Economic Dimensions of Autonomy and the Right to Development in Tibet

Following the lessons of this mining example, Canadian foreign policy towards China, including development assistance and private sector policies, could act to promote local ownership and the right to development in Tibet through the following strategies:

Develop a holistic program to promote local ownership in Tibetan areas


• CIDA has offices in Beijing and deals regularly with the provincial capitals that govern the Tibetan areas. It could therefore assist with key networking, bureaucratic and authorization requirements for Tibetan-owned initiatives.
  
  
• Canadian development assistance is also already involved with education projects in western China. Given that China already prioritizes the compulsory nine-years education from primary to lower middle school, Canada should complement this policy by emphasizing projects in vocational training and adult education, which effect immediate improvements in the skill levels of the existing adult labour force. These could be coordinated with Tibetan investment initiatives.
  
  
• Finally, financial support for local investment initiatives could easily be provided through existing programmes, such as the Canada Fund.
  
  
• If these various elements were combined under a holistic strategy, they could promote local ownership in the Tibetan areas in a way that empowers local Tibetans without being invasive to Chinese interests in the area.

Recognize social exclusion in Tibetan areas and develop mitigating strategies as a priority within CIDA's new policy for ethnic minorities in China


• There should be minimum recognition that social exclusion is a reality in the Tibetan areas of China. It is not simply a matter that these areas are poor and need help to get richer, but that there is an ethnically exclusionary dynamic within current growth itself.
  
  
• Essentially, it involves acknowledging the right to development of Tibetans as an ethnic group, rather than as mere individual citizens of the Chinese nation, as well as the role of ethnic ownership in making human rights both substantive and effective. This will require the design of affirmative policies to support Tibetan workers and businesses.

Promote dialogue between Chinese authorities and representatives of the Dalai Lama


• There are already many domestic actors in China - both Han and Tibetan, including a wide range of scholars, officials, educators, journalists and businesspeople among others - who are contesting the exclusionary nature of growth in the Tibetan areas and who are arguing that the unresolved impasse between Tibetans and the Chinese state maintains the tight policy space and lack of effective autonomy in the Tibetan areas.
  
  
• In this opportune moment, if a country like Canada were to add momentum to the rising consensus within China on the issue of negotiations with representatives of the Dalai Lama, it would be a significant contribution towards stability in the restive region.
  
  
• This strategy would be coherent with current Canadian policy for China. In its recently released "China Country Development Programming Framework (2004-2009)", CIDA plans to take particular consideration of both the concept of local ownership and the challenges faced by ethnic minorities (12). The link between the concepts of ownership and ethnic minorities is an obvious guiding principle for Canadian development assistance, and one that they would have the power to implement.
  
  
• The issues of the right to development, ownership, exclusion, autonomy and dialogue are all tightly woven together. Therefore, Canadian policy will remain ineffective in addressing the three former without addressing the issues of autonomy and dialogue.