New homes with a facade

Last year, local Communist Party officials relocated a 64-year-old Tibetan cattle and sheepherder named Lhabu to a newly created town called “Nomads' New Village'', about seven hours south of the provincial capital of Lanzhou.

The woman moved into a small brick-and-tile house, one of hundreds of thousands the Chinese government has built as part of an expensive and controversial campaign to resettle the country's Tibetan nomads.

The government's effort to control an itinerant population of more than 2 million of its citizens is billed as a plan to improve the nomads' standard of living and to protect rivers and grasslands from overgrazing.

But it is also an increasingly important tool to contain Tibetans and counter the influence of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The “peace and contentment'' that the nomads derive from improved housing “is the fundamental condition for us in holding the initiative in the struggle against the Dalai clique'', Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party secretary for Tibet, wrote in a party journal earlier this year.

For centuries, Tibetan nomads have ranged across an arc of western China, grazing herds of sheep, cattle, goats and yaks.

Now a culture that embodies Tibetan identity is at risk. Following the protests against Chinese rule this spring that started in Lhasa, Tibet's capital, and radiated out to several western provinces on the Himalayan plateau, China's rulers are tightening political controls across the Tibetan regions, including stepping up the government-directed relocation of nomads.

“Tibetan nomads have remained until now beyond the reach of the state, to an extent, and the Chinese government doesn't like that,'' said Kate Saunders, an official of the Washington-based Campaign for Tibet.

Settlement policies vary and their effect is complex. In many places, nomads have been encouraged to give up their animals, leading to reduced incomes, a rise in alcoholism and other social costs.

Some settlements have been left without water or power because of lack of planning, officials admit.

In many cases, nomads are ill-equipped to compete with Chinese migrant workers for jobs, experts said.

The government has relocated thousands of nomads in towns and cities in recent years, drawing them with government-subsidised housing and other incentives.

In Qinghai, officials have settled about 100,000 families, almost half the Tibetan population in that province, experts have said.

In Tibet, officials said last year they would spend $80 million to settle most of its nomads by 2009.

The Gansu province has said it would spend $189 million to relocate 74,000 people — almost all the nomads in its Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Region, where Lhabu has settled.

“Some people who are flexible sell their livestock and buy vehicles to do business such as transportation and tourism,'' said Guo Xuquan, a researcher with the Gannan region's Institute of Pasturage and Veterinary Science, adding that nomads have more work choices now.

Until recently, Lhabu (many Tibetans use only one name) moved across the region with her herd, living in a tent with her extended family in a mobile community known as Ganzha village and staying in one place for relatively short periods.

Now she can be found most days in a parking lot at the nearby tourist resort of Sangke, waiting for a customer to ride her horse for $4 an hour.

“If we're lucky, we can get two tourists a day,'' she said. “Lately, we've been getting just one deal in five days.''

The subsidised two-bedroom brick house Lhabu shares with her husband and three grandchildren is warm and comfortable and not too far from the town centre.

But in one corner, she has stored the bundled tents that are a reminder of her former nomadic life.

She is not yet used to being separated from her sons and daughters and their spouses, who continue to herd livestock on faraway grasslands and come home only every ten days.

In some communities, nomads have been allocated fenced-in land for grazing and move only from summer to winter locations.

Some like the comfort of permanent housing in winter and the opportunities for better education and healthcare. Dorji, from Gansu's Zhuoni county, is a nomad who has made the transition.

His parents settled in a house they built themselves. Dorji went to work for an accounting company in Xiahe and now runs his own souvenir shop. “Why settle?'' he said.

“First, it's good for managing your livestock. If nomads live separately in the grassland, their livestock can be easily stolen. And living conditions in houses are far better.

“It's also good for managing people. In the past, if government officials wanted to hold a meeting, it would take a long time to inform nomads scattered all over.

If the government senses a bad thing is going to happen, it's easy to mobilise forces to surround a settlement.''

“Nomads' choices should be respected. And the government should be aware of their culture traditions,'' said Du Fachun, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology who has studied government-led migration in Qinghai.

By settling nomads into towns, officials also risk losing valuable ecological knowledge and animal husbandry skills, said Liu Shurun, a former professor at Inner Mongolia Normal University who continues to study nomadism.

Liu is among a growing number of Chinese scholars who have argued that the grasslands need the regular grazing of animals to rejuvenate. Officials who have studied settlement issues said it could take ten years to strike the right balance.

But expecting nomads to protect the environment is unrealistic, they said.