‘Don’t discriminate against minority nationalities’: practicing Tibetan ethnicity on social media

Through an analysis of popular posts Tibetans shared over the social media application WeChat in 2013 and 2014 and offline discussions about them, this paper shows how Tibetans living in and traveling through Xining City practiced and performed their ethnic identity in the face of perceived harassment. Through their viral posts, they created a cyber-community that contributed to Tibetan ethnic group formation when Tibetans interpreted their ethnic identity as the basis for unjust treatment by the Chinese state and private Han individuals. In online posts the Han are portrayed as harassing Tibetans after terror attacks across China, violating minzu rights, denigrating Tibetan culture and territory, and denying Tibetans equal footing as modern compatriots. Social media are changing the ‘representational politics’ of Tibetan ethnicity, altering participation in the representation of the Tibetan ethnic group. Still, online discourse remains subject to constraints; private offline discussions remain important fora of opinion exchange.     

‘Green Tibetans’ in China: Tibetan geopiety and environmental protection in a multilayered Tibetan landscape

This article examines how certain Tibetans and Han Chinese converts to Tibetan Buddhism in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Beijing are articulating various forms of environmental discourse, both in terms drawn from Tibetan ‘geopiety’, and/or from a Western model of environmental protection. In relation to these trends, I further explore how certain Tibetans are articulating their understanding of Tibetan Buddhism within an apparently localised context, while other Tibetans are more obviously appropriating from discourses originating in the West and/or wider Chinese society to become more ‘modern’, while at the same time retaining a conceptualisation of Tibetan Buddhism that is hybridised between traditional and modernist understandings. I also explore how some Han practitioners may seek to become more ‘Tibetan’ by endorsing localised forms of Tibetan Buddhism and/or ‘performing’ certain Tibetan modes of religiosity, while others, due in part to geographical distance from the Tibetan landscape and cultural context, endorse an understanding of Tibetan Buddhism which is more closely tied to discourses of environmental protection originating in the West. In both Tibetan and Han Chinese cases, informants reflect upon their own beliefs and identity by gazing at the Other (Tibetan, Han, or Westerner), and marking out differences and similarities between Self and Other.     

The failure of education in preparing Tibetans for market participation

Since the Chinese government began implementing economic reforms in the late 1970s, China has undergone profound economic change and growth. However, this growth has not been equitable, and the present economic gap between east and west China is wide. The Tibetans, a minority group in the ‘west’, are in a particularly dire situation. Although China's strategic policy of developing the west has provided many business opportunities, Tibetans are poorly equipped to respond to and take advantage of these opportunities. The reasons restricting effective market participation are complex and difficult to assess. There are no easy answers. Many political, social, cultural and environmental factors explain the difficulties encountered by Tibetan communities. However, by studying current educational practice with a focus on secondary education in Tibetan areas of China, this paper argues that poor education is among crucial factors explaining the inability of Tibetans to compete economically with non-Tibetan migrants.     

Policy impact on Tibetan market participation

Since the Chinese government began implementing economic reforms in the late 1970s, China has undergone profound economic change and growth. Since then, associated policies have provided many business opportunities in Tibetan areas of China, but Tibetans are poorly equipped to respond to and take advantage of these opportunities. The factors restricting effective market participation are complex and difficult to assess. There are no easy answers. Many political, social, cultural and environmental factors explain the difficulties encountered by Tibetan communities. However, this paper argues that relevant economic development policy is among crucial factors explaining the inability of Tibetans to compete with non-Tibetan migrants.     

Outsider ethnic minorities and wage determination in China

While some studies on urban ethnic minorities in China indicate that they earn lower wages relative to the Han majority, others show little evidence of this gap. To understand this contradiction, the authors propose that the primary issue is a failure to fully disaggregate ethnic minority groups’ labour market experiences. Leveraging a large data set looking at China's ethnic minorities, findings suggest that “outsider minorities”, such as Tibetans and Turkic groups, suffer a significant wage penalty when controlling for covariates, while minorities in aggregate do not. These findings are robust across various specifications and have notable theoretical and policy implications.     

