DATE=7/5/2000
TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP
TITLE=WORLD BANK CHINA LOAN MAY HARM TIBET
NUMBER=6-11909
BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS
TELEPHONE=619-3335
CONTENT=
INTRO: The World Bank is being criticized for some of
the loans it grants to underdeveloped nations that
sometimes have unintended, or even negative,
consequences.
One such loan is drawing a great deal of controversy
this week. At issue is 40-million-dollars of a larger
proposed loan to the People's Republic of China that
would relocate about 58-thousand Chinese farmers into
a province of Tibet. All the U-S newspapers
commenting on the loan are against it, and we get a
sampling now from ___________ in today's U-S Opinion
Roundup.
TEXT: Pro Tibetan activists around the world have
been calling attention to this controversial loan for
months, claiming that it will displace traditional
Tibetan and Mongol herders from their ancestral homes.
They see it as another attempt by the authorities in
Beijing to suppress Tibetan culture, as well as
solving the problem of moving impoverished Chinese
from land they can no longer cultivate.
Within the past few days, Tibetans have marched to the
Chinese Embassy here in Washington to protest the
move.
Another criticism of the pending loan, scheduled to be
voted on Thursday [7/6] is that an independent inquiry
into it found that World Bank staff had broken their
own rules in approving it. With that background, we
turn to The Washington Post, which opposes the loan on
several grounds and worries it bodes ill for the
future.
VOICE: The Clinton administration sold Chinese
entry to the World Trade Organization partly on
the argument that membership of a rules-based
organization would reform China. Skeptics in
Congress objected that China would flout those
rules and undermine the W-T-O's cohesion. Both
sides could learn something from China's
behavior as a member of the World Bank. On the
one hand, China has made the most of membership,
reducing the number of its citizens living on
less than one dollar a day by 150-million during
the 1990s. On the other hand, China has bridled
at some World Bank rules -- not least in a case
that comes to a head at the bank's ... meeting
... Thursday. The case ... has come to the fore
thanks to Tibet activists, who rightly argue
that the bank has no business subsidizing the
eradication of Tibetan culture.
But the project has become controversial for
another reasons too. Pro-Tibet protests
prompted the bank to commission an independent
review of the project, which has found that the
bank's staff bent in-house rules on the way to
approving it. What's more, the bank's board has
held up publication of the review, apparently
also in deference to China. ... Because of the
project's implications for Tibet, the United
States and several other board members will vote
against it. But Thursday's board meeting should
also be watched for the light it sheds on
China's attitude to multilateral rules ...
TEXT: New England's largest daily, The Boston Globe,
joins the debate with these thoughts on the bank's
policy in this particular case.
VOICE: The World Bank has been criticized in
recent years for a lack of transparency and
accountability. As an institution, the bank has
tried to explain its role in financing
economically beneficial projects and, under
President James Wolfensohn, has striven to
become more open and accountable. Much of that
effort is being undercut, however, by the bank's
preparations to underwrite a project in China's
western Qinghai Province, a traditional homeland
for Tibetan and Mongol herders. /// OPT /// The
project would place the World Bank in the
position of financing the resettlement of 58-
thousand Chinese farmers on Tibetan lands and
displacing the indigenous people who had been
living there. /// OPT /// Above all, the
bank should not allow itself to become a
collaborator in Beijing's colonialist policy of
expunging Tibetan cultural identity by
submerging the Tibetan population under waves of
resettled Chinese immigrants. /// OPT /// ...
Bank management has made a bad situation worse
by hiding from public view a report it
commissioned on the project.../// END OPT ///
TEXT: As The Los Angeles Times points out in yet
another unfavorable editorial, Tibet's exiled
spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has a very personal
reason for opposing the project.
VOICE: The ... Dalai Lama sees the proposed
resettlement -- which would affect the area
where he was born -- as "cultural genocide."
The U-S and German representatives to the World
Bank voted against it, and Tibet supporters
around the globe opposed it as an encroachment
on Tibetan culture. An independent panel of
experts concluded that the bank's staff violated
many of its key policies in approving the loan.
The bank's board of directors ... should scrap
it.
TEXT: In Texas, The Houston Chronicle calls the
proposed loan a "Cancer Deal" in its headline, and
then states its opposition this way:
VOICE: The World Bank should cancel the 160-
million-dollar loan it has approved for China
that, in part, would be used to relocate 58-
thousand Chinese farmers into a former Tibetan
province that is the birthplace of the Dalai
Lama. The major objection to the loan is that
it would finance an act by China tantamount to
"cultural genocide" by diluting Tibetan culture
and influence in the area, as Tibetan exile
groups have claimed. /// OPT /// Also, it now
turns out, an independent, internal report about
the loan, released [in June] ... reveals that
the World Bank violated seven of its [own] 10
regulations regarding loan approvals, including
a requirement to assess potential social and
environmental damage to the region in approving
the loan. /// END OPT /// ... Financing the
loan has not been worked out and it shouldn't
be. The World Bank should not be a party to the
brutal elimination of an ancient culture.
TEXT: Lastly, The New York Times, which calls the
loan "misguided" in its headline, outlines its
objections to the bank's response to earlier
criticism.
VOICE: ...[bank] President James Wolfensohn
believes ... these failures can be addressed by
conducting more thorough studies on the
project's impact. But studies are not the
answer. They may satisfy the bank's
regulations, but they will do nothing to solve
the social problems created by incursions into
traditionally Tibetan lands. The bank directors
would be wiser simply to reject this poorly
designed project, and to invite China and the
bank's management to present an alternative plan
that would not require a large resettlement
program in a culturally sensitive area.
TEXT: On that note, we conclude this sampling of
opinion from the U-S press on a highly controversial
World Bank loan that would resettle Chinese farmers
into traditionally Tibetan land.
NEB/ANG/JP
05-Jul-2000 13:58 PM EDT (05-Jul-2000 1758 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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