At least 200 mostly Tibetan students have been protesting in a western Chinese town, complaining that people from outside the region have been given jobs promised to local university graduates, a US-based broadcaster said yesterday.
The report highlighted tensions in China's poor west as the government encourages members of the country's ethnic Han majority to migrate to the area in an effort to integrate it with the booming east.
The protest in Golog Prefecture in Qinghai province has been under way since Sept. 21 outside government offices, Radio Free Asia reported.
It said the demonstrators accused local officials of encouraging families to pay high education fees by promising government jobs, but then giving the posts to people from outside the region.
Local officials were trying to defuse the situation and initially provided food and tents to the protesters, RFA said, citing unidentified witnesses and local officials.
"They were not shouting or raising slogans but protesting in silence," an unnamed local Chinese official was quoted as saying.
Phone calls yesterday to police and local government offices in Golog weren't answered.
Beijing has been spending heavily on economic development in Tibet and other western areas.
But many complain the benefits go mostly to ethnic Han migrants from China's east. Qinghai once was part of Tibet and the area has a large ethnic Tibetan population.
In Golog, the protesters' "main complaint was that jobs are given to outside candidates who are brought into the area, and they demanded that local applicants should be given preference," it quoted a local resident as saying. "Moreover, they do have written assurance of jobs from government officials."
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