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The "Tibet Issue" Between East

and West
a
Wang Hui
a
Department of Chinese Language and Literature,
Tsinghua University
Published online: 20 Dec 2014.

To cite this article: Wang Hui (2010) The "Tibet Issue" Between East and West,
Chinese Sociology & Anthropology, 42:4, 7-30

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/CSA0009-4625420401

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 Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, vol. 42, no. 4, Summer 2010, pp. 7–30.
© 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 0009–4625/2011 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/CSA0009-4625420401

Wang Hui
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The “Tibet Issue” Between East and

West
Orientalism, Ethnic Regional Autonomy, and the
Politics of Dignity

On March 14, 2008 and slightly afterward, riots against local commercial es-
tablishments (operated mainly by Han and Hui) and demonstrations targeting
the government broke out in Lhasa, the Sichuan Aba district, and Tibetan areas
in Qinghai and Gansu. Western opinion at once directed its focus on Lhasa,
the Dalai Lama, and groups of Tibetan exiles. China’s official media lashed
back at Western public opinion. Both discourses revolved around the violence
and on the Tibetan Independence movement in other countries, but rarely, if
ever, touched on the reasons for the March 14th incident from the perspec-
tive of social crises. The passing of the Olympic torch started up worldwide
virtually at the same time, only to be seriously impeded in Paris, London,
San Francisco, and other cities in the West by Tibetan groups in exile and

English translation © 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc, from the Chinese original: Wang Hui,
“Dong xi fang zhi jian de ‘xizang wenti’—dongfang zhuyi, minzu quyu zizhi yu
zunyan zhengzhi,” Tianya (Frontiers), no. 4 (2008): 173–92, abridged. Translated
by Ted Wang.
Wang Hui is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature,
Tsinghua University. His research focuses on contemporary chinese literature and
intellectual history.
This paper emerged from an interview by Zhang Xiang, the 21st Century Economic
Reports reporter, with the author on April 19, 2008, and after more than a month of
repeated revisions and recompilation, became an independent thesis that was published
in the Tianya (Frontiers) magazine, under the title “Orientalism, Ethnic Regional Au-
tonomy and the Politics of Dignity.” Feedback was received from many readers and
friends following its publication, and after more than a year of research and reflection,
extensive additions and revisions were made to the text in June and July, 2009.

7
 8 chinese sociology and anthropology

independence movements, while Western politicians and mainstream media

subjected China to one-sided criticism. Incensed by these circumstances,
students living in China and abroad staged demonstrations to protect the
Olympic torch, opposed the Western media’s discriminatory statements, and
resisted the Tibetan Independence movement. The younger generation used
the Internet to strike back at Western public opinion and start up an Internet
counter-resistance movement, a phenomenon heretofore without precedent.
All these events created a dramatic situation imbued with several possible
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variations. How was one to understand Western society’s attitude toward the
Tibet issue? How should one interpret the Tibet crisis among China’s market-
oriented reform? How should one see the intervention in this issue by the new
generation in China and abroad? And more important, why was it that the
two opposing responses described above directed their focus on nationalism
rather than on the social conditions that triggered the emergence of the Tibet
crisis? All of these are major issues confronting present-day China and the
present-day world. I myself am not an expert on Tibetan research, but given
the grimness and urgency of the matter, I shall venture, at the risk of being
seen as shallow and crude, to offer some undeveloped views for criticism
and discussion.

The Fantasies of Two Kinds of Orientalism

Different kinds of people support “Tibetan independence,” and apart from the
criticisms of China’s politics from the angles of democracy and human rights,
there are three aspects that deserve attention from the perspective of history:
(1) knowledge about Tibet in the West is deeply rooted in their Orientalist
information, which to this day has not been clarified or sorted out and exerts
a strong effect on Europeans; (2) manipulation of public opinion and the
organization of political activities by specific political forces, which for the
most part affects the United States; and (3) sympathy for Tibet is mixed with
concern about, fear and rejection of, and aversion to China––especially to a
China that is registering a rapid economic growth and possesses a radically
different political system. This aspect infects all countries in the world except
those of the third world. These three aspects are related not only to national-
ism, but have even more to do with colonialism, imperialism, the history of
the cold war, and the inequalities of globalization.
Let us first address the issue of Orientalism and its effects on cold war cul-
ture and politics. In the West, Tibetology has never pertained to the domain of
Chinese research and, as [Edward] Said stated, its artificially devised model.
The early missionaries had two views about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
One was to regard these as [the outcome of] Christian believers or disciples
 Summer 2010  9

spreading the Gospel across Asia Minor, Central Asia, and China during the
Middle Ages.1 The other view maintained that Buddhism was the work of
Satan. These two views never died out, and revived from time to time in dif-
ferent forms during the so-called eras of Enlightenment and secularization.
Whether Tibet was regarded as another homeland for Christians or as a world
“manifestly similar to Catholicism,” created by “the cunning of Satan,” they
were both ways of handling and adjusting the East, based on the position of
the East in Europe’s Western experience, and I call them the fantasies of two
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different kinds of Orientalism.

The views on Tibet, held by contemporary thinkers in Europe, are not
only traced back to missionary accounts, but are also rooted in their differ-
ing attitudes toward Catholicism. Ippolito Desideri (1684–1733), one of the
founders of European Tibetology, conceived the fixed viewpoint—which also
produced the greatest effect on the image of Tibet in the West—that Tibet
was a peaceful nation.2 Johann Gottfried Herder, on the other hand, saw simi-
larities between Tibetan Buddhism and Catholicism in that it was a “papal
religion.”3 The core of Immanuel Kant’s view on Tibet was that an occult and
ancient relationship exists between Europe and Tibet, and he maintained at
the same time that the Tibetans and peoples of India, Japan, and China are
all “strange” hybrids.4 [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel lumped Lamaism
into a single category with various other types of superstition and idol wor-
ship that he saw as being of an inferior order.5 In Hegel’s narrations of world
history, the mysterious East was fixed in the recesses of history precisely in
his world-historical accounts.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, knowledge about Tibet became
connected to theosophy. In 1875, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Henry Steel
Olcott, Quan Judge, and others founded the Theosophical Society.6 Blavatsky
claimed to be communicating with Tibetan master teachers by means of telepa-
thy. However, the so-called letters from Tibet that she published actually came
from Aryan Mahatmas, and she herself had never been to Tibet. Nevertheless,
Blavatsky and the successors of theosophy spread racist views, claiming that
Shambhala was the mother country of the noblest human lineage, a lineage
that consisted of Indian Aryans and Caucasians. Her doctrines regarding
root races, coupled with the elaborations by her German followers, played a
decisive role in the development of Hitler’s mind.7
Theosophy created an idealistic, surreal image of Tibet: of a country
unpolluted by civilization, spiritual, mystical, free of hunger, crime and
intemperate drinking, and isolated from the rest of the world—of a group of
people that still possessed ancient wisdoms. This image was a far cry from
the realities of Tibet in the era of serfdom, yet it shaped different aspects of
the Westerners’ understanding of the East and especially of Tibet. The core of
 10 chinese sociology and anthropology

