China’s Frontier Regions: Ethnicity, Economic Integration and Foreign Relations 9781350985711, 9780857727428

Table of contents :
Cover
Author
Endorsement
Title
Copyright
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Preface
Map: People’s Republic of China: Provinces and autonomous regions
Introduction: A Rising China and its Frontier Regions into the Twenty-First Century
1. Development with Chinese Characteristics in Xinjiang: A Solution to Ethnic Tension or Part of the Problem?
2. Beijing’s ‘March Westwards’: Xinjiang, Central Asia and China’s Quest for Great Power Status
3. China’s Economic Modernization in Tibet and Its Impact on Tibetan Identity
4. South Asian Responses to China’s Rise: Indian and Nepalese Handling of the Tibet Issue
5. Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Twenty-First Century: The Inner Mongolia Factor
6. From ‘Backwater’ to ‘Bridgehead’: Culture, Modernity and the Reimagining of Yunnan
Index

Citation preview

Michael E. Clarke is Associate Professor at the National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra. He has published extensively on the history and politics of Xinjiang, Uyghur separatism, nationalism and terrorism, Chinese foreign policy in Central Asia, Australian foreign and defence policy and global nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation dynamics. He is the author of Xinjiang and China’s Rise in Central Asia: A History (2011) and (with Stephan Fru¨hling and Andrew O’Neil) Australia’s Nuclear Policy: Strategic, Economic and Normative Dimensions (2015). Douglas Smith is Lecturer in International Relations, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, where he teaches and researches twentieth-century Chinese history, politics and economy. His research focus is on democratization and political reform in the early Republican era and Australia-China relations. Two of his most recent publications are: ‘The Debate over China’s Economic Reform: Bears and Bulls’, in E. Van Acker and G. Curran (eds), Government and Business in Volatile Times (2013); and (with Michael E. Clarke) ‘The Song Remains the Same: Converging Views on a Rising China’, in M. Heazle, M. Griffiths and T. Conley (eds), Foreign Policy Challenges in the 21st Century (2009).

‘China’s Frontier Regions explores how China’s policy towards its internal peripheries critically structures its emerging foreign relations and new regional frameworks. Whether it be security, economy or identity, the contributions emphasize the centrality of frontier regions in the formulation of Beijing’s internal and foreign priorities, and how discussions of seemingly geopolitical topics like plans for a “New Silk Road” and China’s new great power status cannot be removed from them.’ Alexander A. Cooley, Director, Harriman Institute, Columbia University

CHINA’S FRONTIER REGIONS Ethnicity, Economic Integration and Foreign Relations

MICHAEL

Edited by E. CLARKE AND DOUGLAS SMITH

This book is dedicated to the memory of Marisa Olga Clarke and her lifelong passion for learning.

Published in 2016 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright selection and editorial matter q 2016 Michael E. Clarke and Douglas Smith Copyright individual chapters q Michael E. Clarke, Elizabeth Davis, Sean R. Roberts, Gary Sigley, Douglas Smith, Sharad K. Soni, Tsering Topgyal The right of Michael E. Clarke and Douglas Smith to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by the editors in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. International Library of Human Geography 33 ISBN: 978 1 78453 258 1 eISBN: 978 0 85772 945 3 ePDF: 978 0 85772 742 8 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors Preface Map: People’s Republic of China: Provinces and autonomous regions Introduction: A Rising China and its Frontier Regions into the Twenty-First Century Michael E. Clarke and Douglas Smith

vii ix xii 1

1. Development with Chinese Characteristics in Xinjiang: A Solution to Ethnic Tension or Part of the Problem? Sean R. Roberts

22

2. Beijing’s ‘March Westwards’: Xinjiang, Central Asia and China’s Quest for Great Power Status Michael E. Clarke

56

3. China’s Economic Modernization in Tibet and Its Impact on Tibetan Identity Elizabeth Davis

87

4. South Asian Responses to China’s Rise: Indian and Nepalese Handling of the Tibet Issue Tsering Topgyal

110

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5. Sino-Mongolian Relations in the Twenty-First Century: The Inner Mongolia Factor Sharad K. Soni

140

6. From ‘Backwater’ to ‘Bridgehead’: Culture, Modernity and the Reimagining of Yunnan Gary Sigley

171

Index

204

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Davis is Professor in the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines. She has lived and worked in Asia for many years. Initially, her academic research focused on China. She has previously held professorial appointments at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University and the Asia Pacific Security Studies Centre, Honolulu. Professor Davis has also worked extensively for the US Government on issues related to preventive diplomacy in Asia, including working with Nepalese officials during the transition from monarchy to representative democracy. Simultaneous with these onthe-ground projects, she has maintained a rigorous academic agenda that includes briefing US senators and congressmen, top US military officers, and foreign government officials on issues related to China and Asia. Her most recent publication is Ruling, Resources and Religion in China (2012). Sean R. Roberts is Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and Director of the International Development Studies Programme at George Washington University, Washington DC. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among the Uyghur people of Central Asia and China and has published extensively on this community in scholarly journals and in edited volumes. In addition, he has produced a documentary film on the community entitled Waiting for Uighurstan (1996). In 1998–2000 and 2002–6, he worked at the United States Agency for International

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Development (USAID) in Central Asia on democracy programmes, designing and managing projects in civil society development, political party assistance, community development, independent media strengthening and elections assistance. Gary Sigley is Associate Professor in Asian Studies, University of Western Australia, Perth. Contemporary China and its ongoing social, cultural and political transformation form the broad focus of his research. More specifically, his research interests can be split into two areas: governmental and social policy reform in contemporary China on the one hand, and cultural heritage and community development on the other. His most recent publication is ‘From Revolution to Government, From Contradictions to Harmony: Urban Community Policing in Post-Deng China’, in Randy Lippert and Kevin Walby (eds), Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in a 21st Century World (2013). Sharad K. Soni is Professor and Director, Area Studies Programme, Centre for Inner Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India). He specializes in Chinese Central Asian Studies with particular focus on the history, politics and international relations of Mongolia as well as Tibet and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions of China. He has published extensively across these fields in scholarly journals and in edited volumes. He is also the author of six books, the most recent ones including Mongolia in the 21st Century: Society, Culture and International Relations (2010) and Mongolia Today: Internal Changes and External Linkages (2015). Tsering Topgyal is Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham. His research interests and expertise include Chinese foreign and security policy with special attention to its ethnic conflicts, Asia-Pacific security and politics, Sino-Indian relations and Sino-Tibetan issues. He is the author of China and Tibet: The Perils of Insecurity (2016).

