Train ride from Lhasa to Chengdu is end of the line for Tibetan independence

The Tibetan diaspora is a knockabout democracy that puts China’s kow-towing rubber stamp parliament to shame. Since the Dalai Lama renounced his secular powers five years ago, political leadership has been shouldered by an elected sikyong, or prime minister, the first office-holder being a graduate of Harvard Law School named Lobsang Sangay.

His job post is up for grabs this weekend, in an election in which tens of thousands of exiles worldwide will vote electronically, and if online comments are any guide, the incumbent will face a fierce challenge. One voter, Tashi Tsomo, writes that under his leadership, “The exile administration has not achieved any concrete results in the political, economic, education and social spheres.” Another, Mila Rangzen, accused him of telling the world that Tibetans “never had a country” and failing to demand democracy for Tibetans still living under Chinese rule.

In the incumbent’s defence, it must be one of the toughest political jobs in the world. Most Tibetans both inside and outside the country continue to regard the Dalai Lama as their chief, in political as well as spiritual affairs; Lobsang Sangay has failed to make inroads into that. He has also failed to persuade Beijing to reopen the long-running but unproductive negotiations over the Dalai Lama’s possible return. Indeed, he has succeeded in doing nothing but excite Chinese contempt.

Beijing still fears the Dalai Lama’s vast influence, both on the exile community and beyond, to the extent that it is said to be plotting to anoint a new, tame reincarnation when the present Dalai Lama dies. But it refers to the Central Tibetan Administration, based in the Indian town of Dharamsala, as the “so-called government in exile”. Asked to comment on the upcoming election, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang demanded that the “so-called Tibet independence activities of anti-China separatists” be denied a platform by countries friendly to China (In fact, neither candidate in the election is calling for Tibet’s independence).

Meanwhile, in Tibet itself the marginalisation of the indigenous population continues apace. That project moved up a gear this week with confirmation that a second railway line is to be built connecting Lhasa to the Chinese heartland, this time to Chengdu, the capital of Schezuan province, which has long been China’s gateway to the plateau.

The first line, completed in 2006 and connecting Lhasa with Beijing, was one of the engineering feats of the age, its trains traversing 1,200 miles in two days and crossing passes 16,400ft high. Passengers are provided with individual oxygen supplies to combat altitude sickness. Trains on the new line, part of a five-year development programme, will make the 1,120-mile journey in 13 hours.

The railway line has thrown open the doors to Tibet like nothing before, resulting in an explosive growth of hotels and other facilities for the visitors, all but a tiny fraction of whom are Chinese. Tourist numbers are soaring: in 1987 a mere 44,000 made the lengthy trip; last year the figure was 20 million, 20 per cent more than in 2014. The plateau across which they swarm has an indigenous population of only 3.2 million.

Tibetans continue to express their anguish at Chinese domination by taking their own lives, two setting themselves alight in recent weeks; all told, more than 140 have died this way. But such drastic demonstrations have become more sporadic, and the Chinese authorities are now redoubling their efforts to stop them from happening altogether.

In 2011 the government launched a campaign with the Orwellian title “Benefit the Masses”, which involved sending 21,000 Communist Party cadres in teams of four or more to each of the 5,000 villages in the Tibet Autonomous Region. According to the Communist Party leader in the region, the idea was to turn each village into a “fortress” in the “struggle against separatism”, setting up party organisations in each village, establishing spy networks and carrying out re-education under the slogan “Feeling the Party’s kindness”.

Reminiscent of the micro-surveillance networks established at village level by the Japanese in their South-east Asian conquests during World War Two, the teams, each accompanied by at least one Tibetan for translation purposes, had the task of inculcating “core socialist values” and discouraging “bad old traditions”.

The programme was scheduled to end in 2014, but Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports it is now intended to be permanent, with each Tibetan village sprinkled with government buildings at a total cost of more than £560m. “The construction plan,” HRW reports, “will radically change the nature of Tibetan villages, which until now have never had any government offices or resident officials.” If it goes according to plan, any last embers of Tibetan defiance will be snuffed out.