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 […]
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ALL AT SEA WITH THE LHASA CONSENSUS
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 […]
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MICKEY MOUSE CONQUERS CHINA
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CULTURAL IMPERIALISM? If, as the Chinese Communist Party insists, the imperialist West has never given up on its plot to dominate and humiliate China (and uses Tibet as a weapon to weaken China), then why has China Post just issued stamps featuring Mickey Mouse, to celebrate the opening of Disneyworld in Shanghai? […]
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TERROR EAST AND WEST
Old Europe, New China and those Tibetan terrorists In the commodious grounds of the oldest of Dutch think tanks, the Clingendael Institute, the pastoral idyll abounds. Green meadows, clipped formal gardens, sheep grazing safely in their fields; and a Japanese garden of trees artfully pruned, not for symmetry but a contorted beauty. Inside the old […]
Published in the Belgian media La Libre: “L’exploitation minière intensive du Toit du monde profite aux Chinois, pas aux Tibétains” VERHEST SABINE Publié le lundi 30 mai 2016 http://www.lalibre.be/actu/planete/l-exploitation-miniere-intensive-du-toit-du-monde-profite-aux-chinois-pas-aux-tibetains-527dbd3a3570ea593db72c55 Du cuivre, de l’or, de l’argent et bien d’autres minerais : si l’exploitation minière se révélait plutôt artisanale jusqu’ici sur le haut plateau tibétain, il en ira tout […]
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DROPPING TIBET, FIGHTING GRAVITY
DIVERTING TIBETAN WATERS INTO THE CANAL TO THE DEEP NORTH #1 in a series of 8 blog posts on Tibetan rivers China can and does import every natural resource it needs, with one exception. China can afford to source its raw materials globally because it then exports the products manufactured from them. China now […]
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DEFYING GRAVITY
SACRIFICING TIBETAN RIVERS FOR CHINESE COAL #2 in a series of 8 blog posts on China’s latest plans for Tibetan rivers BIG COAL’S BIG THIRST All stages of coal production require water. At the coal face, if workers are to avoid black lung disease, dust is suppressed with water. Coal stored above ground […]
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DEFYING ECONOMICS
WATER DIVERSION ON A MASSIVE SCALE, FROM TIBET TO LOWER CHINA #3 in a series of 8 blog posts on China’s latest plans for Tibetan rivers China has long planned to channel billions of cubic metres of water from the Tibetan upper Yangtze (Dri Chu in Tibetan) in order to pump water into […]
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ELECTRIFYING TIBET
BIG RESERVOIRS AND BIG DAMS #4 in a series of 8 blogs on China’s latest plans for Tibetan rivers The big new reservoirs for diverting Tibetan waters northward to the exhausted Yellow River are far from the only Chinese interventions on Tibetan rivers scheduled for the 13th Five-Year Plan and beyond. While water is diverted […]