Tibetan Population in China: Myths and Facts Re-examined

China is not only the most populous country in the world, but also a multinational country with 56 ethnic groups. Tibetans (4.6 million in 1990) ranked in number as the ninth largest minority group. The Tibet question has attracted wide publicity in the Western media in recent years. The Chinese government is frequently criticised for political oppression and human rights violation in Tibet, particularly in three population-related areas: genocide, forced birth control programmes and population transfer. Surprisingly, international demographic circles show little interest in these controversies. This paper aims to re-examine the myths and facts about the Tibetan population in China, in an attempt to achieve a better understanding of the Tibet question as a whole. This paper is organised roughly into four parts: introduction, including the definition of Tibet, total Tibetan population in China, an examination of the 'genocide' myth, and a review of family planning programmes and population transfer in Tibetan inhabited areas. Government data used in this paper come primarily from various publications of the 1990 National Census results. Information compiled by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile (TGIE), is used as a comparison, in addition to some other Western sources. Analyses show that the 'genocide' myth is not supported by indirect estimates on Tibetan mortality, and the 'forced birth control' allegation lacks solid demographic foundation. On the contrary, Tibetan population has experienced an unprecedented growth since the early 1960s. Still dominant in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Tibetans were only slightly outnumbered by non-Tibetans in other Tibetan prefectures in neighbouring provinces. However, the number of non-Tibetans transferring into ethnographic Tibet is on the rise. Instead of explicit resettlement programmes, the migration flow is triggered primarily by structural transformation and the Government's modernisation policy. It is historic coincidence if the current policies run counter to the interest of Tibetan nationalists. However, under no circumstances should one believe that time is running out for a political solution of the Tibet question.     

On artistic and cultural generations in Northeastern Tibet

Beginning in the 1980s, and continuing for over three decades since, a particular generation of Tibetans from the Northeastern Tibetan region known as Amdo, and particularly from the northern parts of China’s Qinghai province, has proven extremely productive. Why has this generation, born primarily between 1959 and 1967, been so incredibly successful? This article examines the contextual factors that may have contributed to the incredible success of this generation. This ranges from the policies and circumstances that affected their births, and the state of the cultural field at the time they reached adulthood. Personal experience narratives, autobiographies, and scholarly studies then reveal how this generation was able to access the intellectual field. Finally, I briefly discuss how the Amdo Tibetan intellectual field compares with other Tibetan and ethnic experiences in the People’s Republic of China.     

Dispersion to Oceania and developed Asia

Since most of South Asian Tibetan refugees have not secured formal immigration status in their host countries, their dispersion has expanded to other continents. Compared to those Tibetans living in South Asia, Europe and North America, Tibetans in Australia and New Zealand emigrated there on their own, married citizens, or went to study, work, or engage in religious or cultural activities. Tibetan diasporization in Oceania has proven successful. There are only around 60 Tibetans residing in Japan, some of them hold a Taiwanese (Republic of China) passport, which makes it easier to obtain a Japanese visa, and others are fulltime staff members of the liaison office of the Dalai Lama in Japan. Under Seoul's stringent immigration laws, less than 20 Tibetans reside in South Korea, mostly on work visas. Tibetan exiles and their supporters often protest to the Visiting Chinese Leaders or Embassy of China in Oceania and developed Asian countries.     

Retired Tibetan migrants’ adaptation experiences in Chengdu,China

Diverse types of mobility have emerged in contemporary China, among which consumption-led ethnic retired migrants have received little academic attention. This study addresses the seasonal mobility of retired Tibetan migrants who previously had careers in governmental and public sectors in Tibet. After retirement, they purchase second-home apartments in Chengdu for health and leisure reasons. Through semistructured interviews, nonparticipant observation, and the application of Schnell’s multidimensional model, this article analyzes the migration and adaptation experiences of retired Tibetan migrants in Chengdu. It is revealed that, physically, they reside in mixed communities and share activity spaces with the local people, and, socially, maintain their life-long social relationships and form new local relationships. They feel satisfied and comfortable in their new situation, maintain their primary identity as Tibetan, and gradually establish a sense of home in Chengdu. Their political privilege and governmental support in the destination also contribute to their positive migration and adaptation experiences.     

Tibetans in Europe

This article, mostly based on the information given to the authors by representatives of Tibetan Communities in Europe, focuses on Tibetans in Europe. It tackles the difficult question of statistical data before addressing the current situation of Tibetans in Europe, and more specifically in Switzerland, France and Germany, which constitute very different cases, both in terms of the socio-economic positions held by the Tibetans and in terms of the relationship established by the Tibetans with the countries of residence. It then deals with the link Tibetans in Europe have with the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, notably through the Offices of Tibet established in Geneva, Paris, Brussels and London. It also addresses the question of how Tibetans can work as a group in Europe. It thus looks at the type of connection that Tibetan associations and non-governmental organisations, Tibet support groups, as well as Tibetan monasteries and Buddhist centres can help establish between Tibetans throughout Europe. It concludes by examining the attraction of Europe to young Tibetans: what are indeed the new possibilities and challenges they face when coming to Europe?     

