Rural Urbanization in China's Tibetan Region—Duilongdeqing County as a Typical Example

Abstract

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, China's rural areas embarked on the road to urbanization under the influence of the great tide of reform and the open policy. Has Tibet, a broad, interior region on the southwestern borders of the fatherland, been swept into this urbanization tide? What progress has been made? What are the influences of urbanization on Tibetan society, its economy, and its culture? In November 1993, we made a case study of Duilongdeqing County on the near suburbs of Lhasa to find answers to the above questions.