[Big read] Can Tibet build an economy beyond state support?

(Edited and refined by Josephine Hong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

“Everyone has a Tibet dream. In people’s minds, it is a pure and mysterious place. In terms of development opportunities, Tibet is a world-class intellectual property (IP).”

About ten years ago, Guizhou native Zhang Liangfu left his government job and started a venture in Shannan, Tibet, with 20 beehives. The decision that others would have thought as crazy has now borne fruit.

His Yeban Fengsheng (夜伴蜂声) Cultural Tourism Development Company combines beekeeping with study tours, ecological experiences and rural tourism, becoming a calling card for industrial integration and the plateau’s economy. The company has an annual output value of 65 million RMB (US$9.6 million) and has helped more than 9,000 farming and pastoral households increase their incomes.

Unlike the mainstream choice of many entrepreneurs to set up shop in China’s southeastern coastal region, Zhang, a Sichuan University environmental engineering graduate, chose the remote region of Tibet.

He told Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB) that the scarcity and value of Tibet as an IP was one reason for his optimism. The Tibetan people’s innate respect for and awareness of environmental protection, as well as the simplicity and purity of the local culture, further strengthened his resolve.

From barren land to thriving vineyard

Known as the “Roof of the World”, Tibet lies on China’s southwestern frontier with an average elevation of more than 4,000 metres. It is both an important national security barrier for China and a centre for ecological security and strategic resource reserves, while also being home predominantly to Tibetans.

Last month, Chinese authorities organised a visit to Tibet for around a dozen Chinese and foreign journalists, offering them close-up access to the snow-covered plateau hardly open to foreign media.

(English closed captions are available for the above video.)

Because of factors including its high altitude, transportation and population, Tibet got a relatively late start in modern economic development. Economic growth long relied on fiscal transfers and infrastructure investment from the central government, while the private sector and modern services lagged behind.

In 2024, central government transfer payments to Tibet totalled 256.9 billion RMB. Based on the resident population, this amounted to about 69,000 RMB per person, around seven times the level in Guizhou and 37 times that in Guangdong.

Turning fiscal support into capacity for self-sustaining economic development has become a major issue for Tibet in recent years. Tibet’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) called for vigorous development of the private economy and improvements to the business environment. Its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), released last year, further called for the development of competitive industries with plateau characteristics and investment in emerging sectors.

Against this backdrop, many entrepreneurs have been drawn by Tibet’s unique resources and policy support to enter plateau-related industries. A number of locally distinctive enterprises have emerged, offering new avenues for economic diversification.

“Tibet is incredibly unique. Its ecology and culture are vastly different from the rest of the country. This gives you the opportunity to rise unexpectedly,” Zhang said.

Another local speciality industry project is the Pazhu Vineyard in Sangri county, along the Yarlung Tsangpo river. Since its establishment in 2011, the wine producer has drawn on the plateau’s characteristics to create the “world’s highest-altitude vineyard” on a barren stretch of land.

Li Xiaoping, who heads the vineyard, told journalists that the climate and environment were favourable, with large temperature differences between day and night and strong ultraviolet radiation. Grapes there can contain up to 12 times more anthocyanins than ordinary varieties, giving their wines a deeper colour and greater ageing potential.

The vineyard does more than sell wine. A towering visitor centre at its entrance and a display board promoting “Poetry and faraway places in the vineyard” highlight the company’s aim to build an integrated business encompassing cultivation, sightseeing and experiences, in line with operating models popular at international wineries.

Cooperative breathes new life into intangible heritage craft 

Similar market-oriented efforts have extended to intangible cultural heritage crafts that are at risk of disappearing. At a handicraft weaving cooperative in Shannan’s Nêdong district, dozens of Tibetans work at different stations in a workshop with local character, producing the traditional handicraft known as Tsethang serge.

The craft is regarded as the “Hermès” of pulu (氆氇), a traditional Tibetan woollen textile, but was once in danger of disappearing in 2008. To save it, craft inheritor Pasang set up the cooperative to handle production and partnered with Chinese fashion company Lancy to introduce modern design and marketing concepts.

