Tibet Autonomous Region Xizang Autonomous Region
Chinese : 西藏自治区 Xīzàng Zìzhìqū Tibetan : བོད་རང་སྐྱོང་ལྗོངས། Bod-rang-skyong-ljongs
Abbreviations: 藏  (pinyin: Zàng)
Origin of name	From word Tibat of disputed origin.
Administration type	Autonomous region
Capital (and largest city)	Lhasa
CPC Ctte Secretary	Zhang Qingli
Chairman	Padma Choling
Area	1,228,400 km2 (474,300 sq mi) (2nd)
- Latitude	27° 18' to 36° 29' N[1]
- Longitude	78° 55' to 99° 07' E[2]
Population (2010)  - Density	3,002,166[3][4] (31st) 2.2 /km2 (5.7 /sq mi) (33rd)
GDP (2011)  - per capita	CNY 60.5 billion US$ 9.6 billion (32nd) CNY 17,319 US$ 2,558 (28th)
HDI (2008)	0.630 (medium) (31st)
Ethnic composition	92.8% Tibetan 6.1% Han 0.3% Monpa 0.3% Hui 0.2% others
Languages and dialects
Prefectural level	7 divisions
County level	73 divisions
Township level*	692 divisions
ISO 3166-2	CN-54
Official website http://www.xizang.gov.cn/
Source for population and GDP data: 《中国统计年鉴—2005》 China Statistical Yearbook 2005 ISBN 7503747382 Source for nationalities data: 《2000年人口普查中国民族人口资料》 Tabulation on nationalities of 2000 population census of China ISBN 7105054255 *As at December 31, 2004
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This article contains Tibetan script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Tibetan characters.

This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Tibet or Xizang for short, also called the Xizang Autonomous Region (Tibetan: བོད་རང་སྐྱོང་ལྗོངས།; Chinese: 西藏自治区) is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was created in 1965 on the basis of an administrative region which had been incorporated into the PRC in 1951.

Within the People's Republic of China, Tibet is identified with the Autonomous Region, which includes about half of ethno-cultural Tibet, including the traditional provinces of Ü-Tsang and the western half of Kham. The borders of the present Autonomous Region coincide roughly with the actual zone of control of the then-government of Tibet in 1950. The Tibet Autonomous Region is the second-largest province-level division of China by area, spanning over 1,200,000 square kilometres (460,000 sq mi), after Xinjiang, and due to its generally harsh terrain, is the least densely populated provincial-level division of the PRC.

History[link]

Modern scholars still debate on whether the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644) had sovereignty over Tibet ^[5][6][7] prior to the conquest of Tibet in 1642. While Tibet has formally been a part of China since 1644 as part of the Qing Dynasty, from 1912 to 1950 Tibet was dissolved from China proper as a result of the 1911 Revolution and Japanese occupation during WW2. Other parts of ethno-cultural Tibet (eastern Kham and Amdo) have also been under the administration of the Chinese dynastic government since the mid-eighteenth century;^[8] today they are distributed among the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan. (See also: Xikang province)

In 1950, the People's Liberation Army defeated the Tibetan army in a battle fought near the city of Qamdo. In 1951, the Tibetan representatives signed a seventeen-point agreement with the Chinese Central People's Government affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later.^[9][10] Although the 17-point agreement had provided for an autonomous administration led by the Dalai Lama, a "Preparatory Committee for the Autonomous Region of Tibet" (PCART) was established in 1955 to create a parallel system of administration along Communist lines. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 and renounced the 17-point agreement. PCART was reorganized as the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965, thus making Tibet an administrative division on the same legal footing as a Chinese province.

Geography[link]

The Tibet Autonomous Region is located on the Tibetan Plateau, the highest region on earth. In northern Tibet elevations reach an average of over 4,572 metres (15,000 ft). Mount Everest is located on Tibet's border with Nepal.

The Chinese provincial-level areas of Xinjiang, Qinghai and Sichuan lie to the north, northeast, and east, respectively, of the Tibet AR. There is also a short border with Yunnan province to the southeast. The PRC has border disputes with the Republic of India over the McMahon Line of Arunachal Pradesh, known to the Chinese as "South Tibet". The disputed territory of Aksai Chin is to the west, and its boundary with that region is not defined. The other countries to the south are Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal.