PREFACE

This book is the end product of a process that began with a small workshop organized by the China Policy Group of the Griffith Asia Institute in July 2013. The workshop, titled ‘China at the Edge: Border Movements of Markets, People and Ideas’, focused primarily on Xinjiang and Yunnan and explored the changing nature of these frontier provinces under the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Of particular concern for participants was to track the ways in which both the central government and provincial authorities had begun to reimagine or reconfigure the roles of these frontiers both within a domestic and foreign policy setting since the end of the Cold War. Historically, the Chinese imagination understood these provinces as the edge of civilization. Consequently both had been frequently conceived as the frontier writ large: buffer states that represented the transition between civility and barbarism – sometimes under Chinese sovereignty, sometimes not. For the Chinese literati they were always places of exile and ruin. Yet at the same time, these provinces played crucial roles as important commercial and cosmopolitan hubs, intimately involved in the transmission of goods, peoples and ideas between China and its west and southwest. This traffic was crucial for China’s ongoing development. With the end of the Cold War, and particularly with the central government’s efforts from the early 1990s to extend the benefits of ‘reform and opening’ to China’s interior provinces, these two

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provinces returned to a more central role in Chinese thinking about domestic and international politics. The workshop considered the changing identity of these two frontier provinces and the roles they played as subnational actors in both policing their borders and reaching out to near neighbours. It also highlighted how these twin historical legacies as both ‘backward’ frontiers and strategic ‘bridgeheads’ for Chinese power influence into Central Asia and Southeast Asia respectively were being reinterpreted into new politico-economic and foreign policy strategies encapsulated in the political rhetoric of ‘bridgeheads’, ‘gateways’ and ‘Silk Roads’ (both land- and maritime-based). A core outcome of the workshop was the recognition that a focus on the role of China’s frontier regions not only in the context of domestic-level concerns, such as policy toward ethnic minorities or economic development strategies, but also these regions’ effect on China’s contemporary foreign policy was warranted as places such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Yunnan were emerging as key avenues through which Beijing was seeking to project its power and influence into Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. Such a focus we believed was not only valid in and of itself but would also provide an important contribution to the burgeoning international relations literature on the ‘rise’ of China. Much of this literature we felt has tended to focus almost exclusively on the potential impact of the ‘rise’ of China on the international relations and the strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific and on whether a ‘rising’ China can be peacefully integrated into the existing order in maritime Asia to the exclusion of what China’s growing power and influence means for its significant, and historically pivotal, continental frontiers. This edited book argues that nowhere is China’s ‘rise’ more immediately felt than in, and across, its historical frontier regions of Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia. While the establishment of the PRC in 1949 secured China’s claims to these territories, they remained heavily populated by non-Han ethnic groups with religious, cultural, economic and linguistic linkages to neighbouring states/societies. However since China’s resurgence

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under Deng Xiaoping’s institution of ‘reform and opening’ in 1978 Beijing has channelled much of its energy toward the thorough integration of these regions into the PRC. This process has had widereaching implications not only for these frontier regions themselves but also the neighbouring states and societies with which they have traditionally had a myriad of links. The contributors to this volume explore the inter-connections between the domestic policy challenges posed by Beijing’s broad integrationist project in Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia and its diplomacy and foreign relations with the countries abutting these regions. Two major tasks that contributors undertake are to: (i) examine how Beijing views these frontier regions and their ultimate place within the PRC; and (ii) explore the roles these regions play in Chinese thinking about its diplomacy and foreign policy with neighbouring states. Michael E. Clarke and Douglas Smith

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INTRODUCTION A RISING CHINA AND ITS FRONTIER REGIONS INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Michael E. Clarke and Douglas Smith

‘Nothing was ever quite settled in the borderlands.’1 One of the enduring themes of China’s history has been the unsettled relationship between its centre and its ever-changing periphery. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) now includes 31 provincial-level administrative units2 (22 provinces, five autonomous regions and four municipalities). Eight of these units – Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Xizang (Tibet), Yunnan and Guangxi – form a daunting 22,147 km land border with 14 other nation states. No other country’s land border stretches as far, and only Russia can equal the number of neighbouring states. Furthermore, these frontier regions are complex, generally economically disadvantaged and ethnically diverse – products to a large extent of the ebb and flow of Chinese imperialism. Histories are for the most part national histories. They are told from the centre and often incorporate and define the margins with, at worst, disdain and at best, miscalculation. The Chinese dynastic imagination understood these frontier regions as the edges

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of civilization: buffer states that represented the transition between civility and barbarism – sometimes under Chinese sovereignty, sometimes not. For the Chinese literati they were always places of exile and ruin.3 For others, they were places of violence and anxiety where Chinese forces sought expansion and ‘barbarian’ tribes jealously sought the riches of the Middle Kingdom. Under the PRC, however, much of the historical tenuousness of the Chinese state’s (both imperial and post-imperial) control over its frontiers has been purposefully occluded by an official narrative that views the relatively recent incorporation of regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia as the ‘return’ of errant territories to the motherland. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) adherence to such a view is not new but the continuation of a long-standing conceit that reads back into history both the political unity and territorial extent of the Chinese state, with clear implications for the governance of non-Han Chinese peoples and regions: Successive governments (imperial, Guomindang, Communist) have held devoutly to the view that the Chinese state reached close to its current extent in the early stages of the Empire (3rd Century BCE ). There have followed more than two millennia of unity, broken only by the aberration of periods of disunity. The centre (wherever the Chinese capital was located at any given time) rightfully controls the borderlands, in a paternalist, one-way relationship in which benevolence comes from the centre and is gratefully received by the benighted border peoples, once referred to as barbarians, now known as national minorities.4 Yet, this official narrative belies the inherent political, and often violent, contestation that has characterized the incorporation of China’s frontiers. The example of official pronouncements with respect to Xinjiang is symptomatic here. Through a number of official White Papers on state policy in Xinjiang published by the State Council of the PRC, for instance, Beijing has repeatedly asserted that Xinjiang has not only been an ‘integral’ province of

