Commentary
As I write this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing cultural genocide in Tibet. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has demanded a “new modern socialist” Tibet, as well as the “sinicization” of the Tibetan people.
To ensure mass compliance, the CCP has implemented a string of new policies in the supposedly autonomous region. In Tibet, banned activities and practices now include visiting temples and the use of rosary beads, or any other religious objects.
According to the Policy Research Group (POREG), Beijing “has appointed special agents in each office and community to report on Tibetan cadres and officials who break these laws.” Any person found to have engaged in any of the banned activities or practices faces “sacking from their government jobs, denial of all special entitlements, and even arrest.”
In an effort to eradicate the country’s cultural DNA, the Tibetan language is no longer being taught in schools. Instead, Mandarin is now the new language of instruction.
The country’s monks are also being persecuted and punished for fabricated crimes. According to Human Rights Watch, two monks recently received “17- and 15-year sentences, respectively, simply for arguing with the cadres during the education session.”
On Dec. 10, Go Sherab Gyatso, a Tibetan writer and educator, was sentenced to a decade behind bars. His crime? He refused to denounce the Dalai Lama. It should be noted that Dec. 10 was Human Rights Day, a fact that added an extra layer of cruelty to the prison sentence.
Why, one wonders, is China so obsessed with Tibet, a remote land with a population of a little more than 2 million people? On closer inspection, the reason becomes obvious. It involves water; more specifically, freshwater.
Who Controls the Water Controls the Future
Across the globe, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water, according to World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Each month, at least 2.7 billion people experience water scarcity. By 2025, as the United Nations warns, “nearly 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could face water-stressed conditions.”
Only 3 percent of the world’s water is freshwater. Roughly three-quarters of the planet’s freshwater is stored in glaciers. When one thinks of glaciers, one automatically thinks of Antarctica. However, the Tibetan plateau has more than 46,000 glaciers, making it the third-largest reserve of freshwater in the world, after Antarctica and Greenland.
Glaciologists refer to the Tibetan plateau as the “third pole.” Others refer to it as the “water tower” of Asia, and for good reason. Asia’s major rivers begin in the plateau: the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and the Yellow River. At least 240 million people in 10 different countries—Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam—rely on these rivers for survival. This is the real reason why control of Tibet is non-negotiable for Xi Jinping and the CCP.
In China, according to the scholar Yong Jiang, millions of citizens face severe water scarcity, especially in the northern part of the country. China’s water scarcity is “characterized by insufficient local water resources as well as reduced water quality due to increasing pollution, both of which have caused serious impacts on society and the environment.”
Of course, China doesn’t have a monopoly on water-related crises. Across the Asian region—from Mongolia to Pakistan—a water crisis looms for 270 million people. Tibet’s freshwater resources have never been as valuable as they are today. If the CCP controlled these waters, it would have serious leverage across most of the continent.
The Tibetan plateau also contains large reserves of silver, lead, and zinc, as well as copper and gold. In recent years, China’s exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources has gathered significant pace. The exploitation includes forced labor camps.
According to Free Tibet, a group dedicated to ending China’s occupation of the secluded, mainly-Buddhist territory, Tibet is China’s number one source of lithium, which is used in rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras, and electric vehicles. As the world faces an “acute” shortage of lithium, China continues to profit from Tibet’s seemingly endless supply.
The Tibetan plateau is also home to uranium, a heavy metal used to generate electricity in nuclear power plants. According to Bloomberg, the CCP plans to build “at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the rest of the world has built in the past 35,” thus allowing China to “surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest generator of nuclear power.”
What can be done to help the people in Tibet? What can be done to stop the CCP from exploiting the Tibetan Plateau? In December 2020, the U.S. Congress passed a bill, called The Tibetan Policy and Support Act (TPSA), which upgraded Washington’s support for the people of Tibet. Not surprisingly, the bill has had little impact on occurrences in the region. As long as Tibet continues to provide China with an abundance of natural resources, no sanctions will prevent the CCP from inflicting even more misery on the people of Tibet.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.