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 […]
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 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 […]
CHINA’S NEW IMAGINARY OF TIBET #4 IN A SERIES OF 4 BLOGPOSTS ON CHINA’S NEW TIBETAN ROMANCE FOUR: ENGINEERING TIBET FOR THE MASS TOURIST GAZE The intrusive tourist gaze is problematic worldwide. The eye behind the camera captures all, but gives nothing. The camera has licence to enter even private spaces, and sacred places, and […]
WHY ARE TIBETANS PREDISPOSED TO BE POSITIVE? The immediate response of my Tibetan friends, on hearing that a brand new Potala has been built over the river from the original, positioned facing north to look at and interrogate the historic Potala, is that this is good. It matters little that the geomantic positioning is all […]
THE LAST FRONTIER OF THE MEAT EATERS? Of all peoples, Tibetans might seem the least likely to take to a vegetarian diet. The altitude of the Tibetan Plateau averages four kilometres above sea level. The land is ideally suited to yaks, hardy sheep breeds and goats; but vegetables grow only in sheltered valleys. Yet Tibet […]
‘Spoiling Tibet: China and Resource Nationalism on the Roof of the World’ – coming soon from Zed Books Twenty six years ago Zed published a book on Tibet, which quickly became controversial. The Making of Modern Tibet by Tom Grunfeld made the case for China’s revolutionary modernising project in Tibet. Not surprisingly, many Tibetans found this apologia for […]
COMPARING MONGOLIA AND TIBET Mongolians, on the brink of abundant mineral wealth accumulation find themselves torn between doing it with the multinational giants of global mining, and going it alone. Mongolia’s deal with global major Rio Tinto, to exploit the massive Oyu Tolgoi deposit of copper, gold and silver is at last about to […]
Hewlett Packard is to publish a list of all the smelters worldwide which supply it with the metals used in HP products, according to the New York Times. HP is one of the first big companies to buckle under the global push to ban the use of “conflict minerals” dug from the earth by coercion, […]