(TibetanReview.net, Dec07’20) – The GDP of Chinese ruled Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) during the first three quarters of this year was more than 130 billion yuan ($20 billion), which was up 6.3% year-on-year, placing its growth above all other regions and provinces in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), reported China’s official Chinadaily.cn Dec 7. However, the region’s economy strongly relies on projects initiated by the central PRC government and other Chinese provinces, the report noted.
The region had received investments of 59.6 billion yuan from the central government this year, it added. Besides, 540 Tibetan aid projects had been implemented in the region to date, thanks to the financial support. The report added that funds allocated to help TAR had increased 51.3% year-on-year.
Apart from these, the growth was fuelled largely by the bio-economic, tourism, digital and clean energy industries. The digital industry alone saw a year-on-year growth of 37% between January and September this year, the report said.
The Tibet Ningsuan Technology Group, for example, was stated to have invested more than 11.8 billion yuan to build the world’s highest big data centre in Tibet’s capital Lhasa.
The report said that in the last five years, the TAR’s GDP growth had led the PRC with an average annual rate of 9.3%.
Thubten Khedrub, a professor from Tibet University, was cited as saying that if the region could maintain the trend, the economic gap between it and the rest of the PRC would quickly narrow.