this understanding was a kind of surreal spirituality. There has been no lack of
high-profile figures influenced by Blavatsky and her theosophy. The cultural
imaginings, social psychology, and political movements in today’s Western
countries have always had very deep origins in mysticism, and the position
of Tibet in the contemporary spiritual world of the West is rooted precisely in
the same mystical vein. In the twentieth century, this theosophy-related image
of Tibet has also been given a semblance of modern science, and ethnology,
archaeology, linguistics, and other modern sciences have contributed to this
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end. The Nazis’ faith was a concoction of ancient Teutonic legends, Oriental
mysticism, and late nineteenth century mysticism.8 It maintained that Tibet was
the homeland of their Aryan ancestors and mystic wisdom.9 In 1938, Ernst
Schafer of the Nazis’ Ancient Heritage Research and Teaching Community,
a registered society (Foschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft Ahnenerbe e.V.),
lead an expedition to Tibet expressly for the purpose of providing scientific,
ethnological, and archaeological evidence for the doctrine of racism and to
confirm the origins of the Aryan race.10
Substantial advances were made in postwar Tibetology, but compared with
James Hilton’s Lost Horizon and other popular writings, academic research
has exerted little influence, and the shadow of Orientalism never dissipated.
The story of Shangri-la as related by Hilton in reality evolved from Blavatsky’s
myth: the story of a group of Caucasians living in a Buddhist society—Shangri-
la. Tibet formed the background of the story, and the author and protagonists
were all Westerners dreaming of Shambhala and Shangri-la. Hollywood films
and diverse pop culture frequently reproduced this story about Shambhala
and Shangri-la, but were merely expressing their dreams of a Western world.
After the stresses of wars, industrialization, and various disasters, Tibet—or
more precisely, Shambhala and Shangri-la—became a dream world for many
Westerners: a mysterious, spiritual, inspirational, nontechnical, peace-loving,
and moral world where telepathy was possible. People who had lost faith in
Christianity now turned to a spiritual Tibet, yet this Tibet was in fact more of
a fad than a spiritual homeland. Many Hollywood stars and celebrities—who
most likely knew nothing about Tibet—turned into believers in Lamaism and
personages hostile to China. In 1997, the French film director Jean-Jacques
Annaud turned out a film based on Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet
(1953) and bearing the same title. This film made a big impact in the West,
but very few people knew that Harrer had once worked at Schafer’s research
institute and was himself a Nazi. The Hollywood film not only concealed the
author’s Nazi status, but added a good many circumstances not present in the
book in order to pander to the tastes of its Western audience.11
The significance of Tibetan culture does not lie in the illusions of Oriental-
ism. Tibet must be liberated from the imaginations of Westerners and from the
 Summer 2010  11

myth of Shangri-la. The general image conferred by Orientalism on Tibetan

culture is no more than a self-projection of the West. Western society has, to
this day, failed to free itself from Orientalist knowledge in the Saidian sense,
and people who have lost hope in their own society and the contemporary
world very quickly find spiritual solace in the fantasies about Tibet. They
have never stopped to consider that their “theosophy” or telepathic artifices
not only distort Tibet’s past and present, but also hurt the Chinese who greet
them with open arms. Nor have the Chinese been aware that they are being
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confronted with a band of Westerners who have been permeated with centuries
of Orientalist knowledge. When Westerners realize the enormous disparity
between the real Tibet and their creation, resentment wells up—the existence
of the Orient/Tibet is a necessary prerequisite for constructing their own
Self, and once this Other disappears, what does that Self rest upon? Indeed,
Shambalas have long since departed from this globalized world, and if they
[Westerners] lose faith in their own world, they will not be able find it in any
other corner of the world.12

The Variations of Colonialism and Nationalism

The Tibetan independence issue emerged at the same time as the West extended
its imperialist politics of recognition—that is, the system whereby nation-states
are recognized as sovereign entities—to the Asian region. From the late Qing
era to the present, almost no country has publicly denied that China possesses
sovereignty over Tibet, but the Western concepts of civilization, nation, and
sovereignty that dominate the world are unable to countenance the models
of feudal allegiance and tributary relations that have existed in the past. Also,
since the politics of recognition of sovereignty have often broken down in the
face of realities (e.g., the disintegration of Yugoslavia), the Western countries
can still employ ambiguous (references to) “a high degree of autonomy” to
support Tibetan separatism.
Why is it that so many Westerners sympathize with and support Tibetan
independence? First and foremost, an important role has been played in this
matter by the West’s nationalist knowledge, especially by the concepts of
China and Tibet formed within this framework. It is a political nationalism
where the circumstances are complex but the principle is simple: “political
and national entities should be consistent.”13 The Tibetan Independence move-
ment abroad identifies a form of ethnic nationalism. It is not strange that it
should find resonance in Europe—mixed as it is with elements as multina-
tionalism, human rights, democracy, and religion. This ethnic nationalism is
also frequently an excuse for the United States to pursue its global strategy.
And if this principle overlaps with differences in religious belief, it is even
 12 chinese sociology and anthropology

more likely to trigger feelings of ethnic antagonism. For many Westerners,

describing China—a trans-systemic society of multiple ethnicities, multiple
religions, and multiple civilizations—has always been a problem. China is
not a normal nation-state or a modern state. Here, “normal” and “modern” are
both standards generated in accordance with the West’s conception of itself.
They are [manifestations of] the Western exceptionalism that has forced itself
into the framework of universalism (or so-called universal values).
Second, nationalism is also a historical force that has constantly developed
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along with capitalist expansion, and the political relationships throughout

China, including the Tibet region, have all been reshaped by this force. A
direct result of colonialism is that variations, contradictions, and estrange-
ments have taken place in the traditional relationship between Tibet and the
Qing dynasty because the Qing dynasty was powerless to resist the invasions
and encroachments by British colonialism. After the Opium War, the Qing
dynasty was too busy dealing with challenges on its seacoast to devote any
attention to Tibet. In the course of invading Tibet, Britain also devised ways to
distance Tibet from the central government, which led to centrifugal tenden-
cies in Tibet and triggered efforts on the part of the Qing dynasty to exercise
direct control over Tibet.
This twofold change complemented the centrifugal tendency among Tibet’s
upper crust. For example, the legality of the order issued by the 13th Dalai
Lama to “drive out the Han” was built on the new, or nationalist, politics of
recognition. However, these politics of recognition that sought “independence”
did not come into existence independently. To begin, apart from the two wars
Britain waged against Tibet (and the subsequently signed unequal treaties),
forces in other regions and worldwide also began to intervene in the Tibet issue
throughout the twentieth century. Second, the Tibet crisis is not an isolated
matter; it is the outcome of a sort of systemic change. In the final years of the
eighteenth century, many traditional tributary systems, which are located at the
southern foot of the Himalayas next to Tibet, fell successively within Britain’s
sphere of influence. Britain broke open the gates of these territories by means
of armed invasions, confirmed their status as protectorates by forcing each
society to sign unequal treaties, and proceeded to undermine the traditional
relationships in this region––in particular the tributary relationship between
these societies and Tibet.
Worth noting is that the Sino-British conflict in the Himalayan region took
place on the basis of the contention between two kinds of political legalities
and their rules. As against the British encroachments into this region in the
form of treaties, the Qing dynasty’s governance over Tibet prior to Britain’s
intervention did not go beyond the Dalais, the Panchens, the jin ping che
qian (Golden Pemba lot-drawing system), or other religious, tributary, and
 Summer 2010  13

