KOKOSHILI/HOH XIL: TIBET’S EMPTY QUARTER OR HUMAN LANDSCAPE? NATURAL AND CULTURAL WORLD HERITAGE Blog 2 of 2 on the decision facing UNESCO World Heritage Committee in the first week of July 2017 The inspiring example of Tibetans determined to protect wildlife as fellow sentient beings created a worldwide movement to stop animal slaughter. […]
CHINA’S HI-TECH AMBITIONS TO SUPPLANT THE WORLD’S TOP MANUFACTURING COUNTRIES, BY EXTRACTION OF RARE STRATEGIC METALS FROM TIBET Blog #1 of 2 LHAGANG LITHIUM AND RARE EARTH DEPOSITS Fresh evidence has emerged confirming how and why Tibetans in remote areas, far from metropoles of power, experience the state as predatory. The Tibetans of the […]
CHINA’S HI-TECH AMBITIONS TO SUPPLANT THE WORLD’S TOP MANUFACTURING COUNTRIES, BY EXTRACTION OF RARE STRATEGIC METALS FROM TIBET Blog #2 of 2 LITHIUM, HI-TECH STEALTH BOMBERS AND THE DAM PLANS ON THE NYAGCHU/YALONG RIVER Even though extraction on a commercial scale has barely begun, lithium mine construction at Lhagang/Tagong is confined to warmer months and […]
HYDRO DAMS ADVANCING UP THE RIVERS OF EASTERN TIBET Will Tibetan rivers be saved from damming? We now know what China’s planners intend, in more detail than when the 13th Five-Year Plan was announced early in 2016. Now, at the end of 2016, China’s water planners have finalised their plans for that five year […]
EVALUATING CHINA’S NOMINATION OF HOH XIL NATURE RESERVE TO BECOME A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE NATURAL PROPERTY #1 of a series of 3 blogs The cute Tibetan chiru antelope mascot of the Beijing Olympics is to be saved, by making its winter pastures and summer birthing grounds UNESCO World Heritage. Before China reached the Tibetan […]
EVALUATING CHINA’S NOMINATION OF HOH XIL NATURE RESERVE TO BECOME A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE NATURAL PROPERTY #3 of a series of 3 blogs WATER VERSUS PASTORALISM In 2007, China’s leading research institute for making Tibet a scientific object reported that: “No man’s land records of scientific investigation in China for the first time the work […]
EVALUATING CHINA’S NOMINATION OF HOH XIL NATURE RESERVE TO BECOME A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE NATURAL PROPERTY #2 of a series of 3 blogs THE ICONIC CHIRU ANTELOPE In celebration of the heroic efforts of Tibetan guardians of the chiru antelope, China produced not only the very popular movie Kekexili: Mountain Patrol but, in 2004, a […]
XI JINPING COMES TO AMDO QINGHAI Xi Jinping’s recent tour of inspection of Qinghai province suggests all is well in the northern half of the Tibetan Plateau, which, in China’s usage has become hyphenated, as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, or QTP. Although the Tibetan Plateau is one unit, in any sense –geographically, tectonically, altitudinally, culturally, linguistically, […]
TROUBLED TIBET: THE PREFECTURES OF KANDZE AND NGAWA For the densely populated inland province of Sichuan, its mountainous Tibetan rump has always been an anomaly. Sichuan is a largely lowland province, stiflingly hot and humid in summer, made more fiery by a passion for the hottest of chilies in most dishes. The alpine meadows of […]
CHINA’S HISTORIC RIGHTS TO OCEANS AND PLATEAUS First, we had the “Washington consensus” of the 1990s, a convergence of “well-known facts” about the inevitable triumph of capitalism, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The Washington Consensus on the superiority of neoliberal capitalism coincided, not coincidentally, with the […]