in the region.
Ni Ma, 45 years old, wants to keep alive his 70 yaks, his family's most valuable and beloved asset. He sells yak milk, which is processed into the butter, cheese and yogurt that are the staples of Tibetan diet and Buddhist ritual. Even the dung is used, for fuel. Fingering a cigarette on his vast ranch, Ni Ma says his family slaughtered just three of its herd last year, even though "the local government requested that we kill more."
This remote, mountainous place, known mostly in the West as a human-rights cause, is feeling the force of China's economic juggernaut. The government in Beijing says it wants to make its 12 western provinces resemble the country's booming eastern seaboard. Lured by this vision, and by a new train connecting Tibet with the rest of China, entrepreneurs as well as tourists are flooding into the region known as "the roof of the world."
Yet Tibet is also still very much a rural place -- some 80% of its 2.7 million population is spread out on grasslands that cover almost a quarter of the country. Tibetans are protective of their distinctive Buddhist culture, which abhors the killing of animals. Many are suspicious of Chinese interference and some see the economic integration, part of the government's six-year-old "Go West" policy, as a form of colonization.
Tibetans already believe that Chinese are taking over the economy. In the capital, Lhasa, it is difficult to find a local-born taxi driver, waiter or laborer, since Chinese from other provinces will work for lower wages. Even on the $4.1 billion railway project, only about 10% of the 100,000 construction workers hailed from Tibet, according to Zhu Zhensheng, a Ministry of Railways official. Now completed, the train promises to deliver an extra 800,000 visitors a year.
Tibet lags behind other Chinese regions in many areas, including literacy rates, life expectancy and average per-capita income, which is under $250 a year in rural areas. Unlike the U.S. West, where access to the Pacific Ocean opened new trade routes, China's western regions border land-locked central Asia, home to some of the poorest and most remote locations on earth.
Nagqu, which means "Black River," is a county situated 15,000 feet above sea level on the northern steppe of the Tibetan Plateau, about 125 miles north of Lhasa. On a typical day, the temperature is below freezing. Its main town is a military base and truck stop, where garbage is left to smolder in open containers on streets that aren't lit at night, a gritty contrast to Tibet's legendary Shangri-la reputation.
Beijing's nationwide goal is to halt two decades of creeping inequality between urban and rural income, a gap the United Nations Development Program said last year may represent the world's most-uneven distribution of wealth. The Communist Party recognizes that its future depends on keeping people happy in the countryside, home to more than 80% of Chinese.
Shortly after China's communists took power in 1949, they grabbed control of Tibet, then an independent state. In 1959, the region's spiritual leader, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who was 23 at the time, fled on foot over the Himalayan Mountains, fearing arrest. China's efforts to discredit the Dalai Lama, who in 1989 won the Nobel Peace Prize, have fueled support for one of the world's most-celebrated human-rights causes.
In the 1960s, the government tried instituting communal ranching and other Communist economic policies, with the same disastrous results -- such as famine -- seen elsewhere. During the next two decades, Beijing relaxed its supervision of the Tibetan economy and later started celebrating Tibetans as ethnic treasures, one of 55 groups distinct from the 93% of China who are of the Han race. But by the late 1990s, Tibet's economic semi-autonomy began to look like neglect as the region fell behind the sizzling east.
In Nagqu, the job of helping Tibet catch up has fallen to Mr. Duan, a 50-year-old agricultural expert from Beijing. An ethnic Han, Mr. Duan can't speak Tibetan. Like most outsiders, he says he struggled with the effects of its high altitude and thin air.
Still, he can count. The 7.4 million livestock in Nagqu far outnumber people and generate a third of the county's $400 million in gross domestic product. Yaks, sheep and cows, which Mr. Duan calls the region's "pillar industry," are key to his goal: 50% GDP growth this year and a quadrupling of the local economy over five years.
Supporting his quest is the world's highest-altitude train, the $4.1 billion Qinghai-Tibet Railway, that at times travels 16,641 feet above sea level. Completed this summer, it links Tibet with the outside world by rail for the first time, including Beijing 1,572 miles away. Its tracks are set in permafrost and an oxygen system helps riders combat altitude sickness. It will eventually run to the Indian border.