Mount Everest

Physically, the Tibet AR may be divided into two parts, the "lakes region" in the west and north-west, and the "river region", which spreads out on three sides of the former on the east, south, and west. Both regions receive limited amounts of rainfall as they lie in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, however the region names are useful in contrasting their hydrological structures, and also in contrasting their different cultural uses which is nomadic in the lake region and agricultural in the river region.^[11] On the south the Tibet AR is bounded by the Himalayas, and on the north by a broad mountain system. The system at no point narrows to a single range; generally there are three or four across its breadth. As a whole the system forms the watershed between rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean – the Indus, Brahmaputra and Salween and its tributaries – and the streams flowing into the undrained salt lakes to the north.

The lake region extends from the Pangong Tso Lake in Ladakh, Lake Rakshastal, Yamdrok Lake and Lake Manasarovar near the source of the Indus River, to the sources of the Salween, the Mekong and the Yangtze. Other lakes include Dagze Co, Nam Co, and Pagsum Co. The lake region is an arid and wind-swept desert. This region is called the Chang Tang (Byang sang) or 'Northern Plateau' by the people of Tibet. It is some 1100 km (700 mi) broad, and covers an area about equal to that of France. Due to its great distance from the ocean it is extremely arid and possesses no river outlet. The mountain ranges are spread out, rounded, disconnected, separated by flat valleys relatively of little depth.

The Tibet AR is dotted over with large and small lakes, generally salt or alkaline, and intersected by streams. Due to the presence of discontinuous permafrost over the Chang Tang, the soil is boggy and covered with tussocks of grass, thus resembling the Siberian tundra. Salt and fresh-water lakes are intermingled. The lakes are generally without outlet, or have only a small effluent. The deposits consist of soda, potash, borax and common salt. The lake region is noted for a vast number of hot springs, which are widely distributed between the Himalaya and 34° N., but are most numerous to the west of Tengri Nor (north-west of Lhasa). So intense is the cold in this part of Tibet that these springs are sometimes represented by columns of ice, the nearly boiling water having frozen in the act of ejection.

The river region is characterised by fertile mountain valleys and includes the Yarlung Tsangpo River (the upper courses of the Brahmaputra) and its major tributary, the Nyang River, the Salween, the Yangtze, the Mekong, and the Yellow River. The Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon, formed by a horseshoe bend in the river where it flows around Namcha Barwa, is the deepest, and possibly longest canyon in the world.^[12] Among the mountains there are many narrow valleys. The valleys of Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse and the Brahmaputra are free from permafrost, covered with good soil and groves of trees, well irrigated, and richly cultivated.

The South Tibet Valley is formed by the Yarlung Zangbo River during its middle reaches, where it travels from west to east. The valley is approximately 1200 kilometres long and 300 kilometres wide. The valley descends from 4500 metres above sea level to 2800 metres. The mountains on either side of the valley are usually around 5000 metres high.^[13][14] Lakes here include Lake Paiku and Lake Puma Yumco.

Government[link]

The Tibet Autonomous Region is a province-level entity of the People's Republic of China. It is governed by a People's Government, led by a Chairman. In practice, however, the Chairman is subordinate to the branch secretary of the Communist Party of China. As a matter of convention, the Chairman has almost always been an ethnic Tibetan, while the party secretary has almost always been a non-Tibetan. The current Chairman is Padma Choling and the current party secretary is Zhang Qingli.^[15]

Administrative divisions[link]

Tibet Autonomous Region is divided into one prefecture-level city and six prefectures.

Map	#	Conventional[16]	Administrative Seat	Tibetan script Wylie	Hanzi Hanyu Pinyin	Population (2010)
	— Prefecture-level city —
	5	Lhasa	Chengguan District	ལྷ་ས་གྲོང་ཁྱེར་ lha-sa grong-khyer	拉萨市 Lāsà Shì	559,423
	— Prefecture —
	1	Ngari Prefecture	Gar County	མངའ་རིས་ས་ཁུལ་ mnga'-ris sa-khul	阿里地区 Ālǐ Dìqū	95,465
	2	Nagqu Prefecture	Nagqu County	ནག་ཆུ་ས་ཁུལ་ nag-chu sa-khul	那曲地区 Nàqū Dìqū	462,382
	3	Qamdo Prefecture	Qamdo County	ཆབ་མདོ་ས་ཁུལ་ chab-mdo sa-khul	昌都地区 Chāngdū Dìqū	657,505
	4	Shigatse Prefecture	Shigatse	གཞིས་ཀ་རྩེ་ས་ཁུལ་ gzhis-ka-rtse sa-khul	日喀则地区 Rìkāzé Dìqū	703,292
	6	Shannan Prefecture	Nêdong County	ལྷོ་ཁ་ས་ཁུལ་ lho-kha sa-khul	山南地区 Shānnán Dìqū	328,990
	7	Nyingchi Prefecture	Nyingchi County	ཉིང་ཁྲི་ས་ཁུལ་ nying-khri sa-khul	林芝地区 Línzhī Dìqū	195,109

These in turn are subdivided into a total of seventy-one counties, one district (Chengguan District, Lhasa) and one county-level city (Xigazê).

