Comfortable Housing Program

I'm not anxious to join hands with Richard Gere in anything, but
this is prototypical Chinese government stuff.

In a massive campaign that recalls the socialist engineering of an earlier era, the Chinese government has relocated 250,000 Tibetans - nearly one-tenth the population -from scattered rural hamlets to new "socialist villages," ordering them to build housing largely at their own expense and without their consent.

The government calls the more than year-old project the "comfortable housing program." Its stated aim is to present a more modern face for this ancient region controlled by China since 1950. The new housing is on main roads - sometimes a mile from previous homes - and will enable small farmers and herders to have access to schools and jobs, as well as health care and hygiene, the government says. . . .

Human Rights Watch's witnesses told a different story. Peasants must take out loans of several thousand dollars to pay for the houses, which cost an average of $6,000, even though annual rural incomes hover at about $320 in this deeply impoverished region. Farmers who can't repay their bank loans forfeit the right to occupy the homes.

. . . .

Local officials frequently embezzle allocated funds, the group said, and some vacated land is being used for mining and other projects.

The government wants control of Tibet - they can't even control Shanghai - so they move in, order all the people out as part of their "comfortable housing program" (you have to love the name) and then take the land for government projects. There aren't enough Tibetians to cause a ruckus and no one in China is going to protest on someone else's behalf. Easy. Plus, any money allocated by Beijing to the program goes directly into the pockets of the local politicians.