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China since ‘ancient times’ but that the region’s non-Han ethnic groups ‘cherish dearly’ their place in the ‘unitary and multi-ethnic’ PRC. Such ‘bland, confident assertions’, Lary notes: obscure the actual nature of much of China’s physical expansion – a heavy dependence on the force of arms. This forcible expansion has often been regarded as permanent only on the incoming (i.e. Chinese) side; on the other side, that of the indigenous peoples of the borderlands, the Chinese presence either remains contested or is seen as an occupation.5 Indeed, if we were to shift the emphasis away from a Sinocentric historiography, we can see that these border regions often played crucial roles as important commercial and cosmopolitan hubs, intimately involved in the transmission of goods, people and ideas between China and the outside world. This was particularly true for the land based corridors that connected China’s centre with Europe, the Middle East and the rest of Asia: the so called Silk and the Maritime Silk Roads.6 While this traffic was crucial for China’s ongoing development, the spiritual centre remained in the Chinese heartland and feelings of cultural superiority saw these regions neglected, and sometimes ignored, by the national imagination. As Alexander Woodside has argued, however, elite narratives about the relationship between the centre and China’s frontiers for much of the historical record tended to view them as either sources of threat or strategic and/or economic liabilities. Such views, perhaps not surprisingly, correlated with the relative strength of the Chinese state at a given point with the frontiers viewed as sources of threat during times of weakness or disunity and strategic or economic burdens when the state had expanded to control the frontiers.7 This ‘cyclical-catastrophic, view of the borders’, Woodside notes, ‘faded in favour of a perspective that might be called linear-providential’ by the early twentieth century that ‘entertained visions of frontier development in which frontiers were seen as part of a willed progress towards some emancipatory goal’.8

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As detailed by a number of the contributions to this volume such a ‘linear-providential’ view has reached its apogee under the PRC with Beijing pursuing vast, state-led economic development programmes along China’s frontiers designed not only to consolidate and solidify the centre’s hold but to also remake these regions into conduits of Chinese power and influence abroad. In this volume we thus suggest that these borders and frontier regions have now become more central to China’s domestic and international vision. A crucial factor that has driven this change in the state’s view of frontiers has been the convergence of both geographic and historical factors that have tended to ‘naturalize’ the concept of China’s rise as a ‘return’ to its rightful place as pre-eminent world power. John Agnew has pointedly noted in this particular context that there have been two major ways in which China’s rise has been understood both by external and Chinese observers: China as ‘just another in long succession of great powers rising at the top of the global hierarchy’; or as ‘a completely new phenomenon because of its singular history associated with its imperial past, communist rejection of world capitalism, and cultural peculiarity’.9 Interpretations of China’s rise as ‘great power politics as normal’ are widespread. International relations scholar, John Mearsheimer, have argued that China will behave as all other rising great powers have throughout history. For Mearsheimer, due to the incentives provided by the anarchical international system, China will seek security through the maximization of its power and attempt to ‘dominate the Asia-Pacific region much as the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere’.10 ‘Why’, Mearsheimer asks: should we expect China to act any differently than the United States over the course of its history? Are they more principled than the Americans? More ethical? Are they less nationalistic than the Americans? Less concerned about their survival? They are none of these things [. . .] which is why China is likely to imitate the United States and attempt to become a regional hegemon.11

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In this understanding, Chinese domination of the lands abutting its territorial frontiers is seen as inevitable. At the other end of the spectrum lie those that, in Agnew’s terms, present ‘idiographic’ understandings of a rising China’s impact on world politics. While works in this realm are diverse, they have in common a desire to present accounts of China as a ‘unique’ or indeed ‘exceptional’ international actor in political, economic and normative domains.12 Such ‘idiographic’ treatments of China’s rise span serious international relations literature to more tabloid, headline-grabbing punditry such as Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World. Within the international relations literature perhaps the most advanced and sophisticated representation of this perspective is David C. Kang’s. Kang argues, contra Mearsheimer, that China’s rise has not prompted its neighbours to balance against it but rather, to varying degrees, to accommodate it. This is based upon a reanimation of a Sinocentric ‘tribute system’ in East Asia which Kang posits represents a return to something akin to the ‘natural order’ of things in the region after a relatively brief interlude of Western dominance.13 Henry Kissinger’s 2011 book, On China, also draws on such positions asserting that ‘China’s exceptionalism is cultural’. Beijing, Kissinger avers: does not proselytize; it does not claim that its contemporary institutions are relevant outside China. But it is the heir of the Middle Kingdom tradition which formally graded all other states as various levels of tributaries based on their approximation to Chinese cultural and political forms, in other words a kind of cultural universality.14 William Callahan has critically described this tendency as a ‘New Orientalism’ characterized by an ‘emerging dialect’ of ‘Sino-speak’ that ‘employs a new vocabulary and grammar of naturalized civilization and essentialized identity to describe – and thus prescribe – China’s rejuvenation to global greatness’.15 In this scenario China is portrayed as a ‘natural’, and often largely benign, superpower in East Asia. The ‘rise’ of China should thus be reframed

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as a ‘return’ to ‘traditional’ pre-eminence with the concomitant implication that this will not constitute an unprecedented development in the power politics of Asia, and hence not be inherently destabilizing to that order. Much of this debate, however, is bedevilled by a lack of consideration of the effect of Beijing’s domestic state-building imperatives in its core frontier regions upon both its foreign policy and its emerging vision of China’s role in international affairs. Indeed, it is pertinent in this respect to note that the dynamic ‘ebb and flow’ between the traditional core of Han Chinese civilization and the surrounding non-Han Chinese world alluded to above was to a large degree brought to a close by the conquests of imperial China’s last dynasty, the Qing (1644– 1911), itself led by the non-Han and Inner Asian Manchus.16 Between the mid-seventeenth and mideighteenth centuries the Qing emperors succeeded in conquering and/or absorbing China’s historical frontier regions – Xinjiang (East Turkestan), Tibet, Mongolia (both ‘Inner’ and ‘Outer’), Manchuria, Yunnan and Taiwan – the control of which had eluded the bulk of the Qing’s dynastic predecessors. By virtue of these achievements the Manchus endowed twentieth-century (and indeed twenty-firstcentury) China with a truly continental scale reaching from the Pacific to the heart of the Eurasian landmass. Robert Kaplan’s recent analysis of the geographic bases of China’s rise, while not unproblematic, nonetheless acknowledges the major domestic-level dilemma that Beijing has (and continues to) grapple with in the consolidation of its core frontier regions. Kaplan, first and foremost, argues that China currently ‘occupies the globe’s most advantageous’ geopolitical position as it’s ‘reach extends not only to the strategic Central Asian core of the former Soviet Union, with all of its mineral and hydrocarbon wealth but also to the main shipping lanes of the Pacific three thousand miles away’.17 This ‘fact’, he continues, while ‘so basic and obvious that it tends to be overlooked in all the discussions about its economic dynamism and national assertiveness over recent decades’ nonetheless ‘drives the political reality of China today’.18 For Kaplan, the ‘ultimate fate’ of the apparently ascendant Chinese state hinges on the question of:

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whether the dominant Hans, who comprise more than 90 percent of China’s population and live mainly in the arable cradle of China, are able to permanently keep the Tibetans, Uighur Turks, and Inner Mongolians who live in the periphery under control, with the minimum degree of unrest.19 This book directly addresses this core issue by bringing the frontier into the centre of analysis by highlighting how Beijing’s reimagining of China’s major frontier regions serves both domestic and external policy goals. We argue that there are three principal reasons for this new focus. At a broad level, global modernities have (generally) forced a re-examination of borders and frontier regions. The fact that many states have chosen to engage in the processes of globalization has led to the perception that borders have become less important. Much of this neo-liberal vision emphasizes the transformation of borders from ‘barriers’ to ‘bridges’ – a lowering of obstacles so as to facilitate increased trade and economic development. We want to argue that in fact globalization has in the Chinese context often made the borders more, rather than less, important. Consequently statebuilding near the border and the building of real or metaphorical ‘bridges’ across the borders requires increased and often delicate decision making. The point here is that contemporary nation states have chosen to engage in globalization and this often requires strategic thinking about borders and neighbours which often leads to an increased scrutiny of cross border flows. China in particular, given its unique developmental path and its warm embrace of international capitalism, has been cognizant of controlling what flows across the borders. While Deng Xiaoping was not afraid to ‘let a few flies in’, he was also confident of the state’s ability to ruthlessly meet any new challenges these ‘flies’ may initiate. At the national level, the state has refocussed attention on the frontier regions for two further reasons. China now ranks as the twenty-sixth most unequal country in the world in terms of wealth distribution sitting between Madagascar and El Salvador with a Gini coefficient of 47.4.20 Inequality is now a chronic problem for China and the most dramatic disparities lie between the coastal provinces

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and the western and northwestern border regions. Yunnan and Tibet (Xizang), for example, rate 28th and 29th out of the 31 provincial level administrative units mentioned above in terms of GDP per capita. The poorest three border regions, Yunnan, Xijiang and Tibet had a per capita GDP of RMB 25,083, RMB 37,181 and RMB 26,068 respectively in 2014.21 This is in stark contrast with the three richest coastal provinces Jiansu (RMB 74,607) Zhejiang (RMB 68462) and Guangdong (RMB 58,540).22 Recently, the two autonomous border regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang have gained some benefits from the recent global resource boom, but now face an uncertain future due to declining commodity prices as well as slowing national demand. Liaoning is the only border region that is regularly listed in the top ten performing provinces in terms of GDP. Beijing elites have come to realize that national stability requires the economic integration of these poorer regions into the national economy in a more sustained and comprehensive way. It was noted in one prominent government publication that: If the west of China is not stable, then the whole country cannot be stable, if the living standard in the west of China is not good, then the living standard in the whole country is not good and if there is no modernization in the west of China, then there is no modernization in the whole country.23 Since 2000, Beijing has initiated a number of noteworthy strategies to reverse this growing inequality. Jiang’s Zemin’s ‘Great Western Development’ (xibu da kaifa) policies, for example, focused on six provinces (Gansu, Guizhou, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Yunnan), five autonomous regions (Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet and Xinjiang) and one municipality (Chongqing). While not directly focused on the borders, these policies primarily aimed to stimulate the economies through the construction of large infrastructural projects that physically linked the periphery to the centre. In January of that year the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considered the issue important enough to establish a ‘Leadership Group’ to manage western development with the then Premier Zhu Rongji as head. The key

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project was the construction of The East–West [gas] Pipeline, begun in 2002, that now supplies natural gas from the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang to the industrial and urban centres of the east coast, particularly Shanghai, Fujian and Guangdong. Importantly the network of pipelines also travels through Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi providing energy for development along the way. Other state-building projects included the Qinghai– Tibet Railway that finally linked Tibet to the national railway grid.24 The Hu Jintao Government energetically continued these statebuilding policies incorporating much of the previous government’s initiatives into their ‘Harmonious Society’ campaigns. Generally, though, these policies took a domestic focus: government-led investment in projects that linked the west with the existing centres of production in the east. A significant problem, of course, was the lack of direct access to international markets that had proved so successful for the eastern provinces. Many of the countries adjacent to China’s land borders were perceived as underdeveloped, with poor governance, embryotic infrastructure and difficult terrain. Consequently for China a crucial element of any border initiative was to ‘break the connectivity bottleneck’,25 which had seriously thwarted development both for the border regions in China and their adjacent states. Furthermore many neighbours were anxious about, or even hostile to, China’s rise. India to the southwest was more than concerned about China’s interests in the Indian Ocean and their growing intimacy with countries in its own sphere of influence. China’s diplomacy in the specific geopolitical environment of Central Asia, most particularly, has demonstrated the renewed centrality of China’s frontiers to its foreign policy. After the Soviet collapse China was not (and arguably is still not) perceived to be a ‘natural’ player in the region. It was Russia, even in its enfeebled post-Soviet incarnation, that remained the dominant extra-regional power throughout the 1990s while China remained a peripheral, if emergent, regional power. To some observers in the 1990s, China’s position in Xinjiang, and indeed other frontier regions such as Tibet, was not perceived to be an asset for Beijing but rather to be a hindrance to its rising power. Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross, for