‘Class’, ‘Race’ and Language: imagining China and the discourse on the category ‘Han’ in the writing of Marxist revolutionary Qu Qiubai (1899–1935)

This study investigates the discursive peregrinations of the ‘Han’ category in the writings of the Chinese revolutionary, theoretician and activist Qu Qiubai. In the papers he wrote at the beginning of the 1930s dealing with the questions of language and writing, the author made singular use of the concept ‘Han’ to talk about the language/writing of the ‘Han’ (Hanzi, Hanyu) as a racial or ethnic group (Hanzu). Qu elaborated a discourse which articulated and mobilized, sometimes in a contradictory manner, the ‘Han’ category both as a ‘race’ and as a social class. Going beyond the race/class dialectic, I will try to show that these texts question the territorial, cultural and ethnic boundaries of ‘China’ and its homogeneity. Following this argument, this paper demonstrates how Qu's attempt to define ‘Chinese language(s)’ helps us to elucidate the complex articulation between China as a discursive and spatial category, the ‘Han’ category, and the other nationalities in the Chinese space. By questioning the homogeneity of the linguistic identity of China, using the word zhongguohua, Qu Qiubai unveiled an unstable and fragile imaginary relative to China and its so-called majority ethnic group, the Han.     

Manufacturing Naxi’s original ecological culture in contemporary China

For over a decade, original ecological (yuanshengtai原生态) has contested ethnic (minzu) as an influential framework in representing minority folk culture in Chinese official and popular media. This article explores the ideological implications of such a shift in the context of state-minority relationships. By examining Han elites’ invention of the neologism and Naxi elites’ adaptations, I argue that YST transforms local ethnic categories into a transethnic, translocal, and transnational concept, and therefore allows both the nation state and the minority groups to promote their own versions of ethnic identities. Compared to the antagonistic model between state domination and minority resistance, YST reflects a shift from minority political self-determination to cultural self-representation in the drastically changing global environments.     

Investigating the role of multilevel social capital in ethnic income inequality in the Chinese labour market

This study examines to what extent individual- and county-level social capital respectively and jointly explain the Chinese ethnic income inequality. Using two waves of the Chinese General Social Survey data, social capital is operationalised into extensivity, upper reachability, mean prestige, and range via the position generator. Results show that social capital is unevenly distributed along the ethnic line in China, minorities are in disadvantaged position in accessing social capital, especially the number of occupation accessed and mean occupational prestige, compared with Han. When cross-level interactions are taken into account, with the increase of county-level social capital, its positive effect on minorities’ income attenuates while it become stronger for Han’s income. The differential returns of social capital on income between minorities and Han may be attributable to the mean prestige of their accessed position networks. Finally, the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis uncovers that when all variables are controlled for, there is still approximately 24 % of the income gap between minorities and Han remained unexplained, indicating the severe ethnic wage penalty minorities are facing in the Chinese labour market.     

From Ethnic segregation to impact integration: state schooling and identity construction for rural Tibetans

This paper examines the context of ethnic identity formation in schools for rural Tibetan children. It reviews rural primary education within Tibet and the secondary education for Tibetans in boarding schools across China. Data are presented on policies, student recruitment, curriculum, teachers and the campus environment, as they impact on students' identity formation. Although there is little that is multicultural about the learning process in these schools, these schools do not strictly deny Tibetan culture to Tibetan children. The school architecture, sculptures, photographs, wall paintings and so forth provide representations of Tibetan culture, albeit selectively and interpreted by the state in terms of the ideological themes of national unity, patriotism, revolutionary traditions, civilised behaviour and love of Tibet. The conclusion points to a make‐or‐break opportunity for state education to support a more even‐handed cultural policy, rather than the dichotomy of segregation and impact integration.     

Being Han in a multi-ethnic region of the People’s Republic of China

This article draws on ethnographic material collected in Yangzong county of Yunnan, a province well known for its ethnic diversity. It deals with how the members of this peripheral Han population are categorised by others and by themselves in relation to minority groups and notions of Chinese identity. The specificity of the Han of Yangzong is framed by an ongoing tension between two contrasting points of view: they appear both as a local ethnic minority among others, and, notably by means of ritualised theatrical representations, as the legitimate representatives of the national majority. The Han people of Yunnan, who represent two-thirds of the province’s population, have been largely ignored by contemporary research. However, this study sheds light on the necessary interplay of different levels of identity and asserts the understanding of the category of ‘Han’ as perceived by the Chinese State as well as by the local people.     

Paradise Under Construction: Minorities,Myths and Modernity in Northwest Yunnan

Until recently, Zhongdian County was a little known corner of Northwest Yunnan. All that changed when it began to call itself 'Shangri-la', the mythical paradise of the Tibetan Himalayas. On 17 December 2001, after years of intense lobbying by the county government, the State Council finally granted Zhongdian permission to officially rename itself 'Shangri-la County'. This article is an account of the economic and political forces behind the campaign for Shangri-la, including discussion of the Shangri-la Arts Festival in May 2002. The paper also takes up the dynamics between official and local identities as ethnic tourism expands in this Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It argues that Shangri-la's new tourism could be a force for strengthening ethnic identities, even if those identities are simultaneously rooted in the development of the modern Chinese state.     

