The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China: A Study in the Economics of Marginalization

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Series: Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture, Lexington Books Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Since the central government of China started major campaigns for western development in the mid-1990s, the economies of the Tibetan areas in Western China have grown rapidly and living standards have improved. However, grievances and protests have also intensified, as dramatically evidenced by the protests that spread across most Tibetan areas in spring 2008 and by the more recent wave of self-immolation protests that started in 2011. This book offers a detailed and careful exploration of this synergy between development and conflict in Tibet from the mid-1990s onwards, when rapid economic growth has occurred in tandem with a particularly assimilationist approach of integrating Tibet into China. Fischer argues that the intensified economic integration of Tibet into regional and national development strategies on these assimilationist terms, within a context of continued political disempowerment, and through the massive channeling of subsidies through Han Chinese dominated entities based outside the Tibetan areas, has accentuated various dynamics of subordination and marginalization faced by Tibetans of all social strata. Whether or not these dynamics are intended to be discriminatory, they effectively accentuate the discriminatory, assimilationist and disempowering characteristics of development, even while producing considerable improvements in the material consumption of local Tibetans. In particular, strong cultural, linguistic and political biases intensify ethnically-exclusionary dynamics among middle and upper strata of the Tibetan labor force, which is problematic considering the rapid shift of Tibetans out of agriculture and towards the highly subsidy-dependent sectors of the economy, especially in urban areas. The combination of these disempowering dynamics with the sheer speed of dislocating and disembedding social change provides important insights into recent tensions given that it has accentuated insecurity while restricting the ability of Tibetan communities to adapt in autonomous and self-determined ways. The study represents one of the only macro-level and systemic analyses of its kind in the scholarship on Tibet, based on accessible economic analysis and extensive interdisciplinary fieldwork. It also carries much interest for those interested in China and in the interactions between development, inequality, exclusion and conflict more generally. Table of Contents List of Figures, Maps, and Tables List of Abbreviations Note on Tibetan Spelling Glossary (a Note on Terminology) Acknowledgments Preface: Reflections on Researching Development in Tibet Chapter 1: Introduction: The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China Chapter 2: The Inception of Modern Development in Tibet under PRC Rule Chapter 3: Population Foundations of Marginalization in Tibet Chapter 4: Instituting Economic Growth and Marginalization in Tibet Chapter 5: The Great Transformation of Tibet? Rapid Labor Transitions, Polarization, and the Emerging Fault Lines of Stratification in Urban Tibet Chapter 6: 6The Education-Employment Nexus of Urban Exclusion in Tibet Chaptre 7: Subsistence Capacity and the Material Foundations of Resistance Chapter 8: Boycotts and Religious Networks: Counter-Strategies of Integration into the Heart of the New China Chapter 9: Conclusion: From Polarization to Protest in Contemporary Tibet Bibliography Index About the Author