On this episode of China Uncensored,
why are Tibetans in China this happy?
Because they have to be.
Welcome back to China Uncensored,
I’m Chris Chappell.
As you may know,
Tibet has been part of China since ancient times.
Which is why, in the 1950s,
the Chinese authorities had to liberate Tibet.
From being part of China... already?
Yeah, it’s complicated.
But at the time,
Tibet was in a perilous state,
and had been for decades—
because it was controlled by a cruel,
oppressive dictator.
Fortunately, in 1959 it was finally liberated
by a benevolent, democratic leader—
Sure, Mao Zedong did kill an estimated 1 million Tibetans.
But he also believed in fairness.
Mao killed millions of people in other parts of China, too.
But anyway,
Tibetans are definitely happier now that they’re free...
to be part of the People’s Republic of China forever.
And in all seriousness,
as long as the Chinese Communist Party rules China,
they will never allow Tibet be an independent country.
But you might be wondering—why?
Why would the Party bother sending troops to Tibet,
subjugating its population,
and dealing with the decades of international backlash
for its occupation there?
I mean, the issue comes up every time
the Dalai Lama meets a world leader.
And it’s so embarrassing.
Well it turns out the CCP’s interest in Tibet
is about more than just making sure
the citizens there are happy.
I know, you’re shocked.
In the CCP’s view,
controlling Tibet is part of China’s national security.
And there are three main parts:
Borders, minerals, and water.
You’ll notice that “people”
did not make it into the top three.
People are disposable.
It’s the land that’s precious.
So Borders.
This is Tibet.
It’s huge.
It accounts for about 13% of all the landmass of China.
And that’s just the arbitrarily drawn Tibet Autonomous Region.
Historical Tibet was twice as big,
and there are Tibetan people living in these areas today.
These are the Himalayan mountains.
They divide China from India, Nepal, and Bhutan.
And it’s this natural border that makes Tibet so valuable.
The steep mountains and harsh climate
make travel across the border next to impossible.
A three-week death hike across the Himalayas stops
way more intruders than a concrete border wall.
Especially if you were, say, an invading Indian army.
China and India have been rivals for a long time.
They’ve fought wars over the border
between Tibet and India.
If Tibet were its own, independent country,
which neighbor do you think it would prefer to trade with,
and do military drills with,
and go out to dinner and a movie with:
China or India?
And while Tibet has this impregnable mountain
border wall on one side,
....the other side is, well, still rugged,
but it’s no Mount Everest.
Also now there are several good roads
and even a rail line connecting Tibet to China.
So not exactly impenetrable.
China has understood the border issue for a long time.
“When British forces began making inroads into Tibet from India
in the early 1900s”,
...The ruling Qing Dynasty freaked out
because they knew exactly what that could mean.
And today, the CCP does not want some allied Indian army
hanging out in Tibet,
next to some completely useless border.
After all,
good mountain ranges make good neighbors.
And there’s another important reason
the CCP wants to control Tibet:
Minerals.
The Tibetan plateau stores an estimated
$130 billion dollars worth of mineral reserves.
Those include key manufacturing ingredients,
like iron to make steel,
gold to make electronics,
and lead to make bullets.
I mean, batteries.
There are also rarer metals,
like lithium, mercury, and uranium.
For decades,
the CCP has been importing a lot of minerals
from foreign countries to supply its manufacturing industries.
For example,
right now it’s cheaper for China to import copper from Chile
than to mine it in Tibet.
But that’s changing,
because the CCP is incentivizing companies
to mine in Tibet.
They do this by, for example,
giving mining companies exemptions
from cumbersome environmental rules.
That’s why parts of Tibet are becoming
environmental disaster zones,
with polluted air, water and soil.
But the CCP wants to make sure that it can
mine important minerals in house—
in case, I don’t know,
other countries decide that the CCP is sucking them dry
and put export tariffs on their minerals.
The third major reason the CCP wants to control Tibet
is water.
Tibet is the giant peach-shaped water tower of Asia.
Most of the major river systems in Asia originate in Tibet
or from the larger Tibetan plateau.
Those include the two main rivers
that have sustained most of China’s population
for millennia:
The Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
Imagine if Tibet were independent,
and Tibet decided to somehow dam up those rivers,
or re-route them!
It would be a disaster for China.
I know that sounds far-fetched.
How could the CCP ever think that Tibet
would do that to them?
Well, because the CCP is currently doing that
to other countries.
This is the Yarlung Zangbo River in Tibet.
It’s also called the Brahmaputra River
as it flows down through eastern India and Bangladesh.
It’s a really important river for those two countries.
And the CCP is in the process of damming it up.
It already built this,
the Zangmu hydroelectric power station.
It has plans for as many as two dozen more dams
along the same river.
The CCP also has plans to divert some of this river
to dry parts of northern China.
That sounds great to the CCP,
but it means the people of India and Bangladesh
will get less water,
and there’s nothing they can do about it
because the CCP controls the source.
The CCP also controls the headwaters of rivers
that flow to Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia,
Thailand, and Vietnam.
So you can understand,
that with so much power over China’s water
and other countries’ water,
Tibet is a precious strategic resource.
That’s why the Chinese Communist Party
will never allow a free Tibet.
The only hope is a future China controlled by
a not terrible, brutal, manipulative regime.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again I’m your host Chris Chappell,
see you next time.
Want to learn more about Tibet?
Go to ChinaUncensored.tv.
There you’ll see more great episodes
about everything you want to know
about China today.
Once again that’s ChinaUncensored.tv.