Yamdrok Lake

Namtso Lake

Demographics[link]

With an average of only 2 people per square kilometer, The Tibet Autonomous Region has the lowest population density among any of the Chinese province-level administrative regions, mostly due to its harsh and rugged terrain.^[17]

In 2009 the Tibetan population was 2.91 million. The ethnic Tibetans, comprising 92.8% of the population,^[18] mainly adhere to Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, although there is an ethnic Tibetan Muslim community.^[19] Other Muslim ethnic groups such as the Hui and the Salar have inhabited the Region. There is also a tiny Tibetan Christian community in eastern Tibet. Smaller tribal groups such as the Monpa and Lhoba, who follow a combination of Tibetan Buddhism and spirit worship, are found mainly in the southeastern parts of the region.

Historically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic Tibetans. According to tradition the original ancestors of the Tibetan people, as represented by the six red bands in the Tibetan flag, are: the Se, Mu, Dong, Tong, Dru and Ra. Other traditional ethnic groups with significant population or with the majority of the ethnic group reside in Tibet include Bai people, Blang, Bonan, Dongxiang, Han, Hui people, Lhoba, Lisu people, Miao, Mongols, Monguor (Tu people), Menba (Monpa), Mosuo, Nakhi, Qiang, Nu people, Pumi, Salar, and Yi people.

According to Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition published between 1910–1911, total population of Tibetan capital of Lhasa, including the lamas in the city and vicinity, was about 30,000, and the permanent population also included Chinese families (about 2,000).^[20]

Most Han people in the TAR (6.1% of the total population)^[18] are recent migrants, because all of the Han were expelled from Outer Tibet following the British expedition until the establishment of the PRC.^[21] Some ethnic Tibetans claim that, with the 2006 completion of the Qingzang Railway connecting the TAR to Qinghai Province, there has been an "acceleration" of Han migration into the region.^[22] The Central Tibetan Administration of the Dalai Lama claims that the PRC has actively swamped Tibet with migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup.^[23]

Towns and villages in Tibet[link]

Economy[link]

A Tibetan farmer ploughing a field; yaks still plow fields in Tibet

The Tibetans traditionally depended upon agriculture for survival. Since the 1980s, however, other jobs such as taxi-driving and hotel retail work have become available in the wake of Chinese economic reform. In 2011, Tibet's nominal GDP topped 60.5 billion yuan (US$9.60 billion), nearly more than seven times as big as the 11.78 billion yuan (US$1.47 billion) in 2000. In the past five years, Tibet's annual GDP growth has averaged 12%.^[17]

While traditional agricultural work and animal husbandry continue to lead the area's economy, in 2005 the tertiary sector contributed more than half of its GDP growth, the first time it surpassed the area's primary industry.^[24][25] Rich reserves of natural resources and raw materials have yet to lead to the creation of a strong secondary sector, due in large part to the province's inhospitable terrain, low population density, an underdeveloped infrastructure and the high cost of extraction.^[17]

The collection of caterpillar fungus (Cordyceps sinensis, known in Tibetan as Yartsa Gunbu) in late spring / early summer is in many areas the most important source of cash for rural households. It contributes an average of 40% to rural cash income and 8.5% to the TAR's GDP.^[26] The re-opening of the Nathu La pass (on southern Tibet's border with India) should facilitate Sino-Indian border trade and boost Tibet's economy.^[27]

In 2008, Chinese news media reported that the per capita disposable incomes of urban and rural residents in Tibet averaged 12,482 yuan (US$1,798) and 3,176 yuan (US$457) respectively.^[28]

The China Western Development policy was adopted in 2000 by the central government to boost economic development in western China, including the Tibet Autonomous Region.

• Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone

Tourism[link]

The Potala Palace in Lhasa, the capital of the TAR

Tourists were first permitted to visit the Tibet Autonomous Region in the 1980s. While the main attraction is the Potala Palace in Lhasa, there are many other popular tourist destinations including the Jokhang Temple, Namtso Lake, and Tashilhunpo Monastery.^[29]

Transport[link]

Airports[link]

The civil airports in Tibet are Lhasa Gonggar Airport,^[30] Qamdo Bangda Airport, Nyingchi Airport, and the Gunsa Airport.

