Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. vi, 268 pp. (Tables, maps.) US$60.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-16998-1.
This edited volume presents theoretically rigorous and ethnographically rich social science research concerning Xinjiang and the Tibetan areas of China. Its nine chapters cohere not only methodologically and thematically, but in a common argument: the authors challenge longstanding assumptions about the primary importance of ethnic and religious identities to Uyghurs’ and Tibetans’ discontent vis-à-vis the Chinese state and Han Chinese. Instead, they offer explanations rooted in economic change, local government, and ordinary people’s perceptions of the state.
Most of the chapters demonstrate the usefulness of comparisons between China proper and Inner Asia in narrowing down proximate causes of discontent. The authors point out the ways in which the expansion of state-directed infrastructural development under the Open Up the West campaign has affected Uyghurs and Tibetans much as they have Han. In Xinjiang and Tibet, Beijing subsidizes highly visible, labour-intensive projects that nominally are meant to “develop” the region but instead feed into local networks of official corruption and fail to enrich Uyghur or Tibetan workers. In Yeh and Nyima’s words, “The imperative to capture central level subsidies results in perverse policy implementation by local government” (155). Their subtle argument, like most in the volume, operates on two levels: in terms of policy and its reception, efforts at “environmental protection” are more likely to contribute to resentment when they are insensitive to local knowledge and needs. Moreover, Tibetans perceive that the state demands gratitude for its often-ineffective interventions. The result is the erosion of faith in Beijing’s claim to benevolence. Mortensen makes a related argument about the importance of the popular understanding of “the state” among Tibetans and observes considerable variation between regions. He finds that dissatisfaction has no necessary connection with ideology, religion, or ethnicity, but rather usually stems from human beings’ perennial concern with subsistence.
Cliff’s theoretically sophisticated argument makes similar observations in Xinjiang. He analyzes Uyghur discontent as a consequence of the region’s economic normalization within the Chinese system. The state supports economic development through two tracks: the first is large-scale infrastructure projects from “partner” provinces in China proper, which incentivize debt farming and the dispossession of land from small farmers, incidentally mostly Uyghur. The second is the creation of “lucrative chaos,” an artificial “frontier” economy that mainly benefits Han settlers, whose enterprises do not employ or promote Uyghur workers. Uyghurs, like many poor people in China proper, find themselves displaced, and then trapped on the lowest tier of the social hierarchy. Harlan finds exceptions to the rule, but they prove Cliff’s thesis: only those Uyghurs who successfully learn to navigate the guanxi networks of Chinese society succeed in the new Xinjiang economy. Hillman likewise looks at Tibet in the context of the broader Chinese political economy. He asks why since the 1980s sub-provincial governments in Tibetan-majority areas have not been as responsive to local concerns or as innovative as their counterparts in China proper. He finds a deeply entrenched system of disincentives against engagement with local issues in the official system of assessments and rewards, combined with incentives to misappropriate official money in informal networks of influence.
The tone-deaf insistence of campaigns for cultural assimilation also leads to counterproductive results. Henry’s piece argues that unrest stems less from the imposition of the Chinese language in Tibetan education per se and more from the frequency and intensity of those efforts. Leibold likewise characterizes discontent as the product of increasingly rapid social and economic change under a weak government and constantly changing policies. As Terrone explains in the context of Xinjiang, the strong emphasis on cultural assimilation in propaganda typical of these regions has the unintended effect of heightening Tibetans’ and Uyghurs’ awareness of their culture as the object of state power. In certain areas, “education reform” has become a vector for securitization, as well, which undermines the supposedly noble intentions of the state and reminds non-Han of their inferior position in China. Nevertheless, the volume is not entirely pessimistic in its outlook. Robin demonstrates that young Tibetans in China are articulating new universalist discourses of rights that reflect their own reactions against a growing Chinese particularism, rather than the influence of exile leaders.
A short review cannot do justice to the subtlety of the arguments in this volume, which will be of interest to anyone seeking lucid, innovative explanations of politics, economy, and society in Xinjiang and Tibet. Recently, “Xinjiang studies,” “Tibetan studies,” and “Chinese studies” have become increasingly separate fields, and work on contemporary issues in China’s West, with some outstanding exceptions, has rarely drawn on such rich ethnography or engaged so thoroughly with broader social-scientific questions. While we often speak of Uyghurs and Tibetans in the same breath, it is rare for scholarship to bring their situations into detailed comparison. This volume is a model for productive cross-regional scholarship and demonstrates the value of combining deep area knowledge with disciplinary rigour.
Eric Schluessel
University of Montana, Missoula, USA
pp. 575-577