Chinese officials compare the rail's significance with that of America's transcontinental railroad. The train has made Tibet much more accessible -- passengers can ride from Beijing for less than $200 -- and the cost of transporting freight is less than half that charged by truckers.
The world's highest-altitude bottling plant, Hong Kong-based Tibet Glacier Mineral Water Co., wants to use the train to transport branded water to Shanghai called "5,100," as in meters above sea level. The Yulong copper mine in eastern Tibet contains China's biggest deposit, with more than 10 million metric tons of proven reserves. In Nagqu, Canada's Sterling Group Ventures Inc. says it has signed a letter of intent with a Beijing company to extract lithium carbonate from a salt-water lake. The mineral is used to make batteries and glass.
Wu Yongpan, a 28-year-old entrepreneur from south China, bought an $85 ticket for a middle bunk on the first train into Lhasa last month. He figured getting to China's new western frontier quickly would give him a head start in the wholesale jewelry business. "Tibet is now opened," he says.
After nearly a month in Tibet, Mr. Wu says he found business trickier than he imagined, not least of all because, "Tibetans are not very open minded." Jewelry makers wanted to be paid in cash because they weren't comfortable using wire transfers. Jewelry distributors in southern Guangdong Province said the samples Mr. Wu bought were too big and heavy for the Chinese market. Mr. Wu says he didn't like the food and that his skin felt dry.
He plans to make a second prospecting visit before the end of this year, perhaps to sell electronics. "The culture question is a very big one ... but if I do business for a while, I can learn a little and pass it on to my friends," Mr. Wu says.
The culture question looms large in the yak business. Where rancher Ni Ma lives, rocky flatlands stretch to bald mountains on the horizon, and brushes of green grass are the only summertime vegetation. Three generations of his 10-person family sleep in two rooms of a concrete house with no electricity. Inside, a Buddhist shrine is set on top of a row of hand-painted Tibetan cabinets, contrasting with posters of Chinese luminaries such as Mao Zedong.
In a bow to tradition, when Ni Ma slaughtered his three yaks last fall, he paused for a "crying" rite on behalf of each animal slaughtered, a ceremony he is teaching to his seven children. Before a rope is fixed around the neck of a yak to be suffocated -- considered the least painful way to kill -- Tibetan nomads comfort the animal by putting Buddhist blessing pills and holy water into its mouth, while holding smoky butter candles near its nose.
The term comes from the good wishes read when an animal or person dies, called bsngo-ba, which is pronounced like the word for cry -- ngu wa -- according to Tibetans and foreign experts.
A decision to slaughter an animal is, "not a simple market transaction," says Gabriel Lafitte, a lecturer in Asian civilizations and science at the University of Melbourne, and a long-time critic of China's role in Tibet. "It's a very quiet, simple dignified ritual."
Mr. Duan, the Communist Party official, dismisses the crying rites. He says emotion is unsuitable for the slaughterhouse industry he envisages. "The traditional concept has contained the economic development in our region," Mr. Duan says. "These traditional concepts will have to be changed." The local government also cites a need to fill its budget deficit.
Beijing thinks Tibet has too many yaks, which aren't raised systematically and threaten the grasslands through over-grazing. The Nagqu government is trying to enforce an edict from the Grasslands Construction Authority, the body that decides how such land is used, stating that no more than one yak can be raised per 120 mu, a Chinese measure equivalent to about eight hectares.
Nagqu's yak herders are trying to break into distant markets through a government-funded dairy cooperative. Tibetan butter, cheese and yogurt, all made from yak milk, are slowly becoming specialty products overseas. Tibetan Ragya Yak Cheese has been irregularly imported to New York by Slow Food U.S.A., a not-for-profit organization.
After sampling the Ragya Yak Cheese this year, chef Riccardo Buitoni of the Aurora restaurant in Brooklyn, N.Y., developed a pasta incorporating the "amazing cheese." Mr. Buitoni says he will put the dish on his menu permanently if he can get regular supplies. It reminds him of the unpasteurized cheese he ate as a child in Italy.
