The substance of a story I reported in April, that partly earned me a cuff on the ears by the Foreign Ministry, is slowly filling out.

It involves the large-scale relocation of Tibetan herdsmen and their families to new settlements.

The latest account comes from Xinhua, the state news agency. It says 61,899 Tibetan herdsmen will be moved by the end of this year from an ecologically vulnerable river basin in Qinghai province that is the source of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. The province, immediately to the north of the Tibetan autonomous region, has built 35 resettlement communities, and plans to build 51 more.

By the year 2010, 100,000 herdsmen and their families will have been moved, the report says, adding:

“To move the herdsmen from pasture lands they have inhabited for generations is not easy,” said Deni, head of a community in Darlag County of Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Golog. “But due to erosion and desertification, more and more people are realizing the benefits of resettling.”

“The government has done a lot to persuade those who are truly reluctant to move. The relocation is in line with the will of the herdsmen, not by force,” he said, noting many herdsmen felt easier after seeing the school, hospital, and the facilities in the community.

My earlier story said Tibet had relocated up to 10 percent of its population, around 250,000 herdsmen, into “socialist villages,” in a move to improve their living conditions but also without much real consultation or input from the herders themselves.

While Qinghai is not Tibet, it is home to a large ethnic Tibetan population.

Xinhua is doing its utmost to present the herder relocations as voluntary. Here is an earlier story, dated June 20, that also carries a denial that any of the relocations are forced or under pressure. Is this true? Many of these nomads have been living for centuries as roaming herders. So the relocations are not only a physical move but also a dramatic change in lifestyle for them. This BBC story raises some of these questions.