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example, asserted in 1997 that China’s geopolitical situation, possessing at once major continental and maritime frontiers, would temper its ‘rise’ by rendering it a ‘vulnerable power with limited opportunity to be expansionist’ as Beijing would be confronted by ‘antagonists who are numerous, near and strong’.26 Yet such dismissals have given way over the past decade to references not only to growing Chinese influence throughout Asia but even to an emergent Chinese hegemony in Central Asia. What has fundamentally changed this equation has been the progress and success of China’s integration of Xinjang. Xinjiang is no longer an ethnically and geographically liminal zone between Chinese and ‘Inner Asian’ peoples/civilizations, with the region’s population now divided almost equally between the Turkic Uyghurs and Han Chinese. Moreover, decades of state-led investment and development have also transformed Xinjang from an outpost of Chinese civilization into a dynamic frontier zone through which Chinese power and influence is flowing into Central Asia. In Central Asia, China has capitalized in on the strategic and economic potentialities of Xinjiang to forge a role as an ascendant power, overtaking Russia as the region’s major external economic partner and the prime mover of the region’s major multilateral organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). There is now thus a clear view that such frontier regions should once again take on the identity of ‘important commercial and cosmopolitan hubs’, or ‘pivots’ as one well-known scholar27 has called them: that is that they play both domestic and international roles. In what the Chinese media are increasingly calling Xi Jinping’s flagship policy, a number of border concerns and regional developmental issues have been integrated into the One Belt and One Road (OBOR) strategy.28 Xi unveiled the initiative in a number of major announcements in 2013 when plans for the Silk Region Economic Belt (SREB) and Maritime Silk Road (MSR) were revealed. A year later the government pledged US$ 40 billion to support infrastructural development for the project, clearly suggesting that China’s interests were now to be served through a shifting of emphasis for its geo-economic power away from the Pacific towards Eurasia.

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The (SREB) aims to once again connect Xinjiang to Central Asia and Europe providing a new Eurasian Land Bridge to develop the China-Mongolia-Russia and China-Central Asia-West Asia corridors. It would also be one of the terminals of the Pakistan-China economic corridor. Similarly, Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia will become gateways to Mongolia and Russia’s Far East. The area would be central for the development of the Eurasian high-speed transport corridor linking Beijing with Moscow, lessening China’s dependency on current sea routes. China also wishes to leverage Tibet’s geographic location for extending a Silk Road node to Nepal. The ‘Maritime Silk Road’ (MSR) incorporating the so-called ‘Old Tea Horse Road’ traditionally ran through Yunnan and Guangxi and to Southeast and South Asia and then on to the Middle East aims to strengthen economic and political ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the underdeveloped regions of South and Southeast Asia. These provinces, which border Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar are ideal for connecting with the Greater Mekong Subregion, and can serve as a pivot to link China with South and Southeast Asia. Yunnan’s provincial capital, Kunming, is the endpoint of the proposed Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor, which starts in Kolkata. While still quite abstract, the initiative provides a ‘map in the sand’ for how Beijing wishes to further integrate itself into the world economy and take the border regions with it.29 The goal according to the government is to achieve ‘multinational economic development through the revitalisation of [these] two historical thoroughfares’ and there is little doubt that the initiative is gaining momentum. During the opening speech of the fourth China-Eurasia Expo in Urumqi in 2014 Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang stated that the projected SREB would cover more than 50 nations with a total population of approximately 3.8 billion, with an enormous development and business potential. One source estimates that the total value of China’s ‘one belt, one road’ initiative could reach US$ 21 trillion.30 China aims to stimulate development and consequently domestic demand in these neighbouring markets for China’s production that will at the same time stimulate

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development in the border regions themselves. It is also hoped, it should be noted, that China will gain a greater influence in regional economic and political affairs and counter recent American initiatives in the Pacific. Running parallel with this economic integration are policies to achieve the social and political integration of the populations of China’s frontier regions. This state building aims to integrate more evenly the 100 million non-Han Chinese, many of whom live near the border and have strong ethnic, religious or cultural ties across it. Given the ongoing unrest in some of China’s frontiers, Beijing has refocused its attention on (re)constructing the political, economic and cultural bonds needed to preclude any further intensification of centrifugal tendencies especially in Xinjiang and Tibet. These two regions constitute, as they have for much of the PRC’s history, sites of greatest challenge to the state-building agenda of Beijing. This is due to the fact that both Uyghurs and Tibetans not only constitute coherent ethnic communities with strong attachment to what they perceive to be ‘their’ territories but also retain a resilient cultural, if not political, sense of difference from the dominant Han culture of the PRC. The state’s renewed state-building initiatives in these regions in part hope to redress this through the delivery of, for want of a better term, a modernity with ‘Chinese characteristics’. Yet, as detailed in a number of the contributions to this volume, such a project carries within it numerous unintended consequences that undermine the state’s quest for integration of its frontier regions. At a strategic level, a refocusing on China’s land borders also responds directly to the United States’ ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’ to Asia and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) widely seen in Beijing as strategies to contain China. China’s trade routes, especially with the energy rich countries of the Middle East remain vulnerable particularly in the Malacca straits. China is also very aware of the proximity of US 7th fleet based in Guam and Japan. In a geopolitical sense it can be argued that China’s refocus on its frontier regions thus constitutes its own ‘pivot to Asia’ in an attempt to secure China’s overland linkages to the economies and security spheres of Central,

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South and Southeast Asia in the context of the strategic constraints placed upon its freedom of action in East Asia with the Obama administration’s ‘rebalance’.

