Taming Tibet

Emily Yeh

Description

The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans' apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life. The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han's "little brothers." Arguing that development is in this context a form of "indebtedness engineering," Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to-and negotiations with-development, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China's modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Tíbet
• History of Asia
• China
• Tibet

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801469787
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

TA M I N G T I B E T

StudiesoftheWeatherheadEastAsianInstitute, Columbia University

TheWeatherheadEastAsianInstituteisColumbiaUniversity’scenter for research, publication, and teaching on modern and contemporary East Asia regions. The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia.

TamingTibet

LandscapeTransformationand

the Gift of Chinese Development

EmilyT.Yeh

C o r n e l l U n i v e rs i t y P r e s s Ithaca&London

Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges receipt of a Subsidy for Publication Grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which generously assisted the publication of this book.

Publicationofthisvolumehasbeenmadepossible,inpart,throughsupportfromthe Eugene M. Kayden Endowment at the University of Colorado.

Copyright©2013byCornellUniversity

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orparts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

Firstpublished2013byCornellUniversityPress Firstprinting,CornellPaperbacks,2013

PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yeh,EmilyT.(EmilyTing),author.  Taming Tibet : landscape transformation and the gift of Chinese development / Emily T. Yeh.  pages cm. — (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-0-8014-5155-3 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 978-0-8014-7832-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Tibet Autonomous Region (China)—Ethnic relations. 2. China—Ethnic relations. 3. Economic development—China—Tibet Autonomous Region. 4. Economic assistance, Chinese. 5. Tibetans—Ethnic identity. I. Title.  DS786.Y444 2013  951'.505—dc23 2013021195

CornellUniversityPressstrivestouseenvironmentallyresponsiblesuppliersand materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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ToRSandthepeopleofLhasa

oCtnnest

Listofillustrationsviii Prefaceix NoteonTransliterationsandPlaceNamesxv AbbreviationsandTermsxvi

 Introduction1 ACelebration26  1. State Space: Power, Fear, and the State of Exception29 HearingandForgetting52

PartI.Soil TheAftermathof2008(I)57 Control: Nature, Gender, and Memories of Labor2. Cultivating in State Incorporation60

PartII.Plastic LhasaHumor95  3. Vectors of Development: Migrants and the Making of “Little Sichuan”97 SignsofLhasa126  4. The Micropolitics of Marginalization129 ScienceandTechnologyTransferDay161 5. Indolence and the Cultural Politics of Development163

PartIII.Concrete MichaelJacksonasLhasa191 a Civilized City”: Making Lhasa Urban6. “Build 195 TheAftermathof2008(II)228  7. Engineering Indebtedness and Image: Comfortable Housing and the New Socialist Countryside231

 Conclusion264

 Afterword: Fire269 Notes273 References295 Index313

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Illustrations

Maps 221. Tibet Autonomous Region 2. LhasaChengguanqu23and Lhasa Municipality 1523. Social-spatial relations in a peri-urban village

Figures 551. “Marching upon wasteland” 2. Vice Premier Chen Yi helping plant apple seedlings at the July First State Farm 75 3. Plastic greenhouses in Lhasa’s peri-urban landscape, 2001 93  4. The new urban landscape 189  5. Michael Jackson as Lhasa 191  6. Sacred City Flower Garden brochure 208  7. Resettlement houses of those relocated from the Economic and Technological Development Zone, 2007 219 8. Posters of Chinese leaders adorn a sitting room, 2007248 9. Image engineering, 2007 249 25010. Flags atop a Comfortable House, 2007

viii

aceferP

InMarch2008,Tibetanprotestorssetfireto,damaged,anddestroyed roughly one thousand shops run by Han and Hui migrants in Lhasa, killing nineteen people and sending much of the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region up in flames. The violent unrest, which fueled a nationalist back- lash across China, became the subject of starkly competing interpretations premisedonfundamentallydifferentunderstandingsofdevelopment,mi- gration, and the place of Tibet within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The transnational Tibet Movement views Han migration as a key compo- nent of a deliberate policy of “cultural genocide.” In contrast, the state and most Chinese citizens view these same migrants as a natural and inevitable part of the process of economic development, modernization, and progress that began with the “peaceful liberation” of Tibetans in 1951. A week after the March 14 riot, aNew York Timesreporter interviewed a Han Chinese businessman, one of whose Tibetan trinket shops had been smashed and burned. “Our government has wasted our money in helping those white- eyed wolves,” he said, referring to Tibetans. “Just think of how much we’ve invested . . . Is this what we deserve?” This comment stood out for its mild- ness among the Han in Lhasa, who consistently described Tibetans as “lazy 1 and ungrateful for the economic development they have brought.” TheangrysentimentsofHanmigrantsintheaftermathoftheunrest drew directly from state discourse about the benevolence and generosity of the state and its Han citizens toward Tibet. Indeed, PRC legitimation of its sovereignty over Tibet has always rested heavily on the presumption of Tibetan gratitude, first for liberation from the cruel, barbaric, and feudal pre-1950s “old society” and then, starting in the 1980s, for the bestowal of the gift of development, through the skills brought by Han migrants as well as the provision of large-scale infrastructure and massive subsidies from the government. In this narrative, all but a few radical separatists are grateful for this largesse. Thus, the official explanation of the 2008 unrest is that it was instigated and masterminded by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and a 2 “conspiracy of the Dalai clique and Western anti-China forces.”From this vantage point, Tibetan citizens, grateful for development brought by the state and their “older brother” in the Chinese nation-family, the Han, would not protest unless they were duped and manipulated by evil forces abroad, intent on destroying China’s territorial sovereignty.

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