Local officials also used the cooperative to lean on yak farmers to slaughter enough animals each year to keep the herd from growing.
Yak meat tastes like tough beef. The woolly animals are two-thirds the size of cows but they're pound-for-pound more valuable; both sell for about $750. The meat is often available jerk-dried or as an ingredient for dipping into a hot pot consisting of an oily, spicy soup. At Ba Guo Bu Yi, a Sichuan-style restaurant in Shanghai, raw yak meat is a delicacy that sells for $16 a plate compared with a cold beef plate at $3.25.
So far, however, there isn't much cargo leaving Tibet. About 60 loaded freight cars a day have pulled into Lhasa since freight services began in March, some of them ferrying supplies for China's military. Railway officials say through July, only about two dozen stocked freight cars left Lhasa for other parts of China.
In the Sichuan town of Manigango last year, some 300 ethnic Tibetans rioted and burned down a year-old slaughterhouse operated by Sichuan Longsheng Group. Ranchers said they faced government pressure to sell livestock to the company for slaughter, according to human-rights groups and an official at the company. The slaughterhouse has reopened "but business is not good," says a Longsheng official. "Tibetans aren't willing to kill their yaks. They just keep them and raise them," he says.
For Ni Ma, the train had an immediate financial impact. As the construction work stretched into Nagqu, he was hired as part of the preparation crew. The work tripled his $250 yearly herding income.
Now the railroad is complete, Ni Ma says he recognizes the potential of a business-like approach to slaughtering his yaks. But for "family" reasons, he says he still isn't comfortable with it in practice.
西藏感受经济发展脉动
中国政府希望通过发展经济振兴农村贫困地区，不过，在西藏，这个计划却遇到了一定障碍：比如，家住那曲的尼玛（音）就不愿宰杀他家饲养的旄牛。
