Search

Showing total 2 results
Start Over Topic dalai lamas Topic tibet (china) politics & government, 1951- Region china
2 results

1. Ethnic Separatism in the People's Republic of China History, Causes and Contemporary Challenges.

Author

Clarke, Michael

Subjects
*ETHNIC groups, *DALAI lamas, SOCIAL conditions in China, 2000-, CHINESE foreign relations, 1976-, TIBET (China) politics & government, 1951-
Abstract

The aims of this paper are threefold: to provide some historical background on ethnic separatism in the PRC; to identify the causes of ethnic separatism; and to provide an assessment of the current separatist challenges to the PRC and their implications for China's domestic politics and foreign relations. The paper demonstrates that the nature and scale of the challenge posed by any one ethnic minority to the PRC is largely a function of three major factors: the historical relationship between the ethnic group and the Chinese state; the geographic concentration of the ethnic minority; and the degree of acculturation to the dominant Han society. In this regard the paper identifies Xinjiang and Tibet as the ethnic minority regions that pose the most enduring separatist challenge to Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2013
Full Text
View/download PDF

2. Insecurity, State Building and China’s Tibet Policy.

Subjects
*NATION building, *DALAI lamas, TIBET (China) politics & government, 1951-, CHINESE politics & government, 2002-
Abstract

China’s Tibet policy is a subject of intense and diametrically opposed representations. While the Tibetans portray the Chinese take-over in 1950 as an invasion and continuing rule as a repressive occupation, Beijing calls it “liberation” of a historically “integral” part of China from imperialists and Tibetan feudal forces and emphasise its modernising mission and records. In such a politically charged context, dispassionate analyses of Beijing’s Tibet policy are few and far between. This paper addresses the question: what drives Chinese policies in Tibet and positions towards the Dalai Lama? It hypothesises that insecurity drives Beijing’s Tibet policy. Tibet, with its combination of a restive domestic population and an active Diaspora, led by a charismatic and internationally engaged leader, the Dalai Lama, induces insecurities that relate to the territorial, institutional, ideational (ideology and national identity) and regime components of the Party-State. In security studies parlance, China’s insecurities in Tibet fall under political security, societal security and military security. China’s state building drive in Tibet (integrating Tibet with China economically, politically and culturally) in the Communist and reform era has been efforts to mitigate these insecurities. China’s state building in Tibet is analytically organised around infrastructure-building, institution-building and nation-building. This paper finds that while China has had considerable, yet qualified, success on the infrastructural and institutional sides, nation building, i.e. making the Tibetans feel Chinese, has largely failed in the face of a strong Tibetan national identity. While China’s policies inside Tibet can be characterised as positive state building in that they push forward the integration of Tibet with China, its positions vis-à-vis the Dalai Lama are intended to prevent the reversal of the gains made in state building in Tibet since 1950. This paper, therefore, explains China’s policies inside Tibet and positions towards the Dalai Lama. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2008