Bringing the Frontiers Back in to Analyses of China’s Rise The contributors to this volume explore the inter-connections between the domestic policy challenges posed by Beijing’s broad state-building projects in Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia and its diplomacy and foreign relations with the countries abutting these regions. In particular the contributors address themselves to two major tasks: (i) to examine how Beijing views these frontier regions and their ultimate place within the PRC; and (ii) to explore the roles these regions play in Chinese thinking about its diplomacy and foreign policy with neighbouring states. This book thus considers the changing identity of these frontier regions and the roles they play as subnational actors in policing their borders, integrating their minorities and their economies and reaching out to neighbours, near and far, as well as highlighting how these historical legacies are being reinterpreted into new politico-economic and foreign policy strategies encapsulated in the political rhetoric of ‘new silk roads’, ‘bridgeheads’ and ‘gateways’. The volume begins with Sean Roberts’ exploration of China’s state-building imperatives in Xinjiang. He begins by noting that this agenda in Xinjiang was informed by a recognition that the initial decades of ‘reform and opening’ under Deng Xiaoping, while resulting in great strides of economic development and modernization, has not been felt equally throughout the country. Rather many of China’s interior provinces, and in particular many of its traditional frontier regions, had been left behind. Beginning in the late 1980s, Roberts notes, Beijing not only sought to increase its development efforts in ethnic minority areas in order to more equally distribute the country’s economic growth but also as a means to mitigate separatism and to incorporate certain ethnic minorities, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, into China’s larger statebuilding project. Roberts details, however, that while this strategy

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of using development to pacify restless minorities is not unique to China, and has its roots in modernization theory’s assumptions about state building, it has also not proven historically to be effective in either quelling dissent or assimilating minority groups. Furthermore, he argues depending upon how such development is implemented, it frequently has the reverse result of aggravating already discontent populations. As the experience of state-led development among indigenous minority groups around the world has demonstrated, such negative results are predictable when the development efforts do not take into consideration local people’s attachment to their historical homelands, to their cultural traditions, and to their language. Ultimately Roberts’ analysis demonstrates that recent history has proven that this is again the case in China’s development efforts in minority areas experiencing dissent, particularly among the Uyghur people of Xinjiang. Michael Clarke’s chapter complements Roberts’ contribution through its focus on how the progress of China’s integration of Xinjiang has effected Beijing’s perception of the region’s role during China’s ascent and, in particular, how this has reconfigured Beijing’s perceptions of the opportunities and threats posed by Central Asia. Clarke argues that China increasingly perceives Central Asia to be a constituent part of a number of diplomatic and security ‘rings’ that it must successfully navigate on its rise to great powerhood. He argues that this has conditioned China’s foreign policy in Central Asia in three distinct ways. First, securing China’s control over Xinjiang remains Beijing’s core interest. China’s anxieties here stem from the fact that it has been pursuing an inherently imperial project in Xinjiang that seeks its thorough political, economic and cultural integration. Second, while China’s interests are crucially shaped by the core imperatives of security and development in Xinjiang Beijing’s perceptions of the threats and opportunities presented by the Central Asian geopolitical environment are also conditioned by its global foreign policy agenda of combating the perceived negative attributes of US primacy. China’s foreign policy in Central Asia can thus be understood as the product of the interaction of its interests and anxieties across the domestic-regional and regional-global

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nexuses. This can be seen in China’s multilateral engagement of the region via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and its bilateral relationships with each of the Central Asian republics and Afghanistan. Third, China’s anxieties regarding Xinjiang have increasingly seen it adopt what a number of scholars have succinctly described as a ‘discourse of danger’ to frame its engagement with the region. Within this discourse ‘Central Asia’ is ‘scripted’ as a ‘place of great insecurity, terrorism and Islamism, where violent political conflict is ever ready to erupt’. This can most readily be seen through Beijing’s handling of the threat of Uyghur terrorism. Clarke concludes that Beijing’s predominant global foreign policy goal of combating the perceived dominance of the US, in the specific regional context of Central Asia, is refracted through core domesticlevel concerns (i.e. security and development of Xinjiang) and is not simply driven by structural factors as per conventional neorealist international relations formulations. Elizabeth Davis turns our attention to China’s state-building agenda in Tibet. She argues, similarly to Roberts, that Beijing has ultimately decided to entrench its control over this frontier using the tools of economics in order to demonstrate to Tibetans that they have a viable future in China. However, she notes that there are several questions regarding how Beijing views and implements its economic modernization imperatives in Tibet, especially regarding the impact of those on Tibetan identity. One question that she addresses in detail is: are those economic imperatives going to Tibetans or to non-Tibetan economic immigrants in the Tibet Autonomous Region? The other major question that is the subject of her discussion is whether economic incentives are the right or sufficient tool to address deep-seated issues that concern Tibetans and Tibetan identity. She details how Beijing has launched several expensive social and economic development programmes with important implications for Tibetans within China and stability with Tibet. China’s ‘Develop the West’ campaign, in particular, was intended to reduce economic inequality and thereby neutralize political tensions among the ethnic minorities of China’s western regions. China’s ‘People First’ development emphasis embedded in Tibet’s 11th Five-Year

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Plan also represented yet another ambitious and costly effort by the Chinese Government to improve the life of Tibetans. Davis argues that both ‘Develop the West’ and ‘People First’ are part of a political strategy aimed at convincing Tibetans that being part of China is beneficial to their economic and social wellbeing. In this regard, she notes that there has been a significant trickle-down effect that has provided rural Tibetans opportunities to earn non-farm cash income by working as migrant labourers and that rural Tibetans have been actively competing in the market economy to improve their standard of living. This is in contrast to what internal and external observers question regarding the effectiveness of large Chinese investments in development in Tibet going not to Tibetans, but disproportionately to non-Tibetan economic migrants. Ultimately, however, she argues that without new affirmative action laws and programmes that give preferences to Tibetans in jobs and contracts while simultaneously expanding vocational training, it is difficult to see how Tibet can reach parity with the rest of China. Davis concludes by noting that although there are signs that Beijing may be considering ways to see the issues in Tibet through a different lens other than just an economic one, economic tools remain at the core of the Chinese approach to Tibet. For instance, there are other deep-seated issues that concern Tibetans and Tibetan identity, such as a new corrupt ruling class, restrictions on monasteries, language barriers and the large number of non-Tibetan migrant workers, which need more than economic tools to resolve. The international community, especially in India and the West, will be focused on these non-economic issues in considering the broader international implications for China. Tsering Topgyal’s contribution shifts the focus to the implications of the Tibet issue for a rising China’s foreign policy in South Asia. He contextualizes this subject by exploring the international relations literature on rising powers and notes that the rise of China and its greater assertiveness has provoked complex responses from neighbouring Asian states. Some states are clearly bandwagoning with China, while others are engaging in various shades of balancing through strengthening formal and informal alignment with America and other Asian states and internal military build-ups, including

