Bhutan, the world's last remaining Shangri-la, received only 7,000 foreign tourists (excluding Indians) last year, and it's not complaining. This year it expects around 10,000 and thinks that's good enough. It issues no more than 9,000 visas a year and believes that's a manageable limit.
Well, it certainly reflects one view of how a particular country wants to develop, especially one that measures its growth against an index of gross domestic happiness, not gross domestic product.
Bhutan has made a deliberate choice. It doesn't want millions of tourists swarming all over the country. It doesn't want the backpacking crowd and all that goes with it, like drugs and pollution.
It wants elite, discriminating visitors who won't meddle with its natural environment, will spend big (at least $ 200 a day), stay in exclusive hotels and resorts, and are not particularly looking for a sightseeing holiday. Bhutan has decided to preserve itself in its present pristine state.
Last January, the government outlawed the sale of tobacco products. In March, it banned smoking in public places. Swimming is forbidden in rivers and lakes, and mountains cannot be climbed.
There are discos and karaoke bars in the capital city of Thimpu, but 70 per cent of the country must remain under forests. There are only some 26,000 vehicles in the country as of now, and the government is already worried.
Now look at Tibet, and in particular Lhasa, and you get a different view of development. Being very big and having a small population, this Chinese autonomous region is still an unpolluted paradise, but Lhasa is not as the Dalai Lama had left it in 1959.
It was 3 sq km in size then, it's 54 sq km now. There were half a dozen cars then, there's one for every 23 residents now, besides 770 buses and 1,200 taxis.
There was just one road then, there are 241 km. of city roads now, including an eight-lane boulevard. There was just the Potala then, and the monasteries.
Now there are high-rise buildings, jumbo neon signs, Pajeros and BMWs, Internet cafes, saunas, food-and-drink plazas, shopping centres, supermarkets, bowling alleys, thermal pools, theatres showing western movies (Star Wars III -- Revenge of the Sith was showing in May), and more than 220 hotels and guest houses with a total of 8,805 guest rooms.
Nearly 100 industrial enterprises have already been set up in and around Lhasa. Carlsberg has just established a joint venture with Lhasa Beer Co.
Beijing has poured an average of $1.2 billion a year to start big projects in Tibet and upgrade its infrastructure, particularly roads. There are more than 20,000 km of paved roads in Tibet already and more are being added every year.
Last May, a colourful, 928-metre bridge on Lhasa River, facing the Potala, was completed, making the city's access to the interiors easier.
Tourism is on the increase and foreign tourists are arriving in greater numbers. Over 51,000 of them visited Lhasa in 2003. There's now a regular bus between Kathmandu and Lhasa, which foreign backpackers find particularly attractive.
There are four direct flights daily from Chengdu to Lhasa, besides flights from Beijing and Xian. When the Qinghai-Tibetan Railway, linking Golmud in northwest China's Qinghai province and Lhasa, opens in 2007, Tibetan tourism will receive a special boost.
There are people, especially in the West, who don't like all this, but the Tibetans aren't complaining. Economic growth under Beijing has brought them a level of prosperity that they couldn't even dream of in earlier times.
Over the past decade, Tibet's GDP has grown at more than 10 per cent a year, reaching $2.55 billion in 2004. This year, per capita GDP is expected to cross $1,000.
Many herdsmen now live in beautiful homes with TVs, washing machines, and solar energy stoves. For Lhasa's 400,000 residents, the good life never appeared so attractive.
Would they want to give it up to keep the city where it used to be 50 years ago, so that foreign tourists could come and gawk at it in appreciative wonder?
To foreign tourists visiting Phuket soon after the December 2004 tsunami had levelled the famous, and overbuilt, Thai island resort, it was like rediscovering paradise in the raw. They said they loved Phuket's return to nature.
But families whose economic prosperity depended on Phuket's continued growth weren't amused. So weren't many in the developing world by a recent Worldwatch Institute warning that the Chinese model of economic growth wasn't sustainable and shouldn't be followed.
For most developing nations, applying a brake on growth means denying their people the quality of life that others enjoy.
The bottom line is: Bhutan is a country one may admire, but China is the country everyone would like to follow.