那曲县县委主管经济的官员段祥铮（音）正在全县推行有步骤地宰杀旄牛的工作，政府计划在那曲发展旄牛肉制品产业。段祥铮说，他们想把风味旄牛肉和牛绒挂毯卖到中国其他地方，这对那曲的经济应该很有意义，也是经济发展的必然选择。
但45岁的尼玛不想让他的70头旄牛被宰杀掉。这是他全家最值钱、最珍惜的财产。他平日卖牛奶，这些奶会被加工成黄油、奶酪和酸奶，这些都是西藏人的日常饮食及佛教仪式中最常用的食品。牛粪也有用处，藏民用它作燃料来做饭取暖。在尼玛那片面积不小的草场上见到他时，他点了一支烟说，去年，他家一共只宰杀了3头牛，虽然“政府要求的数要多些”。
这片在西方人眼里是人权事业重点地区的偏远、多山之地现在也开始感受到中国一门心思发展经济的巨大声势了。中国中央政府表示，希望能让西部12个省份赶上经济发达的东部沿海地区。这一发展目标的激励加之青藏铁路的开通使各地企业家和游客对这个被称为“世界屋脊”的地方趋之若鹜。
不过，西藏境内大部分都还是农牧业区。在西藏自治区270万人口中，大约有80%生活在牧区。西藏人对他们独特的藏传佛教文化非常珍视，在他们的教义里憎恨屠杀生灵的行为。许多人对汉人插手他们的事务持怀疑态度；为配合中央政府6年前提出的“西部大开发”政策而实施的一些经济集约化发展政策在一些人看来是某种形式的“殖民”。
西藏人认为，汉人正在控制当地经济。在拉萨，你很难看到出租车司机、餐馆服务员或干体力活的工人里有当地人，因为从国内其他地方来的人即使工资低些也愿意干。
据铁道部官员朱振生（音）透露，在前不久通车的青藏铁路建设过程中，10万建设大军里只有大约10%是西藏本地人。
与中国其他地区相比，西藏在许多方面都比较落后，如文化程度、人均寿命和人均收入等等。西藏非城镇地区人口的人均年收入还不足250美元。与濒临太平洋的美国西部地区不同的是，中国的西部被陆地所包围，与其接壤的中亚国家相当一部分也是地球上最偏远、最贫穷的国家。
那曲县位于青藏高原北坡，海拔4,500米，在拉萨以北200公里。“那曲”在藏语里的意思是“黑色的河”。平日这里的温度都在零度以下。县里最主要的城镇有一处部队驻地和一家货运交通站。镇上卫生很差，街道两边的垃圾箱敞著口，里面的垃圾没人清理，发出腐臭的气息。一到晚上，大街上到处黑灯瞎火，与人们想像中的具有传奇色彩的香格里拉有很大差距。
中国政府希望能遏制中国城乡之间20年来收入差距逐渐拉大的现象，联合国发展计划署(United Nations Development Program)去年曾表示，中国的城乡差距是全世界最严重的。中国共产党已认识到，它未来的执政前景要依赖于能让占全国总人口80%的广大农村居民过上幸福生活。
中国共产党1949年接管全国政权后不久即控制了当时处于独立的西藏。六十年代，中央政府在西藏推行农牧业合作社制度和其他经济政策，但像全国其他地区一样，这些政策产生了灾难性后果。随后的二十年间，政府放松了对西藏经济的管制，稍后开始逐渐重视西藏作为少数民族地区的独特价值。但到九十年代末，西藏半自主式的经济开始给人一种被忽视的感觉，其水平远远落后于东部发达地区。
在那曲，帮助藏民发展经济的任务落到了段祥铮的身上。今年50岁的农业专家段祥铮是从北京过来的。他是汉族人，不会说藏语。和大多数外地人一样，段祥铮说他还很不适应这里高海拔严重缺氧的气候特点。
不过他还是尽量正常工作。那曲有740万头生畜，全县每年4亿美元本地生产总值的三分之一都有赖于它们。被段祥铮称为那曲经济支柱的旄牛、绵羊和奶牛对他完成工作指标至关重要：按照计划，今年全县经济总量要增长50%，5年后要翻两番。
青藏铁路的开通对他实现这些目标提供了很大帮助。这条总投资41亿美元的铁路线是全世界海拔最高的，部分路段的海拔超过了5,000米。它的开通运营使西藏第一次得以通过铁轨与外部世界连通起来，西藏人从此可以坐著火车直接到达2,515公里外的北京。这条铁路的路基建在冻土带上；为帮助乘客克服高原反应，列车上专门安装了供氧设施。这条线最终将通到中印边境。
政府官员认为，这条线路的重要性可与那条横贯美国大陆的铁路相比。有了这条铁路，人们去西藏更容易了。从北京乘火车到拉萨的票价不到200美元。货运费用还不到卡车的一半。