ceremonial forms. Tibet’s relationship between political allegiance to the

Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties was contingent on Tibet’s political, military,
and economic dependence on the Central Plains dynasties. In addition, the
sustained operations of this relationship benefited from a set of flexible tribu-
tary systems based on religious, ritual, and other complex forms of contacts.
This systemic dependency underwent constant changes as it partook in the
dynamic relationships of the system’s practice, but none can be explained
by the nationalist era’s concepts of unity or separation, whether they tended
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toward closer connections (e.g., the Yuan and Ming dynasties) or toward a
relative distancing (as during the Qing dynasty). Seen from this perspective,
the Qing dynasty’s Tibet policies arose not only from the interactions between
central and local authorities, but from the very beginning were closely con-
nected with extensive evolutions of geopolitics and their rules and regulations.
The basic argument here is that the unequal treaties between the Qing dynasty
and foreign powers were signed against the backdrop of changes in regional
relationships as a whole and their regulations. These regulatory changes
constituted a transformation from multiple tributary relationships to nation-
state relationships under the conditions of colonialism, and a transformation
from relative internal and external relations of recognition of rule to clear-cut
internal and external relationships of recognition of sovereignty—the ties of
the former being universal monarchical power and its multielemental relation-
ships of recognition (such as religious relationships, political relationships,
and the multiple relationships among the Mongol-Junggar-Manchu-Central
Plains political powers) and the premise of the latter being sovereign nation-
states and their recognition relationships. When the sovereignty system
became established as a standard of international relations, the central-local
relationships under the conditions of traditional tributary relationships had
no alternative but to undergo a fundamental transformation. Such factors as
territory, ethnic groups, and religion were defined as the basic standards for
drawing the lines between different political communities, and, among these
many factors, administrative jurisdiction over territories become the princi-
pal manifestation of modern state sovereignty. China’s Tibet policy after the
1950s must be placed among this regulatory transformation if one is to gain
a comprehensive understanding of it.

Ethnic Regional Autonomy and the Incomplete Nature of

“Unity of Diversity”

In order to resist imperialist incursions and overcome internal divisions,

China’s contemporary nationalist movement has made attempts to reconstruct
the understanding of China—the essential point being to define China as a
 14 chinese sociology and anthropology

sovereign nation-state. Three main forms may be distinguished: (1) Prior to

the Revolution of 1911, Sun Yat-sen, Zhang Taiyan, and other revolutionaries
advocated forming a nation-state theorem centered on opposing the Manchus,
that is, on the slogan “drive out the northern intruders and restore China” and
on revering the Yellow Emperor as the first ancestor of the Chinese nation.
(2) Based on the historical circumstances of international competition and
multiple nations, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao put forward the he qun jiu
guo lun (the theory of united groups to save the nation) or “meta-nationalism.”
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(3) After the founding of the Republic of China, there was the “nationalism
that determined the national domain by means of the national boundaries
of the Qing Empire” and “the doctrine of a single nation of diverse orgins,”
a typical expression that was Sun Yat-sen’s proclamation when he took of-
fice as Provisional President of the Republic of China.14 Sun Yat-sen’s view
that stood for merging all of China’s ethnicities into a single Chinese nation
subsequently occupied an important position in the ethnic thinking of the
Guomindang and its intellectual core.
The system of ethnic regional autonomy that China implements today is a
product of China’s modern revolution, and although it starts from the legacy
of contemporary ethnic revolutions, it also embodies important innovations.
It institutionally highlights the differences between ethnic regions and other
regions in such aspects as ethnic groups, culture, religion, customs, language,
and social development. This does not negate the unity of the Chinese nation,
and rests upon the idea of “region.” It assimilates the traditional Chinese ex-
perience of governing border regions described as adopt the custom, adopt
the appropriateness (cong su cong yi) to form diverse central-local relation-
ships, but this system does not replicate history. Its crucial difference from
the tributary system under the conditions of monarchical power lies in the
unitary nature of state sovereignty and the forming of a social system centered
on people’s politics. I see it as a synthesis of the imperial legacy, the nation-
state, and socialist values.
The first principle of ethnic regional autonomy consists of emphasizing
ethnic cooperation and opposing ethnic division. It stresses that universal
contacts within a political community should be established in the form
of communication rather than in the form of each standing apart from the
other. The concept of ethnic cooperation is premised on acknowledging the
multiethnic situation and conducting criticism of big and small nationalisms
that tend to “separate.” The premise of cooperation is ethnic equality—not
merely equality of the Han with ethnic minorities, but also among all ethnic
minorities. The second principle is, while acknowledging ethnic multiplic-
ity, to take ethnic regions rather than single ethnicities as the entities for
autonomy. According to Zhou Enlai’s explanation, ethnic regional autonomy
 Summer 2010  15

is a systemic category that differs from the federal system generated on the
basis of ethnic self-determination, and the first and foremost problem is the
relationship between the mixed-habitation setup and the institutional layout.
Therefore, the scope and population mix of autonomous regions must respect
historical traditions as well as take into consideration what is best for ethnic
cooperation. The institutional forms must suit local conditions, and different
dispositions must be made for different circumstances and conditions.15 In
the 1950s, there were, in reality, three different and relatively large areas of
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governance in the Tibet region: the area under the jurisdiction of the Dalai
Lama and the Qashag, the area under the jurisdiction of the Panchen Kampus
Assembly, and the area under the jurisdiction of the Qamdo People’s Libera-
tion Committee. The Panchen Lama started by forming regional autonomy
in line with this structure, but the central government proposed setting up
a united Tibet Autonomous Region in consideration with the fact, and the
historical tradition, that Tibet was a relatively mono-ethnic region, that is,
the particular circumstance that Tibet had a mono-ethnic population and a
unified religion.16
The third principle is that of common development. Multiple ethnicities
“do best to come together rather than stand apart,” but this principle does
not simplistically emphasize ethnic assimilation, otherwise no consideration
would be given to ethnic unification in special regions, such as in Tibet.
The system of ethnic regional autonomy is premised by the unity of diver-
sity of the Chinese nation.17 As compared to the foregoing “Chinese nation”
discourse, the unity of diversity concept emphasizes the unity among plural-
ity. It not only refers to the state of coexistence of multiple ethnicities, but
also means that multiplicity exists in any society that is defined as a minzu.
Therefore, plural oneness applies equally to the Chinese nation, the Han
ethnicity, and all ethnic minorities.
“Unity” refers to the Chinese nation. It refers not only to the self-standing
ethnic entity that gradually took shape over thousands of years of history, but
also to the political entity that turned into a conscious nation among almost
a hundred years of confrontations with Western powers. In the former sense,
unity of diversity refers to the close contacts, common experiences, and
historical traditions (including various customs and habits and political tradi-
tions) formed among the peoples of all ethnicities in the process of everyday
life; in the latter sense, unity of diversity refers to the political community
generated on the basis of the above-mentioned contacts. Therefore, this is not
an ethnic concept built around a concept of essential ethnicity, but rather a
political entity, the main body of which is the people of a civic community.
Precisely because the Chinese nation is a political entity rather than a fait
accompli, it is still in a process of formation and construction, and will for a
 16 chinese sociology and anthropology

