All things tibet
LAUNCH OF Wasted Lives: China’s campaign to end Tibetan nomadic PRO-PASTORALIST REPORT ON TIBETAN NOMADS UNDER CHINA’S POLICY OF CLOSING PASTURELANDS UPRIVER FROM INDIA http://youtu.be/mBOsT6ss1pU New voices out of Tibet and China, converging on a new understanding of why nomadic pastoralism is what suits the Tibetan Plateau best, feature in a new report, launched globally […]
Tibet, Congo or Papua New Guinea When, in 2012, I wrote a book about mining in Tibet, it seemed China’s appetite for minerals was insatiable, having survived the great global recession of 2009 onwards with hardly a blip in demand. By then the global commodity boom had been rolling on nonstop for a decade and […]
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TIBETAN MASTIFF; THE FALL AND RISE OF THE WOLF AS TOTEM OF THE CHINA DREAM The mastiff guard dogs of the Tibetan pastoralists preceded their owners into modernity. Early this century China discovered an utterly modern fashion for Tibetan mastiffs, traditionally used to guard the black yak hair tents, […]
XI JINPING AND THE ECONOMY OF TIBET It is 18 months since my book on mining in Tibet came out, over two years since I finished writing. What a lot has changed, in directions I did not foresee. Those changes mean a lot for the future of Tibet. While writing Spoiling Tibet: China and […]
A CHARMING NEW DOCO Tibetans in exile, and their supporters, chronically politicise everything they learn about what is happening inside Tibet; maybe they forget there are other lenses. However, there are other ways of approaching reality, and in today’s China those approaches can occasionally come from Chinese film-makers taking a fresh look at situations that […]
from a small book of essays, poetry and art on the Soil and the Earth, edited by Vandana Shiva, celebrating the International Year of Soils, 2015 ********************** That the soils of the Tibetan Plateau exist at all is remarkable. This vast island in the sky is, in planetary history, so new, so high and still […]
WILL TIBET WATER CHINA NORTH AND SOUTH? China’s completion of the two routes channelling water from the Yangtze far to the north, to water deficit northern China, sets the scene for one of the biggest decisions China will make in the coming year. The decision facing China’s leaders in 2015 is whether to now go […]
Why is it “inefficient” to save the lives of mothers? This is the first in a series of four blogposts on why so many women in Tibet die in childbirth, usually alone, bleeding to death. As with almost anything to do with Tibet, even the basic facts are contested. As we rapidly approach the fulfilment […]
Traditional Tibetan sciences of healing, and Community Health Workers Second in a series of four blogs on why so many Tibetan women die in childbirth, and what fresh solutions may be possible. The first in this series canvassed the conventional explanations, which both reach the pessimistic conclusion that as long as Tibetan nomads occupy remote […]
Reaching out to remote women: Sciences of healing, Sowa Rigpa and Community Health Workers In the first two blogs, we asked why it is that well into the 21st century, on the eve of declaring China the great success story of the Millennium Development Goals, so many Tibetan women still bleed alone to death as […]