This opened up broader market channels for Tsethang serge. In the showroom, products range from shoulder bags and scarves to complete outfits, priced from several thousand to tens of thousands of RMB. Several stylish Tsethang shoulder bags became fashionable items snapped up by foreign journalists.

Tibet’s statistical communiqué on national economic and social development, released in March, showed that the number of businesses had reached 615,700 as of the end of 2025, up 10.5% year-on-year, indicating growing market vitality.

Lhasa deploys drones for seeding, inspections and rescue operations

As more businesses enter the market, emerging industries previously less common in Tibet have also begun to take root. At Nanshan Park in central Lhasa, drones are being used for ecological restoration work, including sowing seeds and planting trees.

Publicly available information shows that several drone companies have established operations or conducted business in Tibet, covering agricultural and forestry work, surveying and inspections, and emergency rescue.

These companies have diversified local industries, broadened Tibetans’ sources of income and enabled residents to find work closer to home.

Sonam Penpa, who has worked at the Pazhu vineyard for six years, was previously a construction worker. The interpreter, speaking on behalf of Sonam Penpa, who could only speak Tibetan, told LHZB, “Before the vineyard was built, he had to travel around to make a living. Now he can work near home, and his income has risen significantly.”

According to Li Xiaoping, vineyard workers such as Sonam Penpa work about six hours a day and earn around 170 RMB. Based on 20 working days a month, they earn 3,400 RMB a month.

Unlike labour-intensive manufacturing, however, such industries more often generate incomes through cooperation with farming households. They create relatively limited direct employment, with stable workforces generally numbering around 100 people or fewer.

Most of these businesses are also still in their developmental stages, with annual revenues generally ranging from several million to several tens of millions of RMB. They remain far from becoming industries capable of supporting local economies.

Development relies on institutional advantages, not the market

Andrew Fischer, a professor at the Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, who has long studied Tibet’s economic development, said in an interview that these businesses are not representative of a modern factory-based economy. Rather, they are better understood as government-led development initiatives that seek to generate income while also aligning with the tourist economy, but they remain quite niche, uncompetitive and subsidised.

“The key question is the scale and prevalence of these industries. Are they employing hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people?” he said.

Tibetan scholar Luorong Zhandui, a professor at Sichuan University, said when interviewed that Tibet is far from the country’s main markets and supply-chain centres. Its development therefore depends mainly on institutional advantages, and “a large portion of state investment in Tibet is aimed at social benefits”.

“Entrepreneurs are not philanthropists. Given costs, profitability and the capacity of the local market, major inland Chinese companies are generally reluctant to invest in Tibet, and it is also difficult for them to survive and grow there,” he said.

Fischer did not deny the importance of state support and subsidies to the economies of remote ethnic minority areas. However, he said that the issue was whether such subsidies genuinely helped Tibetans build the capacity to manage their local economy and infrastructure independently.

Yang Minghong, a professor at Sichuan University’s School of Economics and a full-time researcher at the China Tibetology Research Center, said that Tibet’s commodity economy had long been characterised by small-scale traditional commerce. It had progressed from the past but remained at a relatively early stage. “This is a question of the stage of development. It is not something that any individual or department can achieve overnight,” he added.

He said that Tibet’s development must first improve people’s livelihoods by focusing on everyday needs, employment and income growth. “This is what distinguishes Tibet from other regions in the way it addresses problems.”

One school of thought holds that concepts in Tibetan Buddhism such as reincarnation and fatalism have reduced Tibetans’ desire for wealth and their ability to embrace modern industry. Fischer said such explanations were overly simplistic, and that the issue should be understood holistically through factors such as state governance, market structures and the historical evolution of institutions.

He added that many Tibetans, apart from participating in relatively small-scale niche industries, have limited competitiveness in the broader economy, especially sectors dominated by companies from outside Tibet. This leaves Tibetans relatively marginalised from the dominant flow of value in Tibet’s economy.

‘Pomegranate seeds’ unity slogans found everywhere

“All ethnic groups should remain as closely united as the seeds of a pomegranate.”

On the road from Shannan to Lhasa Gonggar International Airport, billboards bearing this slogan promoting ethnic unity and integration in China appear repeatedly.