long time depend on explorations and practice on the part of generations of

people. Some historical and cultural studies in the West devote their efforts
to deconstructing this “oneness” by means of “pluralism,” but do very little
research on the historical and political contents of the construction of this
oneness, and are even unaware that this oneness also comprises the oneness
of all ethnic minorities and the oneness of all ethnic regions. Therefore, they
are incapable of understanding that this oneness can only be a reciprocal
oneness—or what I call a trans-systemic society.
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Within the polemic on the Tibet issue, one topic that is frequently men-
tioned is the difference between the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Dalai
Lama’s “Greater Tibet” concept. Greater Tibet comprises not only the Tibet
Autonomous Region but also all of Qinghai province, half of Sichuan, half of
Gansu, one quarter of Yunnan, and the southern part of Xinjiang. It includes
many non-Tibetan communal districts, and its total surface comprises one
fourth of China’s total territory. As Shi Shuo has pointed out, if one is to
understand the forming of the region, one must first abandon the viewpoint
that from the very beginning sees Tibet’s civilization as an appendage to the
Central Plains civilization. Then we must understand the historical reasons
for the Tibetan civilization’s gradual eastward expansion over the centuries
and its profound interpermeation with the Central Plains civilization.18
Time-wise, Tibet was brought within the orbit of the Central Plains dynastic
ruling system only during the Yuan dynasty. In the early years of the seventh
century, the ethnicities and tribes, including the Tugu hun, Dang xiang, Bai
lan jiang, and Dong nu guo that were distributed successively from north
to south over the “extremely vast yet relatively weak intermediate region”
between the Tang dynasty and newly rising Tu Bo dynasty––that is, the
domains involved in today’s Greater Tibet Region––were conquered one by
one by the Tu Bo. However, each tribe continued to use its own language,
and He Long was a Han-populated area. If all factors are summed up, “the
period in which the Tibetan minzu took shape was neither when Songtsan
Kampo unified various areas of the Tibetan Plateau, nor during the time of
the Tu Bo dynasty, but should be in the historical period subsequent to the
demise of the Tu Bo dynasty and prior to the thirteenth century.”19 In other
words, the Tibetan minzu itself was also formed as a “unity of diversity.” In
addition to the Tibetan inhabitants in today’s Tibetan Autonomous Region,
Han, Hui, Monba, Loba, Naxi, Nu, and Dulong, as well as Deng and Sherpa,
have lived there generation after generation. From the historical perspective,
ethnic elements that have merged with the Tibetans include Han, Mongols,
Manchus, and Naxi, and some Tibetans have merged, respectively, with such
ethnic groups as the Han, Mongols, Hui, Qiangs, and Naxi over the years.
Even after the demise of the Yuan dynasty, the succeeding Ming dynasty was
 Summer 2010  17

able to rapidly establish a ruling relationship over Tibet. The establishment

of this relationship was not the result of unilateral compulsion on the part of
the Ming, but included voluntary and swift participation on the part of the
Tibetan side. The Qing dynasty, too, obtained its power to rule over Tibet on
the basis of the submission and allegiance pledged to it by the various Mon-
gol commands. The viewpoint that Tibet was brought within the domain of
China only because of compulsion exerted by the Central Plains is merely
a case of taking things for granted. The Greater Tibet Region is a product
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of multiple processes of the eastward spread of Tibetan civilization and the

westward expansion of the Central Plains civilization––not to mention that
no Dalai Lama in past history has ever ruled such a Great Tibetan area, his or
the Qashag’s domain of jurisdiction has never even covered all of Tibet, nor
has his jurisdiction ever extended to some areas in Posterior Tibet and North
Tibet governed by the Panchen Lama (and a small stretch of territory ruled
by Sakya Trizin). Bringing all regions inhabited by Tibetans within the orbit
of ethnic autonomy would completely ignore the fact that these regions are
mixed ethnic regions formed over long periods of history, and that oppression,
exclusion, and expulsions of other ethnic groups in these regions plus rifts in
the ethnic group itself would be inevitable if administrative regions were to
be demarcated here along ethnic lines. Viewed from this perspective, Zhou
Enlai’s proposition to expand the autonomous region to enable cooperation,
exchanges, and common development among different ethnic groups and
take the diversity of its structure into consideration was a concept replete
with historical clarity.

“After the Revolution,” Development, and Depoliticization

After the March 14th incident broke out, ethnic regional autonomy was
subjected to queries from different directions. One overall opinion was that
the focus should be reducing regional differences as well as the differences
between classes and strata, and to refrain from systemic dispositions that
would solidify ethnic group differences and further create contradictions and
conflicts among minzu.20 In my view, by regarding ethnic regional autonomy
as the root of the Tibetan crisis, one is quite likely to miss a deeper crux of the
issue. Tibet is situated on a snow-covered plateau and it is a relatively mono-
Tibetan community, but it is not an isolated or insulated world. Its destiny
is closely linked with the changes in China as a whole. Even as the central
government and other provinces and municipalities have been giving Tibet
vigorous financial support, the Tibet crisis has become increasingly grave
since the implementation of reform and opening up and should be examined
against the background of social change. Only a few elitists in China and
 18 chinese sociology and anthropology

abroad evince enthusiasm for Tibetan independence, but any belief that the
riots in Tibet were merely the outcome of political machinations without a
profound social basis leads to wrong judgments. Short of the violence and
the presence of external separatist forces, the Tibet issue cannot be explained
as an entirely unique and exceptional occurrence. It must also be analyzed
among the social changes in China as a whole.
In my opinion, the following three mutually connected and mutually em-
broiled changes are most crucial for understanding today’s Tibet issue:
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1. The class politics of the socialist era have thoroughly receded, social
relations have been fundamentally restructured, and major changes have
taken place in terms of the conditions for implementing ethnic regional
autonomy.
2. Market relationships have pervaded all areas, demographic changes have
occurred, and the gaps in financial income and education have widened.
3. Ethnic cultures are facing crises, religion has been revived, and drastic
increases have taken place in number of temples, monasteries, monks, and
priests.

I sum these up as a synchronous process of depoliticization, market expan-

sion, and cultural crises plus religious expansion.
As opposed to the arguments about the colonial sequestration syndrome21
and so forth, I believe that the Tibet crisis arose during the depoliticization
process of the post-revolution discourse. The Chinese nation is a political
community based on people, and its institutional construction, social policies,
and ethnic policies must follow this political community’s basic principle,
that is, the people. Any institutional disposition, social policy, or ethnic
policy that runs counter to this principle may be regarded as the “politics of
depoliticization.” Therefore, politicization in the concept of depoliticization
is completely different from politicization that focuses on ethnic relations and
incites antagonisms.22 Regarding the Tibet issue, in the midst of the polemics
most of the discussions have focused on the problem of Tibet’s positioning
in history. However, when discussing the Tibet issue, and neglect of the main
political character of the New China—that is, the political process whereby
the Chinese people have risen up as the political principal—is in itself a form
of the politics of depoliticization.23 Although many problems exist in Tibet’s
democratic reform, the ordinary Tibetans have obtained a new political and
economic status through the land reform, and have become members of
society entirely different from the tenant farmers, farm laborers, and slaves
of the time of the “integration of church and state” and the serf system. If it
 Summer 2010  19