Gunsa Airport in Ngari Prefecture began operations on July 1, 2010, to become the fourth civil airport in China's Tibet Autonomous Region.^[31]

The "Peace Airport" for Xigazê Prefecture was completed on October 30, 2010.^[32]

Nagqu Dagring Airport is expected to become the world's highest altitude airport by 2014 at 4,436 meters above sea level.^[33]

See also[link]

	Geography portal
	Asia portal
	China portal
	People's Republic of China portal
	Tibet portal
	Himalayas portal

• Tibet Area, Republic of China
• History of Tibet (1950-present)
• China Tibetology Research Center
• List of universities and colleges in Tibet

Footnotes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Hannue, Dialogues Tibetan Dialogues Han, travelogue from Tibet - by a woman who's been travelling around Tibet for over a decade, ISBN 978-988-97999-3-9
• Sorrel Wilby, Journey Across Tibet: A Young Woman's 1900-Mile Trek Across the Rooftop of the World, Contemporary Books (1988), hardcover, 236 pages, ISBN 0-8092-4608-2.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tibet

• Tibet Autonomous Region official website
• Economic profile for Tibet Autonomous Region at HKTDC
• Tibet Autonomous Region travel guide from Wikitravel

	Disputed territory	Xinjiang	Qinghai
	Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, India		Sichuan
		Tibet Autonomous Region    East
	Far-Western, Mid-Western, Western, Central, and Eastern Regions, Nepal Sikkim, India	Western through Eastern Zones, Bhutan	Yunnan Kachin State, Myanmar Disputed territory

v t e Tibet Autonomous Region Lhasa (Capital) Topics Art Economy History Human rights Language Music Politics Religion Admin. divisions Tibet in China Lhasa: Chengguan District Lhünzhub County Damxung County Nyêmo County Qüxü County Doilungdêqên County Dagzê County Maizhokunggar County Nagqu: Nagchu County Lhari County Biru County Nyainrong County Amdo County Xainza County Sog County Baingoin County Baqên County Nyima County Shuanghu Special District Qamdo: Qamdo County Jomda County Gonjo County Riwoqê County Dêngqên County Zhag'yab County Baxoi County Zogang County Markam County Lhorong County Banbar County Nyingchi: Nyingchi County Gongbo'gyamda County Mainling County** Mêdog County** Bomê County Zayü County** Nang County** Shannan: Nêdong County Zhanang County Gonggar County Sangri County Qonggyai County Qusum County Comai County Lhozhag County Gyaca County Lhünzê County** Cuona County** Nagarzê County Shigatse: Shigatse City Namling County Gyantse County Tingri County Sa'gya County Lhatse County Ngamring County Xaitongmoin County Bainang County Rinbung County Kangmar County Dinggyê County Zhongba County Yadong County Gyirong County Nyalam County Saga County Gamba County Ngari: Gar County Burang County Zanda County Rutog County Gê'gyai County Gêrzê County Coqên County ■ = Prefecture-level city ■ = Prefecture * Not an official division   ** Part of the South Tibet area, which is administered by India and claimed by the PRC.

v t e Provincial level divisions of the People's Republic of China Provinces Anhui Fujian Gansu Guangdong Guizhou Hainan Hebei Heilongjiang Henan Hubei Hunan Jiangsu Jiangxi Jilin Liaoning Qinghai Shaanxi Shandong Shanxi Sichuan Yunnan Zhejiang Autonomous regions Guangxi Inner Mongolia (Nei Mongol) Ningxia Tibet (Xizang) Xinjiang Municipalities Beijing Chongqing Shanghai Tianjin Special administrative regions Hong Kong Macau Territorial disputes Paracel, Spratly, Zhongsha Islands (see Paracels, Spratlys, & Zhongsha Iss. Authority) Pratas Islands Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku Islands) South Tibet Taiwan, Quemoy & Matsu (see Legal status of Taiwan)

v t e Tibetan autonomous areas in the People's Republic of China Regions Tibet A.R. Lhasa Nagqu Qamdo Shannan Xigazê Ngari Nyingchi Prefectures and counties Qinghai Haibei Hainan Haixi (Mongols and Tibetans) Huangnan Golog Yushu Sichuan Garzê Ngawa (Tibetans and Qiang) Muli Gansu Gannan Tianzhu (Bairi, Hwari) Yunnan Dêqên