CHENGDU, January 2 (Xinhuanet) — The days that Tibetans passed oral messages by trudges on the back of horses and yaks half a century ago have gone. Nowadays, modern information facilities and network technologies are indispensable in the life of Tibetans.
“Moreover, a ‘digital Tibet’ is being constructed to break the monopoly of spreading information on Tibet by foreign countries on the Internet,” Li Tao, a Tibetologist, said at a recent academic meeting in Chengdu, capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Zeng Zhongyi, general manager of the Tibet Telecom Company, said that the “digital Tibet” refers to the information modernization in Tibet.
The “digital Tibet” will help overcome the traffic obstruction on the “roof of the world”, and let people around the world get to know the real Tibet, Zeng said. Chinese central and local government will increase investment in information facilities in the region and the optical fiber cables will reach each counties in Tibet by 2004.
Zeng said that in view of the fact that Tibet has vast land and small population, the region has made a policy giving priority to the development of information industry. As a part of the “digital Tibet”, a Window’s platform compatible with Tibetan, Chinese and English languages has recently been developed by the Tibet University.