were not for this premise, it would be impossible to explain why there were
various kinds of crises, contradictions, and even disruptions from the 1950s
to the 1980s that are fundamentally different from the crises, contradictions,
conflicts, and disruptions that characterize the “Tibet issue” and the identity
crises in today’s sense. The land reform launched in the Tibetan region, start-
ing in the late 1950s, transformed the economic basis of Tibet, “tremendously
changed the living standard of the people in the Tibet region, and to a certain
extent successfully established a new legality and sense of identity.”24 The
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reverence for Mao Zedong, retained to this day among the Tibetan masses, is
not a simple religious phenomenon, but a product of the social subjectification
when China’s society refashioned itself in the 1950s and 1960s. It was precisely
the genesis of this new social subjectivity that turned the Han-Tibetan rela-
tionship issue—one that the Tibetan rulers spared no effort playing up—into
an issue of social emancipation. In other words, the system of ethnic regional
autonomy under the conditions of socialism was a systemic construction that
effectively established legality and a sense of identity.
The “democratic reform” of Tibet established the principles of political
equality and secularism. This not only thoroughly disintegrated the serf sys-
tem that was so closely tied to the religious society but also furnished Tibet’s
politics and economics with a new subject—that is, it produced the people’s
constituency as an outcome of class emancipation and ethnic equality. Actu-
ally, the term emancipated serf was precisely the basis of the legality of the
new politics. Seen historically, the creation of the renmin zhuti (people cen-
tered) was closely tied to the class politics of those times. Any critical study
of the various contradictions and tragic outcomes produced by class politics
should not cover up that a vast transformation took place in Tibetan society
as a result of the land reform, and that the change in the status of “a million
serfs” justified the politics of revolution. However, today’s Tibet issue has
taken place against the backdrop of China’s experiments with market-oriented
reform and increasing integration in the global economy, as well as the vari-
ances and changes that have occurred in the two above principles, which are
precisely products of these processes. Seen from the perspective of political
equality, the democratic reform eradicated the system of social classes, the
main content of which was the serf system, and changed class relationships.
All the while, the market-oriented reform has restructured economic relations
and rationalized social differentiation centered on property rights relationships.
The political basis generated in China in the 1950s and 1960s underwent a
gradual transmutation during the 1990s, and the ethnic regions have been no
exception in this respect: along with new social divisions, the justifications for
earlier revolutionary politics have gone into a crisis. If the process by which
a socialist country transformed the unity between religion and politics in a
 20 chinese sociology and anthropology

religious Tibetan society marks a radical secularization, then market reform

is an even more radical process of secularization. The principal difference
between these two processes is that the former reformed the political and
economic structure and class relationships in Tibetan society and, as far as the
Tibetans are concerned, also created a quasi-religious values system (a new
form of integration between politics and faith).25 The latter process, by contrast,
has destroyed the values system of the socialist era by dint of economic and
market forces, and this process of secularization has also furnished the basis
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for the expansion of religion. Because the marketization has widened the
distance between the state and its citizens and made it possible for religion
to infiltrate all domains of society, Tibetan society is manifestly closer to be-
ing a religious society than it was during the last thirty years—one built on
the conditions of the market and globalization. Under current conditions, the
religious system has not only been infiltrated by the forces of globalization,
marketization, and secularization, but important changes have also taken place
in its functions: the Dalai Lama religion is increasingly becoming the main
basis upon which Tibetan society maintains its own identity. Clearly, the two
processes described above have accompanied the degeneration and failure
of the politics that created the universal identity in the socialist era, and the
result is that, with social differentiation serving as the axis, the politics that
created the universal identity have given way to the politics of (ethnic and
religious) identification.
As many scholars have observed, the so-called ethnic contradictions have
been generated mainly by regional differences and the division between rich
and poor, as well as by the unequal position of working people in market
competition. Scholars have also observed that the concept of ethnic regional
autonomy has not given rise to ethnic-group antagonisms. However, what
many have not touched upon is that these profound social divisions have
placed the principles of equality and separation of church and state in jeop-
ardy, and precisely this has shaken the basis that upholds the rationality of
ethnic regional autonomy. As against the reforms of the 1950s and 1960s that
brought benefits to the great majority of Tibetans, the developments after the
1990s, while promoting economic growth, have sped up the emergence of
disparities between urban and rural areas, between central and remote border
regions, and among different strata of the populace in the Tibet region as
well as between Tibet and the inland regions. The participants in the March
14th incident were, for the most part, “Tibetan youth who were born after the
1970s, grew up in the Tibet regions, and who have been impacted by global-
ization and modernization,”26 and the old conditions of legality are, as far as
they are concerned, very far distant from today’s realities. The March 14th
incident broke out in the form of social retribution rather than as a political
 Summer 2010  21

struggle, which shows that Tibetan society lacks the political dimensions for
resolving such social problems. Only in such a circumstance are all crises in
the domains of society, politics, economics, culture, and religions converted
into ethnic conflict.
This crisis took place under the condition of depoliticization. I now discuss
the crisis under the condition of depoliticization, not out of nostalgia for the
socialist era, but to take this opportunity to point to a basic problem that is
frequently overlooked—that the Tibet crises is part of a universal crisis in
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post-socialist China. Precisely because the source of the crisis is rooted in

contemporary processes, economic inequality alone cannot furnish any overall
explanation for ethnic problems, since these are manifested also in the cultural
and political domains.

Religious Society, Market Expansion, and Social Mobility

Although the Chinese government lifted the ban on all religions in Tibet in
the 1980s, this did not resolve the problems of religion. Since Tibet, as a
religious society, comes in conflict with the government’s logic of a secular
society, and because of the synchronous expansion of religion and the market,
the activities of market reform, tourism, and consumption have penetrated
everyday life in Tibet, and large amounts of wealth are also flowing into the
monasteries.
In reality, contradictions have always existed between modernization
and the religious society. In the 1930s, when there was no intervention by
the central government, a modernization reform of Tibet (the Lungshar’s
Reform) also came in conflict with the integration of church and state and
the system of serfdom. After 1959, economic development in Tibet adopted
the model of economically-developed regions investing in the Tibet region
under state guidance, and in the 1990s this model was supplemented by new
market expansions. The social system and cultural traditions of Tibet have
encountered unprecedented crises during this course of modernization, but
these crises are not ethnic conflicts but rather wholesale social restructuring
under globalization and marketization. This sense of crisis is manifested in
the religious aspect mainly in the following four aspects:
1. The crisis of religion in the process of secularization. The problem of the
relationship between Tibet’s religious and secular society is completely dif-
ferent from the problem of the freedoms of religion and faith in Western so-
ciety, and different from the relationship between religion as a rationalized
domain and modern society such as is discussed by Western theoreticians.
Rather it is a problem of the contradictions and conflicts between modern-
 22 chinese sociology and anthropology

ization and religious society, or in other words, of how religious society

should deal with secularization. Since modernization often manifests itself
as spreading from the economically developed regions to the Tibet region,
this process often takes the form of so-called Han-ization. In religious
organizations, the secularization process also gives rise to corrupt religion
and corrupt monasteries, and is likely to excite moral awareness and ardent
religious faith in troubled Tibetan youth. And more intense social actions
are not hard to foresee when these feelings of religion and morality are
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brought into ethnic relations. However, the contradiction between religion