A Wanderer in a Distant Place: Tibetan Exile Youth,Literacy, and Emotion

Among Tibetans living in exile in India, expressions of longing and sadness for family, friends and places in Tibet are not uniformly shared across members of the community. Time and distance have faded and idealized their homeland in the memories of long‐term exiles. Yet, for a segment of this community called New Arrivals, who have only relatively recently left Tibet, people and places “back home” are real and immediate. The immediacy of these ties to Chinese Tibet, however, often engenders perceptions of New Arrivals as Sinicised, backward and uneducated. This paper focuses on these New Arrivals in the enclave of McLeod Ganj, India, home to the Tibetan exile government and approximately 7,000 Tibetan exiles. In this predominately Tibetan area, the division between long‐term exiles and New Arrivals constitutes the dominant social boundary among McLeod Ganj Tibetans, a division that is most prominent among McLeod Ganj’s Tibetan youth. Drawing from community discourses, social networks and practices, and educational institutions, I analyse everyday written forms (e.g., poetry, letters, diary entries) to suggest that through these writings, New Arrival youth are constituting and reconstructing their marginalized position within the community. In an exile community where resources are limited, improving the position of New Arrivals can be challenging. Here, I suggest two approaches to the difficulties these youth face. First, re‐educating the larger Tibetan community in order to breakdown the prejudices that exist toward these new exiles. Second, refashioning the existing educational institutions for New Arrivals to better prepare them for employment in the Tibetan communities or elsewhere in India.     

Prevalence of ethnic intermarriage in Kunming: Social exchange or insignificance of ethnicity?

This paper examines the socioeconomic status matching patterns among minority – Han intermarried couples in urban China, using the 1 per cent census data of the 1990 Chinese census and marriage registration data of a multi-ethnic city in southwest China. It considers three main findings. First, ethnic minorities were commonly married out to the majority Han in the city, and ethnicity does not seem to be an important consideration in mate selection. Second, status mismatching is based on gender not ethnicity. That is, there was no exchange between Han ethnic status and minority socioeconomic status, which has often been found in the North American context. Third, given that the majority of children of minority – Han intermarriage identify as ethnic minority, the insignificance of ethnicity in mate selection does not necessarily imply the total openness of ethnic boundaries.     

Fostering benign Tibetan nationalism: Tibetan schooling passions in the Diaspora

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on the ‘manufacturing of citizenship’ has focused primarily on European and American nationalism. Scholars have noted the scarcity of research on identity construction among children in the Diaspora. This study explores the role of the altruistic principle and the Middle Way approach (a political strategy for the resolution of Sino-Tibetan issues) on the construction of nationalism amongst Tibetan children in Diaspora. The 2004 Basic Education Policy for Tibetans stresses the principle of ‘altruism’ in the identity construction of Tibetan children. Inclusive nationalism is germane in the schooling process. The study presents an interview analysis of four Tibetan Education Ministers about the intersection of altruistic principle, the Middle Way approach, and Tibetan nationalism. Additionally, 34 school children (14 boys and 20 girls) from the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades participated in a drawing activity. The analysis of children’s ‘cultural artifacts of nationalism’ is also included. The study found that neither the Tibetan children nor the Ministers expressed any feeling of hatred or animosity towards Chinese nationals. The willingness and desire to co-exist in harmony with their counterparts were evident. The principle of altruism is deeply entrenched in the Middle Way approach and Tibetan nationalism.     

The Farmhouse Joy (nongjiale) Movement in China's Ethnic Minority Villages

In China, establishments known as ‘Farmhouse Joy restaurants’ (nongjiale) which originally emerged around the suburbs of big cities and were associated with the foodstuffs of ethnic majority Han Chinese farmers, have now, as a result of a variety of development projects and local initiatives, emerged in ethnic minority and other remote villages located deep in the mountains. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in villages in Hubei and Yunnan provinces, this study examines how a new conception of ‘original ecology’ has played a dynamic role in the transformation of these nongjiale in ethnic and remote areas. This transformation results from a new symbolic synthesis and rapprochement between what are commonly understood to be ‘farmers' foods’, desires to experience an original ecology and understandings of ethnicity in China, a synthetic construction clearly aimed at attracting urbanite consumption. Important differences have emerged between villages participating in this process of synthesis. Those villages with strong claims to ethnic minority status have to carefully convert what are in fact ethnic foods into what are seen as ethnically unmarked ‘farmers' foods' in their nongjiale, while villages without such ethnic backgrounds paradoxically have to construct artificial ethnic symbols by mechanisms of imitation or pretence.