在香港注册的世界海拔最高的饮料灌装公司西藏冰川矿泉水有限公司(Tibet Glacier Mineral Water Co.)根据水源地的海拔高度将其生产的矿泉水命名为“5,100”，该公司希望利用新铁路将这种冰川矿泉水从西藏运往上海。位于西藏东部的玉龙铜矿拥有中国最大的铜矿储量，目前已探明储量达1,000万吨以上。加拿大公司Sterling Group Ventures Inc.说，它已与一家北京公司在那曲签署了意向书，准备从盐湖里提取碳酸锂。这种原料用于生产电池和玻璃。
今年28岁的南方企业家吴勇攀（音）削尖了脑袋终于在7月初买到了一张首班进藏的火车票。他想，快点到达西藏就可以在那里率先开展首饰批发业务了。他说，西藏现在开放了。
但他说，在西藏呆了将近一个月之后，他发现在那里做生意比他想像的复杂，这与西藏人思想还不开放不无关系。制作首饰的人都想收现金，他们不喜欢电汇货款。而在广东那边做首饰经销的人则反映说，吴勇攀买的那些样品尺寸太大，又太重，不适合一般消费者。吴勇攀还说，他不喜欢西藏的食物，气候也不适应，他总觉得皮肤很乾。
他计划今年年底之前再来西藏一探究竟，这次有可能是去那里试试销售电器。他说：文化方面是个很大的问题……不过作过一段时间的业务后，我应该能了解到一些，并把它们介绍给我的朋友们。
在发展旄牛业的问题上，文化问题似乎比较突出。在尼玛生活的那片牧场，岩石地质的平地一直延伸到远方光秃秃的山区，草地上生长的灌木是夏天仅有的植物。全家老少三代十口人住在两间不通电的水泥屋里。屋子里面，一排有手工绘制图案的藏式橱柜顶上供著佛龛，墙上则贴著毛泽东等人的招贴画。
去年秋天尼玛宰杀那三头旄牛的时候，按照传统惯例，他特地为每只牛举行了仪式，并让他的7个孩子在一旁跟著学习这方面的知识。西藏人认为，让牛窒息而死是痛苦最小的办法。尼玛在给牛脖子上套绳索之前，按西藏牧民安抚动物的办法给牛喂了药丸和圣水，同时在牛鼻子附近点了牛油做的□烛。
墨尔本大学从事亚洲文化与科学课程教学的讲师Gabriel Lafitte说，决定宰杀动物并不只是简单的市场交易。Lafitte说，它是一种非常安详、朴素而有尊严的仪式。Lafitte长期以来一直对中国在西藏的角色持批评意见。
段祥铮对那类仪式却不以为然。他说，对他正在构想的旄牛屠宰加工业来说，搀杂感情因素是要不得的。他说，传统观念制约著我们这个地区的经济发展。这些传统观念必须改变。当地政府也表示，需要设法补充预算缺口。
中央政府认为，西藏的旄牛数量太多，没有做到系统养殖，而且过度放牧已威胁到当地草场的存亡。那曲县政府正设法执行相关主管部门颁发的条例，它规定平均每120亩牧场只能放养1头旄牛。
那曲牧民希望能通过政府资助的牛奶合作社打进遥远的外部市场。用旄牛奶制作的黄油、奶酪和酸奶正在逐渐进入海外市场。Ragya牌奶酪一直通过非赢利机构Slow Food U.S.A.不定期出口到纽约。
布鲁克林Aurora餐馆厨师Riccardo Buitoni今年在品尝了Ragya奶酪样品之后推出了一道意大利面，其中就采用了这种“神奇的奶酪”。Buitoni说，如果这种奶酪能保证稳定供应，他将把这道菜式加到他的菜单上。Ragya让他想起了小时候在意大利吃过的未经高温消毒的保留了原始风味的奶酪。
当地政府官员还通过合作社敦促牧民每年宰杀足够数量的旄牛，以抑制旄牛数量的增长。
旄牛肉吃起来有点像硬牛肉。公牛要比母牛小三分之一左右，不过价值更高；两种旄牛都可以卖到750美元左右。旄牛肉通常被晒干，或者作为调料配到油腻、辛辣的汤里。在上海的川菜馆巴国布衣，刺身旄牛肉堪称上等菜，一盘要卖到16美元，而冷牛肉仅卖3.25美元一盘。
不过到目前为止，从西藏运出的货物并不多。自从3月份开展货运服务以来，每天大约有60车的货物运进西藏，其他有一部分是军需物资。铁路部门官员表示，到7月份为止，运出西藏的货物只有20几车。
去年在四川省的一个藏族自治州发生了藏族牧民抢劫和焚烧汉人屠宰场事件。遭到侵犯的是四川隆生集团的屠宰场。据一些人权组织和该公司管理人士称，牧民们声称政府对他们施加压力，强令他们向这家公司出售牲畜。隆生的一位管理人士称，屠宰场后来恢复营业，但生意并不好。“藏族人不愿意宰杀他们的旄牛，他们只是放养它们。”
对尼玛来说，火车的到来的确产生了立竿见影的经济效果。随著这条铁路逐渐向那曲延伸，他被招为临时工，工资比他放牧的年收入250美元多两倍。
现在，铁路完工了，尼玛说他已经意识到这种商业化潮流将很快渗透到他的牧场，更多的旄牛又要遭到宰杀。但是出于“家庭”原因，他说他并不喜欢这种做法。
James T. Areddy
