The
price of gold
THE ecology of the
Tibetan plateau, noted the Ministry of Land and Resources two years ago, is
“extremely fragile”. Any damage, it warned, would be difficult or impossible to
reverse. But, it went on, the China National Gold Group, a state-owned company,
had achieved “astonishing results” in working to protect the environment around
its mine near the region’s capital, Lhasa. On March 29th at least 83 of the
mine’s workers lay buried under a colossal landslide. Its cause is not yet
certain, but critics of Tibet’s mining frenzy feel vindicated.
The disaster at the
Jiama copper and gold mine, about 70km (45 miles) north-west of Lhasa, has
clearly embarrassed the government in Beijing. According to China Digital
Times, a California-based media-monitoring website, the Communist Party ordered
newspapers to stick to reports issued by the government and the state-owned
news agency, Xinhua.
Foreign reporters are
rarely allowed into Tibet, least of all to cover sensitive incidents. The
official media have avoided speculation about any possible link between the
landslide and mining activities in the area. They say the landslide covered a
large area with 2m cubic metres of rubble. By the time The Economist went to press, 66 bodies had been pulled out
by teams of rescuers with sniffer dogs. The high altitude and lack of oxygen
made rescue work hard.
A deputy minister of
land and resources, Xu Deming, said preliminary investigations had shown that
the landslide was caused by a “natural geological disaster”. Fragments of rock
Left behind by receding glaciers are being blamed, though officials do not explain
Why the workers’ camp was set up so close to such an apparent hazard.
The Tibetan
Government-in-exile based in India says it fears the disaster was caused by
Work related to the mine, which appears to have grown rapidly since
Construction began in 2008. It was formally opened two years later, at a
A ceremony attended by Tibet’s most senior officials. The $520m investment was
Described at the time as the biggest in Tibet’s mining industry by a firm
Belonging to the central government. The mine is owned by China Gold
International Resources, a company listed in Hong Kong and Toronto. China
The National Gold Group is the controlling shareholder.
Tibet has been trying
hard in recent years to encourage such companies to dig up the plateau’s metals
and minerals. It has a lot of them to offer: China’s biggest reserves of copper
And chromite (used in steel production), among the world’s biggest of lithium
(used to make batteries), as well as abundant reserves of uranium, gold, borax
(a component of ceramics and glass) and oil. Extracting these, however, often
involves boring into a landscape considered sacred by Tibetans. The Jiama mine,
in a valley known to Tibetans as Gyama and revered as the birthplace of a
seventh-century Tibetan king, has been the focus of protests by locals angered
by environmental and other issues. Water from the valley flows into the Lhasa
river. Woeser, a Tibetan activist based in Beijing, has blogged about locals’
fear that their water supplies will be polluted.
Tibetan resentment has
been fuelled by the mining industry’s failure to provide much direct
employment. Many miners, as well as builders of infrastructure used to service
the mines, are brought in from elsewhere in China. Tellingly, only two of the
miners killed by the landslide were reported to be Tibetans. Managers at big
state-owned firms are usually Han Chinese, who in turn tend to regard their own
ethnic kin as easier to control and communicate with than Tibetans. China Daily, a Beijing newspaper, reported last year that
the Jiama mine had hired 191 locals. It said non-Han employees made up 35% of
the mine operator’s staff, “the highest percentage among mining companies in
China”.
In December Tibet Daily, another government newspaper, said that work
was under way on setting up monitoring stations in the valley. One of their
functions would be to look out for potential “geological disasters”. It was
important, it said, gradually to “set up a green mine, with man and nature
attaining harmonious unity”. Such unity was called into question on the Tibetan
plateau this week.
