The presence of Tibetans in government jobs in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) has diminished dramatically over the last four years due to China's "discriminating policies", a report says.

The London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN) says the "dramatic changes" have been revealed in the Tibet Statistical Yearbook of 2004, the most recent official statistics published in the TAR.

When Beijing began its "Western Development Drive" in 2000 to reinforce the concept of "One China", Tibetans held 71.6 percent of state cadre jobs in the TAR. However, since 2000, the number has declined sharply. In 2003, according to the yearbook, Tibetans accounted for 49.7 percent of the cadre jobs.

In terms of the total number of staff and workers in state-owned units in the TAR, employment fell from 149,690 in 2000 to 136,646 in 2003, while that of Tibetans slipped from almost 106,756 to 88,301.

"The Tibetan share fell therefore from 71 percent to 65 percent of such employment over these four years," TIN said in its report published last week.

According to it, the drop is due to China's discriminating policies against Tibetans.

"Despite the massive amount of funding from Beijing that has gone into both government administration and construction over these years, current policies effectively discriminate Tibetans from state employment," it said.

Though agriculture accounts for the lion's share of employment - about 65 percent in 2003, according to the yearbook - the wages are much lower compared to the state cadre jobs.

The state cadre jobs, though constituting only 11 percent of the total work force, represent the top of the social hierarchy. Tibetan farmers often pray at the holiest shrines in Lhasa, the capital of the TAR, that their children might get state cadre jobs or they themselves be re-born as such officials, TIN said.

According to TIN, the two single largest state cadre job categories in both the TAR and the rest of China are generally "education" and "public management and social organisation".

In the rest of China, the state employs more people in the education sector than in management. But in the TAR, the yearbook shows Beijing employing over twice the number of employees for management than in education or even health related services.

This, the New York-based organisation says, reflects that in the TAR, Beijing "places much more emphasis on administration than on human development considerations."

The TIN also has offices in the US and Asia and monitors political, social and economic situation in Tibet.