The Party regularly recruits Chinese to skilled jobs as cadres, technicians, and scientists while assigning unskilled Chinese to work on construction sites, in factories, and as road workers. Tibetans have expressed anxiety about the government's active role in taking job opportunities away from Tibetans. They feel that the government prefers to employ Chinese immigrants and does not invest in educating and training Tibetans to compete with the Chinese. The Chinese government repeatedly denies allegations that it practices a policy of population transfer into Tibet. Meanwhile, Tibetans are currently a minority in five of ten autonomous prefectures.
Official sources understate Chinese presence in Tibet.
Authorities recorded the total Tibetan population of all the areas with Tibetan autonomous status as 4.34 million. The non-Tibetan population in the same area was officially given as 1.5 million. Official figures fail to record the non-registered floating Chinese population in Tibet. The floating population includes those who have maintained their household registration in a Chinese province and those who have not been in Tibet for more than one year. This population also includes the large number of settlers who have migrated to Tibet on their own volition and without legal registration.