and secularization may shift in the direction of Han-Tibetan conflict if
modernization is equated with “Han-ization.”
2. The language problem. Although Han and Tibetan are both taught in el-
ementary and secondary schools, increasing numbers of young Tibetans are
losing interest in the Tibetan language. This problem has not been dispelled
by the government’s support for ethnic minority languages.
3. Changes in everyday life. In the past three decades, communications,
media, popular culture, and other lifestyle changes have brought striking
changes to Tibetan society.
4. Social mobility, which quite likely serves as a catalyst for contradic-
tions and conflicts. A developing market economy, a relaxed household
registration system, and improvements in the means of transportation
have created the conditions for large-scale social mobility. Along with the
massive expansion of urban basic construction, the commissioning of the
Qinghai-Tibet railway, the Go West strategy, and the development of the
tourist and service trades, the Tibet region’s economy is experiencing an
unprecedented state of openness, and large numbers of outsiders, mainly
Han and Hui and consisting mostly of laborers, technicians, service people,
and tourists, are entering Tibet. The state is increasing investment in the
Tibet region, but regional differences are increasing. As Ma Rong and
Tanzen Lhundup have pointed out, “While the Western region is one in
which ethnic minorities live in compact communities, floating populations
arriving from eastern and central Han regions will vastly increase intereth-
nic contacts in both depth and breadth. Development of the Western region
will not only expand the dimensions of interethnic contacts and coopera-
tion, but it will also highlight cultural and religious differences among
ethnicities and fierce competitions for employment and resources, thereby
causing the emergence of extremely complex situations in ethnic relation-
ships in the Western regions.”27 Business, investment, social mobility, and
the labor market are the basic elements in the configuration of a market
 Summer 2010  23

society, whereas tourism is also a basic means for developing the economy
in the Western regions. According to the logic of development theory, if the
actual disparities between different regions and different social groups in
terms of education, culture, language, and the distribution of other social
resources are disregarded, large-scale population movements are bound to
result in the tilting of resources and benefits toward certain groups. Regard-
ing the situation in Tibet, “those who benefit the most from the flourishing
economy are outsiders, non-Tibetans. Tibetans are increasingly marginal-
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ized because they lack any kind of real assistance in such respects as capi-
tal and skills.”28 In the crises of the above-mentioned religious societies, the
issue of secularization becomes intricately entangled in the relationships
between locals and outsiders, with the result that the crises brought on by
secularization are also projected onto the “Han-ization” issue. How, against
the backdrop of the market economy and large-scale social mobility, should
one link protections of cultural multiplicity with everyday social equal-
ity? And how should one effect a balance between protecting the interests
of ethnic minorities and assuring the rights of immigrants? These are key
links in improving ethnic regional autonomy and promoting equal exchang-
es among all ethnicities.

The central idea here is that, while polarization between rich and poor does
exist in Chinese society as a whole, the rich-poor issue in ethnic regions is
often closely tied to the traditions, the customs and habits, the languages of the
different ethnicities, and their positions in the market economy. Furthermore,
widely existing corruption in today’s China may result in ethnic contradictions,
even market competition in the most ideal of market circumstances—that is,
the so-called equal starting point—may lead to new polarizations if the cultural
differences among different ethnicities are ignored. Whether economic growth
can promote harmony in ethnic relations depends on a variety of conditions.
There is no inevitable connection between the two. The fundamental ques-
tion still rests on how development is conducted, what kind of development
is conducted, and how one interprets development.

“The Politics of Recognition,” Multiethnic Social Equality,

Protest Movements, and the Politics of Dignity

The Tibet issue reflects the full depth of the crisis that this religious society
has experienced since the close of the nineteenth century. No region or society
in the world has to this day found any true solution for this modern crisis.
Pointing out the falsity of Western society’s accusations against China is one
thing; dealing with these specific and complex issues is another.29
 24 chinese sociology and anthropology

The core propositions of modern trends of thought in China are a market

economy, personal rights, and private ownership under rule of law. Although
the arguments may differ, all of these topics clearly point toward a kind of
procedural, depoliticized liberalism of rights. Actually this liberalist discourse
is a replica of modernization theory. My criticism of the theory of private
property is not meant to oppose the protection of private property but to oppose
the representation of this concept as an all-encompassing universal truth. In a
society of cultural pluralism and complex ethnic relationships, contradictions
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often occur between equal protection of individual rights and equal protection
of collective rights. According to the viewpoint of liberalism of rights, the
Constitution and laws may not protect any purposes of a collective nature, as
that would constitute discrimination, whereas according to the viewpoint of
communitarianism, this abstract concept of individuals and their rights is the
product of a particular culture and society, and applying it to other societies
also constitutes discrimination. Therefore, equal respect should not only be
directed at individuals, but should also consider collective purposes, such as
the special requirements of ethnic minorities, women, and immigrants.
China’s ethnic minority policies do in fact include recognition of such col-
lective purposes. Regional autonomy is a way of linking up autonomy with
interaction, and particularity with universality. It recognizes the collectivity,
but does not acknowledge that collective rights run counter to universality.
Seen from the formalist perspective of equality, acknowledging differences is
to acknowledge hierarchy and should therefore be negated. One of the logical
inferences is that the preferential policies for ethnic minorities in fact cause
discrimination against the majority ethnicity.
Western society is rights-oriented and, because social inequality is gener-
ated under the formal equality based on liberalism of rights, the struggle of
ethnic minorities for rights often takes the form of identity politics. (Com-
munitarianists maintain that such identity politics should be converted into
the politics of recognition––putting the values of equality into effect by
recognizing differences, in order to bridge social divisions.) Here, the recog-
nition that different cultures possess equal value is a hypothetical or logical
starting point rather than a substantive judgment; politics of recognition must
be under the premise of public exchanges. The so-called premise of public
exchanges entails two facets:
1. According to Charles Taylor, if the cultures of different ethnicities are
unable to manifest their own splendor in the course of such public ex-
changes, recognizing that the different cultures possess substantive value
is tantamount to patronization and condescension, and patronization and
condescension run counter to the politics of equality, or the politics of dig-
 Summer 2010  25

nity.30 Therefore, unity of diversity must be based on diversity. If there is no

flourishing of such a pluralistic culture, the unity is something that comes
down from above.
2. Public exchange not only means interethnic dialogue and exchange, but
also full exchange within each ethnicity, for without this premise, the poli-
tics of recognition is quite likely to turn into the process of a small popu-
lation manipulating and controlling the politics of the ethnic group they
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belong to. Therefore, if one wishes to prevent “diversity” from becoming

the basis for divisive nationalism but instead to serve as a premise for coex-
istence, one must activate exchanges and autonomous politics within each
element of this diversity and among different elements. What we lack most
today is precisely public exchange and equal dialogue among intellectuals
of different ethnicities and within the same ethnicity. If biases do exist in
today’s China, these do not take the form of overt discrimination, but rather
as latent ignorance and disregard.31 For example, when the disturbances
took place in Tibet, how was it discussed among Tibetan intellectuals? If
we are unable to hear their voices in the public media, we will be losing an
opportunity for mutual dialogue and exchanges among intellectuals from
different backgrounds.