The pomegranate-seed metaphor originated from a speech by China’s top leader Xi Jinping at a 2014 work conference in Xinjiang. It has since been repeatedly used in official Chinese discourse concerning Tibet and other ethnic minority regions.

Further along the highway, another large slogan with a more distinctly Tibetan culinary flavour reads: “People of all ethnic groups love one another, like tea and salt that can never be separated.”

Fischer said such slogans were particularly prominent in Tibet and other ethnic minority regions, reflecting the central government’s “security mentality” towards Tibet and similar areas.

Last August, Xi flew to Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, with Wang Huning, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and Cai Qi, director of the General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The three members of the Politburo Standing Committee attended celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region — this was the highest-level delegation in the history of such celebrations.

Xi then stressed that to govern, stabilise and develop Tibet, the first thing is to maintain political stability, social stability, ethnic unity and religious harmony. He urged further efforts to advance the building of a community for the Chinese nation in Tibet.

China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, passed in March this year, for the first time provided a legal explanation of the concept of the Chinese nation as a community. Shortly after the law came into force on 1 July, Wang Huning made another visit to Tibet from 19 to 22 July, his second within a year, conducting a four-day inspection in Lhasa and Ngari prefecture, which borders India and Nepal.

Wang Chan-hsi, an associate research fellow at the Division of National Security Research at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said, “The core objective of Wang Huning’s visit to Tibet was to oversee the implementation of the law there, and it also underscored Beijing’s emphasis on the legislation.”

Wang said the law reflects a more integrated approach to ethnic governance bringing ethnic governance, economic development, social governance, and cultural policies on language and religion under a single framework to be advanced in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing manner.

He added that Tibet had certain characteristics among China’s ethnic minority regions. The integration of Tibetan culture with mainstream culture remained a long-term task. Meanwhile, Tibet sits along the China-India border, where governance involves multiple considerations, including border security, geopolitics, religion and culture. Tibet is therefore currently a key area of governance concern for the central authorities.

Sichuan University’s Yang Minghong also said Tibet’s circumstances were relatively complex, including its stage of development, its religious and cultural background, and the more pronounced impact of international public opinion. As a result, other factors would be considered alongside economic development.

More Tibetan youths choosing to stay

Gesang Lamu (transliteration, 格桑拉姆) , a 20-year-old Tibetan from Shannan who was visiting the viewing platform at Yumbulakang, Tibet’s first palace, told LHZB that she had been to Chongqing and Xi’an. She said, “I would like to visit more of these big cities, but not to work and live there.”

Gesang Lamu is currently a nurse at a local hospital. “The natural scenery and greenery here are so good. It is also quite convenient to watch dramas on Douyin and buy clothes and cosmetics,” she said.

Her views were broadly representative of the young Tibetans I spoke to. They believe that the gap in consumer lifestyles between Tibet and inland cities is steadily narrowing. As jobs in the public sector and state-owned entities are stable, offer relatively good benefits and involve less competition, most prefer to remain in or return to Tibet.

With the development of e-commerce, modern logistics and chain retail, Tibet has in recent years become increasingly connected to consumer markets in inland China. On Lhasa’s commercial streets and in its shopping malls, Luckin Coffee, Chagee and Mixue are no longer novelties. Pop Mart, the globally popular toy brand, also opened two outlets in Lhasa two years ago.

Sichuan University’s Luorong Zhandui said this reflected the significant improvement in Tibet’s economy and living standards, as well as the relatively strong purchasing power of its people, which had encouraged inland Chinese consumer brands to enter the market.

Fischer also said a substantial proportion of urban residents in Tibet have modern consumer spending power. But he noted that this was still fundamentally underpinned by fiscal subsidies, “which are mainly reflected through wages in the state sector”.

He was concerned that as more residents spend their incomes on modern consumer goods, local consumption would become increasingly dependent on goods brought in from inland regions.

Taking the emergence of several Tibetan sweet-tea brands in Chengdu as an example, Luorong Zhandui said exchanges between Tibet and inland China in terms of people, brands and innovation were mutual. He said, “It is a two-way journey and a two-way economic development.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “雪域养蜂酿酒卖泡泡玛特 西藏特色与现代产业能否走出高原反应？”.

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