Under the banner of “developing Tibet,” Wang says, the regime sends officials, who belong to the Han ethnic group and have lived outside of Tibet their whole lives, on several year-long assignments. As such, they concern themselves only with short-term accomplishments to gain promotions.
Shortcuts to economic growth are shortcuts to death for the prairie, however. Harmful activities include gold mining, jade mining, harvesting Chinese medicine, and harvesting native plants. (An example is Nostoc flagelliforme, a special long-threaded moss, which can be used as a health food.)
According to Wang, officials divided the pasture area into plots and forced Tibetan herdsmen into leases—an entirely foreign approach to their traditional way of life.
Generally the animals have the instinct to “graze only on the fresh grown grass sprouts, but not the roots.” This causes no damage to the pasture. “When they have finished with the grass sprouts, they move on where they can find fresh new leaves. The next year, the herds will come back to where they started and the new grass leaves are again ready for them to consume,” Wang explains.
With officials having forced Tibetan herdsmen to settle the herds in one place, however, when the animals have finished eating the grass sprouts they have no choice but to start eating the roots. Desertification is then inevitable.
Previously, the Tibetan grassland was so thick that even the rats could not dig holes in it, Wang says, but now they dominate the area. The underground water level has dropped as a result.
“In fact, the Han officials’ stationary [grazing] policy has failed several times in history and has caused the collapse of dynasties. The Han Dynasty is an example.”
Wang believes that after such large-scale damage it is nearly impossible to return the Tibetan Plateau to its original state. This is partly because of the cold climate in the region requiring the plants to have extra long growth cycles.
Unsustainable Growth
In the meantime, the regime’s development shows no sign of stopping: hydropower stations are now being built, which seriously diminish water resources.
Experts say that generally the usage rate of a river should not exceed 15 percent of its volume, five percent being the ideal. According to Wang, however, the usage rate of many rivers in China is 100 percent, meaning that the capacity of the reservoirs has reached the flowing capacity of the river.
The Yellow River, whose usage rate is over 100 percent, has completely dried up in many areas. When the river runs dry a small amount of water is usually released from the reservoirs to artificially maintain a flow.
Liaohe River in northeast China and the Haihe River near Beijing are examples. In the case of the Haihe, instead of the river running into the sea, now salt water often flows back into the river. The Yongding River, also close to Beijing, too dried up from overuse.
Rivers have a self-cleansing ability, Wang said; but reservoirs destroy this.
He illustrated China’s river predicament with a vivid example: “We all know that the kidneys cleanse the human body. If one sells one’s kidney for profit, it is just like the profit from hydropower stations. Since one has lost one’s cleansing organ, he has to buy a machine to clean his blood. The same situation applies to the river where water filtration plants have to be built.”
In the Chinese context, this is all in pursuit of GDP growth. “A person with a healthy kidney does not need a blood-cleansing machine, but produces no GDP. He sells his kidney to increase the GDP. Then he buys a blood-cleansing machine, which even increases the GDP more,” Wang said.
“The Chinese regime’s way of calculating things is different from that of other countries.”
Read the original Chinese article
