Gateway to Tibet at ease and crawling with troops

By John Ruwitch

KANGDING, China (Reuters) - Under harsh mountain sunlight, camouflaged soldiers with helmets, assault rifles and tear gas launchers patrol the main street in rows of three.

A bookshop owner watched them march past in lock step. "I'm glad the troops are here," said the woman, a member of China's majority Han ethnic group. "It's secure."

Here in Kangding, a town in the western part of Sichuan province where ethnic Tibetan mountain-dwllers mingle with Han Chinese, the meaning of the show of force is plain: trouble will not be tolerated.

On Friday, Buddhist monk-led protests against Chinese rule culminated in rioting in Lhasa, the cultural and religious centre of the Tibetan world where many Tibetans feel they are treated like second-class citizens.

The city was locked down, but the ethnic tensions have boiled over elsewhere in China and reports have emerged of protests and violence in monastery towns in nearby Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan.

Couched 2,500 meters above sea level, Kangding is the start of the Tibetan world as entered from the east. It is the biggest settlement in Ganzi Prefecture, a region that Tibetans historically called "Kham" and consider a distinctive part of wider Tibet.

From here, a two-lane mountain road connects Sichuan to Tibet. Lately, it has been filled with convoys of soldiers heading west to keep order.

Ganzi has seen a share of local Tibetan unrest in the past, and two locals, including a Buddhist monk, were convicted in 2002 of setting off bombs against Chinese targets. One was executed, but their defenders and Chinese rights campaigners have said the charges were gravely flawed and apparently trumped up.

But in Kangding, called Dardo in Tibetan, ethnic Tibetans and Hans alike say with considerable conviction there will be no problems.

The reasons are manifold. The army presence is considerable, and in a region where Tibetan-dominated highlands overlap Han-dominated plains, the population is about evenly split. And the economy has prospered on the back of a tourism boom in recent years and both groups have benefited, they say.

The local government is also betting that an airport being built nearby will help attract more visitors.

Protests elsewhere have been led by monks for the most part, and there is no major monastery in Kangding.

"Han-Tibetan relations are actually not bad here," said a Han barber who moved from Chengdu to Kangding more than 10 years ago when, he said, things were more tense. "There is a better understanding of one another now."

Monks at a small monastery nearby echoed the sentiment, although avoided lengthy conversations with a foreigner by dashing off to study or meet friends.

"It's a good place here," said one.