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hedging strategies designed to profit from China’s economic opportunities while preserving the security benefits of America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia and institutional enmeshment. Through his examination of the handling of the Tibet issue by India and Nepal, Topgyal illustrates two different responses from South Asia to China’s rise. He argues that Nepal’s policy towards the Tibetans over the decades since 1959 represents a slide from anti-Communist balancing to bandwagoning. India’s handling of the Tibet issue, in contrast, reflects a hedging strategy geared towards preventing the Tibetans in exile from upsetting ties with Beijing in ways contrary to Indian interests, while refusing to curtail the political activities of the Tibetan exiles, in some ways fostering the Tibetan exile polity. He concludes that these divergent policies from Kathmandu and New Delhi are partly products of the different degrees of pressure that China is putting on them on the Tibet issue on account of their different levels of capabilities, options and resistance to Beijing’s growing influence in South Asia. Sharad Soni’s chapter explores the Inner Mongolia factor in China’s relations with Mongolia into the twenty-first century. He begins by providing necessary historical context to this issue by detailing the legacies of the collapse of Chinese state control over ‘Outer Mongolia’ in the early twentieth century and its replacement by Russia and then the Soviet Union. He notes that Sino-Mongol relations for much of the twentieth century, and particularly during the Cold War, were embedded within the wider Sino-Russian/Soviet conflict. Ultimately, it was only with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s that Sino-Mongolian relations began to break away from the constraints imposed by this great power relationship. Soni argues that the Cold War legacy of mistrust and limited interaction in SinoMongolian relations has given way to increasing bilateral and multilateral interconnections. Much of this, Soni suggests, has been the result of China’s reframing of its relationship with Mongolia through its ‘periphery diplomacy’ which has focused on developing close trade and economic ties with its neighbours in order to make China the nucleus of regional integration. Beijing’s logic for this strategy appears to be that growing economic interdependence

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between China and its neighbours provides a uniting factor that limits the potential for them to align against China. In this context, the continued consolidation of Beijing’s state-building imperatives in Inner Mongolia assume pivotal importance as they provide the optimal conditions for China to leverage the region’s assets vis-a`-vis Mongolia – notably the region’s economic complementarity with Mongolia and its geographic and ethnic ties. The volume concludes with Gary Sigley’s exploration of the reimagining of Yunnan from ‘backwater’ to ‘bridgehead’. He argues that alongside the physical rise of China we also need to examine developments in terms of how a shifting geopolitical space works with both spatial and cultural reimaginings to create an idealized vision of Yunnan’s place at this particular historical juncture. Yunnan, Sigley suggests, is an excellent case study of how a peripheral province engages with the political centre in repositioning itself from a ‘backwater’ to a ‘bridgehead’, the latter now being the official China foreign policy position on Yunnan. Sigeley then places this within the context of the significance of ‘culture’ in ‘China’s rise’, where he argues that China could be said to be in the midst of another ‘cultural revolution’ – that is, a radical realignment and reimagining of Chinese culture in a century which will be marked by whatever path/s China takes. Nationalism and culture – especially in the obvious form of ‘cultural nationalism’ – have long been important bedfellows. Insofar as ‘culture’ is part of foreign policy and softpower strategies, the emphasis placed on certain forms of cultural discourse is not just of interest to the Chinese themselves but also to the rest of the world, and especially those nation states along China’s borders. This cultural discussion is then followed by a detailed examination of Yunnan’s place in China’s past, present and future. Sigley’s discussion here centres on the key themes of connectivity and mobility and the role of spatial and cultural reimagining as a way of promoting Yunnan as a province located at the juncture of important domestic and international connections. He presents the official representations of the Ancient Tea Horse Road (ATHR) as a case study of how these themes play out in terms of both domestic and foreign consumption.

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The contributions to this volume thus make clear that if we are to seriously consider all dimensions of China’s rise, and what it means for the rest of the world, we need to consider the diverse interactions of different parts of China with both the Chinese political centre and neighbouring political entities. In this sense it is best to consider China not as a monolithic whole with a single foreign policy but rather to note that China, as a very large and diverse entity, consists of multiple regional forces all of which are jockeying for position in an almost constantly changing and evolving geopolitical environment. Whilst much attention is given to happenings in Beijing and along the eastern seaboard the contributors to this book remind us that due consideration must also be given to China’s frontiers if we are to construct a fuller picture.

Notes 1. Lary, Diana, ‘Introduction’ in D. Lary (ed.), The Chinese State at the Borders (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), p. 3. 2. Thirty-two if Taiwan is included. 3. See for example, Waley-Cohen, Joanna, Exile in Mid-Qing China: Banishment to Xinjiang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Newby, Laura. J., ‘The Qing Literary Conquest of Xinjiang’, Modern China, 25 (4) (1999), pp. 451– 74; and Newby, Laura J., ‘Evolving Representations of Xinjiang in Chinese Travel Writings’, Studies in Travel Writing, 18 (4) (2014), pp. 320– 31; and Millward, James M., Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759– 1864 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 4. Lary, ‘Introduction’, p. 1. 5. Ibid., p. 2. 6. See for example, Millward, James. M., Eurasian Crossroad: A History of Xinjiang (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 7. Woodside, Alexander, ‘The Centre and the Borderlands in Chinese Political Theory’ in D. Lary (ed.), The Chinese State at the Borders (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), pp. 18 – 20. 8. Ibid., p. 22. 9. Agnew, John, ‘Emerging China and Critical Geopolitics: Between World Politics and Chinese Particularity’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 51 (5) (2010), p. 570. 10. Mearsheimer, John, ‘The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, 3 (4) (2010), p. 389. 11. Ibid., p. 390.