The Tibet issue involves the protection and freedom for ethnic minority
cultures and the rights of immigrants under the condition of social mobility.
Under the conditions of globalization and marketization, the ethnic regional
autonomy system also needs to be adapted to new changes and conditions,
but this does not mean that the concept of ethnic regional autonomy should
be completely abolished. The real challenge rests in whether it is possible
to supercede the established identity politics and, after the decline of class
politics, reinvent a universal politics that enables participation by different
groups of people and retains social diversity. In sum, if there is no political
basis of an ethnic nature (of the nature of self-determined and active partici-
pation), ethnic issues will only become a game of chess between a minority
of persons and the government, and will quite likely fall into the framework
of Han-Tibetan dichotomy that mainstream Western public opinion and vari-
ous types of ethnic nationalists are doing their best to fashion. To break out
of this framework of Han-Tibetan contradictions, we must give thorough
consideration to our developmentalist logic, create a more inclusive public
dimension, let the voices of the ordinary people find full expression in this
dimension, and lay the foundations for a new politics of equality.
The Tibet issue reflects the crises faced by China’s market reform and its
process of globalization. However, we have been misled in two ways since
 26 chinese sociology and anthropology

the outbreak of the incident. On the one hand, mainstream public opinion in
the West has not only failed to conduct any self-examination with regard to
the lingering harm the West has caused to other regions during its colonial
history, but it has also distorted this profound issue—an issue closely related
to several centuries of movements in the Western world itself—into an anti-
China chorus that has caused a deep trauma to the psyche of young people
who are situated in the West and influenced by the discriminatory ideology
of Western society. On the other hand, China’s media has not focused on the
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profound crisis in Tibetan society, and society as a whole has not used this
as an opportunity to reflect on how the developmental logic of contemporary
Chinese society is connected with the Tibet crisis. Therefore, when the Tibet
crisis morphed into a conflict over the wresting of the Olympic torch, the Tibet
issue was shunted aside. This was not a “clash of civilizations,” but rather a
clash of ignorance, in addition to a new kind of cold war politics.
The younger generation knows just as little about the Tibet issue as the
Western media, and some biased and narrow-minded phraseology could
hardly be avoided in the Chinese students’ protest movement. However,
simplistically ascribing this movement to narrow nationalism clearly fails to
get to the substance of the issue. First, the movement was intended to protect
the Olympic torch, not to protect China’s torch, and it included among other
things the sense of seeking world peace and of protecting public intercourse
among the world’s people under the Olympic flag. Second, the protest move-
ment was not directed at the Tibet issue, but at the Western mainstream
media’s systematic distortions of the violent incidents in Tibet and unfair
reports about the transmission of the Olympic torch. Students living in China
and abroad demanded that the truth of the incident be made clear, so they
protested against the violence that was taking place in Tibet. The offensive
statements made by CNN and other mainstream media against China not
only exposed deep-rooted racist biases but also fanned a narrow national-
ism in their own societies. For this reason, students attempted to link their
protest movement with the antiwar movement, and showed that they were
beginning to link their concerns for China with a worldwide, internationalist
perspective. Third, it is necessary to differentiate between the criticism against
hegemony and the violence directed against ordinary people, as well as the
respect for ethnic minorities and the complex considerations on ethnic issues
among today’s social changes. The movement of students studying abroad
expressed, in a most clear-cut manner, their rejection of these hegemonist and
separatist forces, and thereby let the entire world hear the voice of Chinese
society itself. Were it not for that voice, the relations between China and the
West would have always remained within the bounds of diplomacy and been
devoid of intervention from civil sources. Today, when China’s mainstream
 Summer 2010  27

media is dominated by a minority of people yet frequently advertises itself

as representing civil society, whether people like it or not, this manifesta-
tion of student strength provides a powerful footnote to what, in the final
analysis, constitutes the voice of the people. This was also an opportunity
to let the new generation renew its understanding of China, to understand
the contradictions and dilemmas of China, and to understand China’s true
status in today’s world system.
This movement was also a manifestation of the politics of dignity. In 1993,
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due to intervention from the U.S. and other Western governments, China
failed to secure the right to host the Olympic Games in 2000. Fifteen years
later, as China was actively preparing for the Olympic Games, many politi-
cal forces from the West again sought diverse ways and means of offending
China. These hegemonist politics and states of mind came up against fierce
resistance not only in China but in many third world countries as well. CNN’s
offensive statements gave expression to a sort of hierarchist world outlook, the
obverse side of which was a hegemonist state’s concept of honor and prestige.
What the politicians of these countries were accustomed to discussing was
the retention of their “leading status” and “superiority” rather than obtaining
recognition of equality, and, as against this sort of hierarchist world outlook
left over from the old system. China’s student movement and the movements
launched by Chinese persons firmly believed in the extreme importance of
recognizing equality in present-day politics, and their efforts to safeguard
national dignity may thus be regarded as the unfurling of modern politics of
equality in the international domain.
I merely wish to emphasize here that the logics of the policy of dignity
and the policy of equality should be implemented in all social relationships
in China’s society, including in its ethnic relationships, and should not be
limited simply to protests against the unjust statements by the Western media.
The Tibet crisis is not fortuitous, but rather deeply rooted in China’s social
changes. If the protest movement is unable to safeguard persons including the
Tibetans, Uighurs, and other minority nationalities, it will lose its connotation
of equality and politics of dignity. And if the protest movement is hijacked by
feelings of ethnic hatred and enmity, it will turn against the political principles
of ethnic equality, cooperation, mutual assistance, and integration whereby to
form a civic political community. In an era of depoliticization, the movement
to seek recognition of equality and dignity may become an opportunity for the
emergence of new politics. New situations in this movement have galvanized
political enthusiasm in the new generation and caused them to participate
in the public life of contemporary China and the contemporary world. The
dedication displayed by the young Chinese generation during the Wenchuan
earthquake was closely linked with this moral enthusiasm and political con-
 28 chinese sociology and anthropology

cern. The epicenter of that earthquake was situated in the Aba Tibetan and
Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, and the communities there consisted of various
ethnicities, including Tibetan compatriots. Yet the volunteers who came from
all over the country never looked at the earthquake victims from a racial or
ethnic viewpoint—no such awareness ever entered their conscious or sub-
conscious minds as they strove to save their compatriots. It was among acts
of profound affection and mutual assistance such as these that the “unity of
diversity” bond emerged. I anticipate that the public awareness evoked during
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this time of crisis will not only turn into a sustained motive force for reshap-
ing China, but also into an opportunity to reconsider and understand China’s
society and its diverse regions and cultures. We are facing an era that follows
close on the heels of a crisis, and that crisis cannot be truly eliminated if we
fail to change the logic of developmentalism by means of specific forces in
society, and try to rebuild a people-based civic politics on the foundations of
the twentieth century. A new self-cognition by China’s society and dialogues
among intellectuals in different regions are urgently needed in order to promote
the birth of these new politics.

Notes

1. Michael Taylor, Mythos Tibet. Entdeckungsreisen von Marco Polo bis Alexandra
David-Neel. The Chinese edition Fa xian xizang (Discovering Tibet) was translated
by Geng Sheng (Beijing: China Tibetology Press, 2006).
2. The main works of Ippolito Desideri S.J. include Opere Tibetane di Ippolito
Desideri S. J. (vol. 4), ed. Giuseppe Toscano S.X. (Rome, ISMEO, 1981–1989);
Letters, the “Relation” (or “Historical Notices of Tibet, Recollections of my Jour-
neys, and the Mission Founded There”); and other Italian works of Desideri, in I
Missionari Italiani nel Tibet e nel Nepal, ed. Liciano Petech (Rome: Libreria dello
Stato, 1954–1957).
3. Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschicte der Menschheit,
Bd. 1 and 2, ed. Heinz Stolpe, bk. 2, pp. 24ff. (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1965).
4. [Immanuel] Kant, Guanyu mei gan he chonggao gande kaocha (Observa-
tions on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime), in Complete Works of Kant, vol.
2, Writings of the Pre-Critical Period II (1757–1777), edited and translated by Li
Qiuling (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2004), 215–16 (originally published
in German, Beobachtungen uber da Gefuhl des Shchonen und Erhabenen,1764, in
Akademie-Ausgabe, Bd. II, Vorkritische Schriften II. 1757–1777, 1905, 2. Aufl. 1912,
Nachdruck 1969, S. 215f).
5. Bd. 8, S. 162–63.
6. Western Esoteric Masters Series, Helena Blavatsky, edited and introduced by
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2006).
7. Jackson Spielvogel and David Redles, “Hitler’s Racial Ideology: Content and
Occult Sources,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 3, chap. 9, 1986.
8. Robin Cross, “The Nazi Expedition,” www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/
history/n-s/nazimyths.html.
 Summer 2010  29

