In 2008, the Dalai Lama warned of the “danger” of one million Chinese immigrants increasing Tibetan GDP and enriching Tibet’s culture:
The Dalai Lama claimed yesterday that Beijing was planning the mass settlement of 1 million ethnic Chinese people in Tibet after the Olympics with the aim of diluting Tibetan culture and identity.
Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader also claimed that some of Asia’s most important rivers which flow from the Tibetan plateau are being polluted and diminished by careless industrialisation and unplanned irrigation.
The Dalai Lama made the claims in an interview with the Guardian after a meeting yesterday with Gordon Brown at Lambeth Palace. He said the talks had been detailed and the prime minister had been helpful “in spite of his difficulties”. The Dalai Lama said: “He met me and he showed genuine concern and he wants to help.”
Downing Street said the discussion focused on talks due next month on Tibet’s future between Tibetan representatives and Beijing officials. The prime minister is said to have stressed the importance of the Dalai Lama’s pledge to oppose violence, not seek Tibetan independence, nor support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
The Dalai Lama said he feared the Chinese authorities could take a tougher line on Tibet after the Olympics, and possibly flood it with Han Chinese, the world’s largest ethnic group.
The Dalai Lama said he had been informed by Tibetan residents that large areas of empty land had been marked out, as if for construction, in the past two years. “Then last year we received information – after the Olympics 1 million Chinese are going to settle in the autonomous region of Tibet,” he said, adding the information came from a “military source” in Tibet.
“There is every danger Tibet becomes a truly Han Chinese land and Tibetans become an insignificant minority. Then the very basis of the idea of autonomy becomes meaningless.”
What was the matter with that? Is Tibetan dirt any less magic than American dirt? Won’t those Han Chinese become true native Tibetans, just indistinguishable in every way from other native Tibetans, in precisely the same way that a Han Chinese immigrant is every bit as American as the Daughters of the American Revolution?
I just don’t see any problem here. We’re are just one human race. Everyone is equal. What on Earth was the Dalai Lama complaining about?