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CHINA ACTIVELY INTEGRATING ITS WESTERN
REGIONS
From: Mavlan Yasin <MYasin@UniversalCare.com>
Canberra, Oct. 2 .00
(CNA) Beijing
is looking to secure its western regions through colonization
and forcing ethnic minorities in both Tibet and Xinjiang to abandon
their cultures and eventually their religions through various
restrictions, reported the Australian on Monday. The
daily reported that the Communist Chinese
government is pushing to consolidate its hold on the outer fringes
of the country by encouraging the migration of
Han and Hui people to Tibet and Xinjiang. The
Chinese government has encouraged Hui Muslims and Han Chinese to open
businesses in these places in order to facilitate the further integration
of both Tibet and Xinjiang into the Chinese fold, the daily
reported. The daily
cited the town of Langmusi, which was
once a predominantly Tibetan pilgrimage center, as an
example illustrating the demographic shifts that are occurring as a
result of government polices, noting that the white
skull caps of the Hui Muslims are becoming a common
sight among the brightly colored tunics of the Tibetans.
The daily quoted Robbie Barnet, an analyst and scholar of Tibetan studies
at Columbia University in New York, as saying that the Hui have laid
the foundation for the Chinese traders now flooding Tibet.
These developments seem to signal something that Tibetans have
dreaded for decades -- a real Chinese
determination to integrate Tibet into the Chinese economy, said
Gabriel Lafitte, a Tibet policy analyst based at Melbourne
University. (By Peter Chen)
