MAY 26, 2014
Four years and $7.2 billion later, Yushu, a city high on the Tibetan Plateau that was leveled by a calamitous earthquake, has been largely made whole, as I reported from there recently. There are thousands of new homes, dozens of schools and impressive-looking museums. The reconstruction effort was made all the more challenging by the city’s isolation and thin air.
But despite the herculean effort and lavish spending, many residents are unhappy with the results. Some say the distribution of new housing favored well-connected government officials over ordinary residents. Others, especially construction workers and contractors who answered the government’s call to rebuild Yushu, are embittered over unpaid wages. At the city’s main monastery, the disappearance last year of a contractor hired to rebuild dormitories and prayer halls means that hundreds of monks and nuns are still living in tents.
The corruption and mismanagement have aggravated tensions between the city’s Tibetan majority and the Han migrants who run most of the local businesses. The result: A project that was meant to showcase the Communist Party’s magnanimity toward China’s embattled Tibetans has inadvertently sown even deeper cynicism and anger.
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