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Comment by queuebert | Hacker News Reader

I believe the CCP is encouraging Han to move there until the Tibetans are no longer the majority. They may have already accomplished this, as an accurate census is hard to find.

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It is difficult, only 8.17% were Han in Tibet according to the 2010 census (probably higher now, but far from 50%), not including military stationed there. Even with the subsidies they are providing, life is fairly hard in Tibet due to the high altitude. Even the high altitude areas of adjacent provinces (which were formerly part of Tibet) don't have many Han in them.

And that's crazy to me.

I would have figured that with the CCP having ~1.5 billion people to choose from, that they could move a few million Han into Tibet (current pop. according to google: 3,648,100).

Even just 1-2 mil could potentially accomplish the CCP's goals?

This is made more difficult by the fact that Tibetans tend to have biological adaptations to life at that altitude which Han Chinese lack.

China isn't that socialist, there is no strong social safety net waiting to bail you out if you move to Tibet. If they can't make a life for themselves in Tibet, they would simply be left to die, so why take the chance?

Yes in contrast to Xinjiang you can't economically develop Tibet.

Even the CCP can't move mountains. Tibet is only good for tourism.

Xinjiang, especially north, has a lot of farm land, a lot of natural resources that are easily accessible, as well a lot of urbanization and industry already. There is a reason it has 25 million people while Tibet only has 2 million. It is already 42% Han, which makes the ethnic tensions with the Uighurs a lot more explosive.

As an anecdote, I visited three Tibetan cities in 2007, including Lhasa and in all three it felt like there was a Tibetan quarter in a predominantly Han city.

In the countryside I'm sure it's not like this but it was quite sad.

You can't even blame Han Chinese who move there. They are fed propaganda by the central government and are given financial incentives to move there.

Anecdata: my buddy's sister (Han) got a job in Tibet, dressing up as a Tibetan for tourists. He jokes, the Westerners can't tell one from the other, so they walk around in "traditional" Tibetan garb, smiling, looking happy. That's their job.

This is so dark. Now ‘the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet’ is complete.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_P...

The way that China exercises its imperialism is unlike the West. The West has shrinking populations and cannot colonize with settlers. They set up resource extraction puppet governments. The Chinese have a growing population and can easily move large numbers of politically loyal Han into areas they wish to control. Expect more of this in the future in Africa and elsewhere.

I remember articles from 10 years ago alledging China forcefully sterilized Tibetans.

Yup. That is a page from the cultural assimilation playbook. This is also why much effort went into building a rail line from the heartlands of China into Tibet, including crazy engineering feats necessary to stabilize soil within the weather extremes of those region.

Another page from the playbook: standardize the official script in which you write the spoken language. That has happened multiple times in Chinese history. And American history too.

Tibet is a brutal place to live, short of forcing people there I doubt they will get a lot of takers.

So is Phoenix, for example.

Or Vegas, back in the day.

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