China plans to reopen Tibet to foreign tourists next week, state media reported, a sign of the regime’s growing confidence following the passage of several sensitive anniversaries without apparent major disturbances.
Tibetan areas will reopen to foreign tourists next Sunday, Xinhua news agency said late on Sunday.
Visits from foreign tourists were suspended “for the sake of travelers’ safety,” Bachug, director of the Tibetan regional government’s tourism administration, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
“Tibet is harmonious and safe now,” the director said.
China requires foreigners to obtain special permission to visit Tibet and routinely bars them from all ethnically Tibetan areas of the country during sensitive periods to keep news of unrest from leaking out.
China claims Tibet as part of its territory, but many Tibetans have chafed under rule by Beijing, which grew steadily more invasive after communist troops entered the region in 1950.
Tibet, along with vast swathes of Tibetan-inhabited parts of western China, have been largely sealed off since widespread anti-government protests broke out last March.
China responded to the protests last year by flooding Tibetan areas with troops and sealing them off to the outside world.
The closure dealt a massive blow to Tibet’s budding tourism industry, with numbers of visitors down by nearly half in the first nine months of last year, Xinhua said.
Tourism revenues plunged 54 percent to 1.8 billion yuan (US$264 million) during that period, it said, while the launch of the first luxury train service from Beijing to Tibet has been postponed from next month until next spring.
Meanwhile, the EU’s top diplomat called for new talks yesterday between Beijing and representatives of the Dalai Lama.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she discussed the thorny issue of Tibet in talks on Sunday with Chinese Vice President Li Keqiang (李克強) and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔箎).
She said the officials’ tone was less angry than in past, but that they did not indicate any change in Beijing’s hard-line attitude toward contact with the region’s exiled Buddhist leader.
Ferrero-Waldner said the EU made no concessions to Beijing about future contacts with the Dalai Lama.
“We feel negotiations are the only way forward. Beijing may not like every position that the Dalai Lama’s side has taken, but at least they should talk about those topics,” said Ferrero-Waldner, who holds the title of EU external relations commissioner.
Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking independence for Tibet and objects furiously when foreign leaders hold meetings with him.
Last year, China canceled a major summit with the EU in anger over a private meeting between the Dalai Lama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy — who at the time held the grouping’s rotating presidency.
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