9. See Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians (Lon-
don: Mayflower Books, 1972).
10. Isrun Engelhardt, Tibet in 1938–1939: Photographs from the Ernst Schafer
Expedition to Tibet (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2007).
11. See “Interview with Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme,” South China Morning Post, April
4, 1998; Orvile Schell, Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas
to Hollywood (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), 283–94.
12. Zhongdian in the Tibet region of Yunnan has been formally renamed “Shangri-
la” by the local government. It is clear that while we criticize the Oriental fancies
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of the West, we should also critically examine Chinese society’s reproduction of

Orientalism.
13. Ernst Gellner, Minzu yu minzu zhuyi (Nation and Nationalism), translated by
Han Hong (Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press, 2002), 1–2.
14. Sun Yat-sen, “Linshi da zongtong xuanyan shu” (Manifesto of the Provisional
President [January 1, 1912]), in Complete Writings of Sun Yat-sen, vol. 2 (Beijing:
Zhonghua Bookstore, 1982), 2.
15. Zhou Enlai’s speech, “A Number of Issues Regarding China’s Ethnic Policies”
at the Qingdao Nationalities Work Seminar on August 4, 1957, in Selected Writings of
Zhou Enlai (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1984); Zhou Enlai, Ethnic Regional
Autonomy Is Conducive to National Unity and Common Progress, see Selected Writings
of Zhou Enlai on the United Front (Beijing: Archives Publishing House, 1984).
16. Major Events in the History of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, compiled
by the CCP Tibet Autonomous Region’s Commission for Collecting Information
on Party History (Lhasa: Tibet People’s Publishing House, 1990), 47. On August
2, 1954, in Guanyu jiedai dalai, banchan de zhaodai, xuanchuan fangzhen (On the
Reception and Publicity Policies for Receiving the Dalai and Panchen Lamas), the
central government once against clearly stated, “The policy of the central authorities
is to gradually bring about united regional autonomy in the Tibet region, . . . to unite
the patriotic forces of the Dalai and Panchen and other patriotic forces and set up a
unified Tibet Autonomous Region.” See ibid., pp. 50–51.
17. Fei Xiaotong, “Zhonghua minzu de duoyuan yiti geju” (The Pluralist Oneness
Setup of the Chinese Nation), see Fei Xiaotong et al., Zhonghua minzu duoyuan yiti
geju (Beijing: Beijing Institute for Nationalities Publishing House, 1989), p. 1.
18. Shi Shuo, Xizang weming dong xiang fazhan shi (History of the Eastward
Development of Tibetan Civilization), p. 11.
19. Ibid., pp. 72, 102.
20. Ma Rong, Jingji fazhan zhong de pin fu chaju wenti—quyu chayi, zhiye chayi
he zuqun chayi (Rich-Poor Polarization during Economic Development—Regional
Differences, Vocational Differences and Ethnic Differences), Journal of Peking Uni-
versity (philosophy edition), no. 1, 2009, 116–27.
21. Fred Halliday, “Tibet, Palestine and the Politics of Failure,” in Open Democracy,
www.opendemocracy.net/article/tibet-palestine-and-the-politics-of-failure.
22. Ma Rong, “Lijie minzu guanxide xin silu—shaoshu zuqun wenti de ‘qu
zhengzhi hua’” (New Lines of Thinking for Understanding Ethnic Relationships—
“Depoliticization” of Minority Ethnicity Issues?), Journal of Peking University
(philosophy edition), no. 6, 2004, pp. 122–33; also used the term “depoliticization,”
but in a way completely different from the way I use it here. What he refers to is the
situation in which the contemporary Western nationalist movement regards ethnic
groups as political entities and seeks political objectives. He calls for integrating
 30 chinese sociology and anthropology

traditional cultures and for the forming of universal civil politics with citizens as the
entities. In this sense, his criticism of “politicization” overlaps in some respects with
my criticism of “depoliticization.” The difference is that what I refer to as “depoliti-
cization” is negation of or deviation from the process of people’s politics, and the
latter was precisely the premise that enabled the Chinese nation to supercede ethnic
divisions and contradictions and form a unified political entity.
23. With regard to “the politics of depoliticization,” refer to my work, Qu zheng-
zhi hua de zhengzhi: Duan ershi shiji de zhongjie yu jiushi niandai (The Politics of
Depoliticization: The Conclusion of the Brief Twentieth Century and the 1990s?)
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 20:13 12 April 2015

(Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 2008).

24. Investigations by some young scholars have also corroborated my viewpoint.
Gongmeng Legal Research Center, An Investigative Report into the Social and
Economic Causes of the March 14th Incident (written by Fang Kun, Huang Li, and
Li Xiang), printed text, 5–6. This investigative report was briefly circulated on the
Internet, but was never formally published. For the English translation, see http://blog.
foolsmountain.com/2009/06/02/an-investigative-report-into-the-social-and-economic-
causes-of-the-314-incident-in-tibetan-areas/2/.
25. In 2004, I and a number of Tibetan friends visited several Lamaist temples.
Virtually everywhere we went, a portrait of Mao Zedong flanked by those of the Dalai
and Panchen was placed in the abbots’ chambers. A Tibetan friend from a Beijing
institution of higher learning stated, “We Tibetans are quite superstitious, and Chair-
man Mao has become a Buddha.” This phenomenon to a certain extent shows that
in the world of the Tibetans, the era of socialism savors somewhat of “integration of
church and state.” The Dalai Lama once said in his autobiography that socialism is
better suited to Tibet than capitalism.
26. Ibid., 2.
27. Ma Rong and Tanzen Lhundup, “Lasa shi liudong renkou diaocha baogao” (An
Investigative Report into the Transient Population in Lhasa Municipality), Northwest
Ethnic Research, no. 4, 2006, 168.
28. An Investigative Report into the Social and Economic Causes of the March
14th Incident, printed text, 10.
29. Ten years ago, I raised the issue of “the politics of recognition” in plural-
culture societies. See Wang Hui, “Wenhua yu gonggong xing” dao yan (Introduction
to “Culture and Publicness”) (Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, 1998), 12. The concept
of “the politics of recognition” that I discussed here was directly cited from Charles
Taylor et al., “The Politics of Recognition,”in Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), 25–74.
30. Taylor, ibid.
31. There are relatively few discussions about ethnic issues and ethnic-relations
issues during public discussions in China’s contemporary intellectual circles. I believe
that this circumstance is closely related with the state of China’s intellectual domain.
Many ethnic minority scholars are conversant with numerous ethnic languages but
find it difficult to make their voices heard in public debates; their discussions are to
this day restricted to the fields of regional and ethnic research. This situation requires
immediate attention.

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