A SERIES OF BLOGS ON CHINA’S LEADING INTELLECTUALS AND THEIR SELF-REFERENTIAL WORLD THREE: THE DISSIDENT LIBERAL LEFTIST WANG HUI: THE PAIN OF THE TIBETANS IS A FIGMENT OF WESTERN FANTASISTS CHINA, CENTRE OF ALL UNDER HEAVEN There is so much in Chinese tradition to draw on that leading intellectuals compete by cutting […]
Category: Tibet
All things tibet
THE TIBETAN FRONT LINE OF THE CONTEMPORARY SECURITY STATE Thanks to the unending flow of top secret documents going public, we now know that every state spies on everyone, not only to monitor terrorists but also to manoeuvre for military, political and commercial advantage. We have long known China does this, to intercept the military […]
ECLIPSED BY THE RESOURCE CURSE?
MONGOLIA’S PASTORAL NOMADS IN NEOLIBERAL FREE FALL In Mongolia, a democracy for almost 25 years, popular disappointment in the corruption of successive, elected governments has reached a point of disillusion deep enough to trigger symbolic warrior attacks on the parliament by horsemen armed with bows, arrows and rifles. The statist response has included speech […]
HARD MEN FOR HARD TIMES IN TIBET
PROVINCIAL MINDS What the global diaspora of Tibetans seldom manage to do is to look at Tibet thru Chinese eyes, not only in Beijing’s eyes but also from the perspective of Lanzhou, Chengdu, Xining and Lhasa. Things look very different if these provincial capitals are the starting point. Lhasa is showered with central money, whatever […]
SEVEN DEADLY SINS IN TODAY’S CHINA
URBAN TIBET UNDER XI JINPING’S NEW “MASS LINE” Blog 1 of 2 on ideologies and technologies of silencing Tibetans In a secret internal directive to all 80 million members of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP has made explicit its many fears and siege mentality. The central command is to NOT SPEAK of […]
HOW DOES CHINA CONTROL LHASA?
HOW TO LIVE UNDER LOCKDOWN: URBAN TIBET IN CHINA’S HI-TECH GRID SYSTEM OF SURVEILLANCE AND BEHAVIOURAL COMPLIANCE Blog 2 0f 2 China’s agenda in Tibet explicitly requires Tibetans to state publicly, on the record, their gratefulness to the Chinese Communist Party, and all it has done for Tibet. These public statements of compliance with […]
Spoiling Tibet: new book on mining Tibet
Spoiling Tibet: China and Resource Nationalism on the Roof of the World by Gabriel Lafitte available now from Zed Books reviewed by Kerry Brown A few years ago, I was seated next to a professor of geology at Oxford University. We broached the subject of China’s resource assets. “China has very little that is easily exploitable,” he said. I asked about […]
INVENTING MASS CHINESE TOURISM TO TIBET
CHINA’S NEW IMAGINARY OF TIBET #1 IN A SERIES OF 4 BLOGPOSTS ON CHINA’S NEW TIBETAN ROMANCE ONE: INVENTING MASS CHINESE TOURISM TO TIBET Imperialism, colonialism, orientalism, racism: these are the sins of the West. The Rest are the sinned against. Amazingly this narrow polarity retains a tenacious hold, both on popular imaginations, and […]
CHINA’S TIBET FEVER
CHINA’S NEW IMAGINARY OF TIBET #2 IN A SERIES OF 4 BLOGPOSTS ON CHINA’S NEW TIBETAN ROMANCE TWO: CHINA’S TIBET FEVER Alongside ingrained disdain for Tibet and especially the Tibetans, in today’s China there is now abundant evidence of a romantic embrace of a fantasy version of Tibet as a magical place of eternal […]
CHINA’S NEW IMAGINARY OF TIBET #3 IN A SERIES OF 4 BLOGPOSTS ON CHINA’S NEW TIBETAN ROMANCE THREE: COME TO TIBET AND CULTIVATE THE MODERN, CONSUMING SELF China’s statisticians say 13 million Han Chinese tourists now come to Lhasa annually, plus many more through the scenic sites and sacred places of Tibet, totalling at least […]