The Great Opening of the West and the Tibetan pastoralists …161

The Great Opening of the West development strategy first affected the cities and towns of Western China. In the countryside, by contrast, during the initial years of its implementation it was mainly presented on propaganda boards, as in Zeku County. The grassland inhabitants appreciated new roads that enabled easier access to the capitals of the prefecture and the province, and they also profited from the increasing electrification on the grassland. However, these transformations affected the Tibetan pastoralists and their livelihoods only marginally. Over time, during the subsequent years the influence of the Great Opening of the West development strategy on the grassland areas gradually increased and by 2011 brought about significant changes in the daily lives of a considerable number of pastoralist households, as we can see in the present case study of Zeku County. The pastoralists were targeted by the policy of poverty alleviation and socioeconomic improvement of the households in order to increase the statistically low annual income in the grassland areas. In addition they were the targets of an environmental policy that intends to restore the grassland in order to ensure sufficient water supply from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the rest of China and to stop desertification in order to reduce the amount of sand brought to the coastal cities by sandstorms. In the first instance, the environmental protection projects were not designed to improve the grassland to benefit the pastoralist population. Nevertheless, the grassland inhabitants are those affected the most by this policy, and their life is now being transformed through the implementation of these projects. The measure of implementing resettlement and settlement is used to achieve the goals that concern the grassland area and its inhabitants, the Tibetan pastoralists. To enable large-scale implementation of grassland restoration projects like Turning Pastureland into Grassland etc. the government needs to gain access to the area and ensure control over the pastureland, which is assured through reclamation of land use rights contracted to individual households, exclusion of parts of the pastureland from herding and resettlement of pastoralist households.

Consequently, this dissertation defines the current government-initiated rapid sedentarisation measures as the most significant aspect of the Great Opening of the West development strategy that directly influences the Tibetan pastoralists and their life and livelihoods.

7.1.1. Sedentarisation as a measure for grassland protection and grassland exploitation

The step of sedentarisation shifts the centre of the life of pastoral households affected by it from the grassland towards urban areas, and at the same time allows the government a free hand in its manipulation of the pasturelands. In most cases, the grassland vegetation can grow and restore itself under the governmental environment policy, but in some cases the excluded grassland areas are used to open mines for exploitation of gold and other available minerals even within the nature protection area of the Sanjiangyuan²⁸⁵. Understandably, mining does not serve the grassland recovery, in fact the opposite in contributing to erosion and further degradation, which allows us to presume that, at least in some cases, the goals of mineral exploitation and administrative control over Tibetan grasslands and their inhabitants are more important to the Chinese government than actual environmental and socioeconomic improvement. In the area of the Sanjiangyuan, to which Zeku County also belongs, the regulations for environmental protection are being implemented on a larger scale and more thoroughly than in other Tibetan areas.

A complete relocation of pastoralists from core zones of the SNNR area and from other places of Sanjiangyuan affected by advanced degradation is taking place here.

7.1.2. Sedentarisation as a measure to improve the socioeconomic situation of individual households

For pastoralists participating in the individual sedentarisation projects, governmental compensation is assigned in the form of a house and sometimes also as a cash subsidy. The act of resettlement or settlement is advertised as a measure of poverty alleviation and improvement of the socioeconomic situation of pastoralist households as scheduled in the Ecological Resettlement Project. The statistical income of pastoralist households is – due to their traditional subsistence and barter economy — significantly below the country average. However the general statistics are based on cash income and are

285 In the year 2000, for example, in Guoluo Prefecture there were two gold mining areas and other mines to extract copper, cobalt and zinc. (Horlemann 2002: 256).

unsuitable for indicating the actual wealth of pastoralist households, which is based on the size of their herds. Although the need for cash in pastoralist households has increased significantly after industrial products brought through the modernisation and development wave reached the countryside of the Chinese West, pastoralist households which possessed livestock were at least self-sufficient in covering their daily needs for food and fuel. The new houses and facilities provided on site in some resettlements and settlements, such as a school and a nearby medical service centre, bring a certain amount of comfort into the life of pastoralist households. At the same time, life in an urban area, based on cash income and adapted to the way of life of the majority of Chinese citizens, allows an easier affiliation of pastoralist households into the national statistics. Through obtaining the subsidy, the cash income of numerous households can actually increase. However if the rules of the Grazing Ban Resettlement and Ecological Resettlement Project are followed strictly, the pastoralists must give up their herds when participating in the relocation project. In that case, with the loss of their livestock, the pastoralists lose the ability to supply their day-to-day needs and the need for cash rises immensely.

Consequently, the annual subsidy of about 3,500 RMB, as provided by the government in Zeku County, cannot cover the expenditures of a whole household. It is therefore disputable if the actual socioeconomic situation of Tibetan pastoral households really does improve through the sedentarisation measure or if it instead deteriorates.

7.1.3. Sedentarisation as a measure of political control

Besides the two main development policy aims, these being environmental and socioeconomic improvement, the matter of sedentarisation also has another important effect: it enables the Central Government better control over the Tibetan pastoral population. Through policy measures like the Nomadic Settlement Project, the Central Government tries to secure its control over the Tibetan pastoralist population in a nonviolent way. The Nomadic Settlement Project speeds up the relocation of Tibetan pastoralists from the grassland into villages, as it targets all remaining pastoralist households not yet involved in any previous sedentarisation project. It offers the opportunity of a comfortable

house with good transportation access for the pastoralists, and better control over its subjects for the government through the presence of police on site. The authority of local state representatives has been additionally enhanced through other achievements of the Great Opening of the West development strategy, like the road network, railway and numerous new airports on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau that enable quick deployment of troops to remote corners of grassland areas in case of political emergency.