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12. For example see, Keith, Ronald, China from the Inside Out: Fitting the People’s Republic into the World (London: Pluto, 2009); Ramo, Joshua. C., The Beijing Consensus (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2008); Kang, David C., East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); and Breslin, Shaun, ‘The “China model” and the global crisis: from Friedrich List to a Chinese mode of governance?’, International Affairs, 87 (6) (2011), pp. 1323– 43. 13. See Kang, David C., ‘Getting Asia Wrong: the Need for New Analytic Frameworks’, International Security, 27 (4), pp. 57– 85; and Kang, David C., ‘International Relations Theory and East Asian History’, Journal of East Asian Studies, 13 (2) (2013), pp. 181– 205. 14. Kissinger, Henry, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. ii. 15. Callahan, William A., ‘Chinese Exceptionalism and the Politics of History’ in E. Kavalski and N. Horesh (eds), Asian Thought on China’s Changing International Relations (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), p. 29. 16. See Perdue, Peter C., China Marches West: China’s Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard: Belknap Press, 2005); Millward, James M., Beyond the Pass; Crossley, Pamela, The Translucent Mirror; and Elliott, Mark C., The Manchu Way in Imperial China. 17. Kaplan, Robert, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House, 2013), pp. 188 – 9. 18. Ibid., p. 189 and p. 195. 19. Ibid., p. 195. 20. ‘China’, CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html. 21. China Statistical Yearbook 2014, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2014/ indexeh.htm. 22. Ibid. 23. (AD XXIV) Qinghai sheng xibu da kaifa baogao, [Report on the Great Opening of the West in Qinghai Province], 2005. Xining: Qinghai sheng xibu kaifa lingdao xiaozu gongshe, p. 78. 24. ‘Hu Open’s World’s Highest Railway’, BBC News, 1 July 2006, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5133220.stm. 25. Chen Dingding, ‘China’s “Marshall Plan” Is Much More’, The Diplomat, 10 November 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/chinas-marshall-plan-ismuch-more/. 26. Nathan, Andrew J. and Ross, Robert S., The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), pp. xiii. 27. Lattimore, Owen, Pivot of Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian frontiers of China and Russia, (Boston: Little Brown, 1950). 28. ‘Chronology of China’s Belt and Road Strategy’, Xinhua, 28 March 2015, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-03/28/c_134105435.htm.

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29. ‘One Belt, One Road’, Caixin Online, 10 December 2014, http://english.caixin. com/2014-12-10/100761304.html. 30. ‘Silk-Road Economic Belt project’s scale at US$21tn’, China Times, http://www. wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id¼20140916000119&cid¼ 1102.

CHAPTER 1 DEVELOPMENT WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS IN XINJIANG: A SOLUTION TO ETHNIC TENSION OR PART OF THE PROBLEM? Sean R. Roberts

Introduction Since the ethnic riots of July 2009 in the city of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), violence in this region of China has been a constant issue of concern.1 Each summer since 2009, the region has witnessed increased incidents of violence. Some of this violence, like the 2009 riots in Urumqi, has broken out between citizens of the Uyghur and Han ethnic groups respectively. Other violence has been perpetrated by Uyghurs against symbols of the state. Although the Chinese authorities have generally sought to blame all of this violence on Uyghur terrorists allegedly supported by foreign Islamic extremists, the details about the events leading up to the violence and whether it has been either spontaneous or premeditated and organized remain unclear.2 Recently, this situation seems to be changing as Uyghur-initiated violence increasingly

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appears more organized and premeditated while also spreading beyond the XUAR with alleged Uyghur terrorist attacks being reported in Beijing and Kunming.3 In many ways, it is reasonable to suggest that these developments signal an escalation of the conflict in the XUAR between Uyghurs and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). If official PRC sources continue to explain this escalation of violence in the XUAR and among Uyghurs in China more generally as emanating from an externally influenced Islamic terrorist threat, many international sources focus on local conditions in explaining the root causes of this violence. Some note that Uyghurs have long desired sovereign rule over their homeland in the XUAR and that recent violence is an escalation of this separatist sentiment, and others focus on the role that political repression and violations of human rights aimed at Uyghurs within China have played in inflaming Uyghur dissent and violence.4 While each of these narratives offer some insight into the rise of violence in the XUAR, they also all limit our conceptual understanding of the political and social processes that are taking place in the region. This chapter seeks to move discussions about the XUAR and the recent rise in violent dissent among Uyghurs towards a different explanatory narrative that provides greater insight into the situation on the ground in the region – towards a narrative about state-driven development and local Uyghur responses. Over the last two decades, the PRC has undertaken unprecedented development efforts in the XUAR coupled with expanded economic engagement with the states bordering on the region in South and Central Asia. This development is transforming the region’s landscape and environment, altering its demography, and changing its socio-economic relations. Generally, the PRC has publicly characterized its efforts to develop Xinjiang and to engage Central Asia as means to enhance the quality of life among the Uyghurs and others living in the XUAR. The assumption behind these characterizations is that overall macroeconomic growth, which depends on both development in the region and the building of trade with other state economies with which the XUAR borders, will bring greater prosperity and contentment to all.

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As such, development is also expected to mitigate the conflict between Uyghurs and the state. As the PRC’s president at the time, Hu Jintao, stated forcefully one month after the July 2009 riots in Urumqi, ‘the fundamental way to resolve the Xinjiang problem is to expedite development in Xinjiang’.5 However, contrary to the assertions of such official communique´s, state-driven economic development in Xinjiang and Chinese engagement with Central Asia, have not only not helped to mitigate Uyghur discontentment with the PRC – they have exacerbated it. State-driven efforts to bring economic development and industrialization to the region are helping to transform Xinjiang into an important future driver of China’s economic growth and a launching pad to project the PRC’s economic influence westward. However, they are also displacing Uyghurs from traditional lands, facilitating the in-migration of Han Chinese, diminishing Uyghur social capital, and serving to further marginalize Uyghurs in their own homeland. In this context, one must view the conflict between Uyghurs and the state in the PRC not only through the lenses of sovereignty, human rights, or terrorism, but first and foremost as a struggle over development and the future shape of Xinjiang, if not of the entire Central Asian region. The PRC appears to see in Xinjiang a future land port and major economic engine that can project its power into Central Asia and beyond in the same manner that the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in southern China have served to project its power into Southeast Asia. By contrast, the Uyghurs view Xinjiang as their historical homeland and the source of their culture and identity. As these two visions of Xinjiang’s future clash through the PRC’s continuing mass development of the region, it is not surprising that the conflict between them is resulting in violence.

Development with Chinese Characteristics: Back to the Future? In the public imagination, development is almost always thought to be a beneficial process intended to make people’s lives better. Any definition of the term in a dictionary will include terms such as

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‘growth’ and ‘progress’, which are generally viewed as positive processes, unless they relate to illnesses. Despite this common understanding that all development facilitates improvements in life, there is a long history of critiques of development that suggest differently. The most radical critics of development, for example, have suggested that the entire enterprise has its roots in the European colonial aims of imposing Western ideals of industrialism and capitalism on other societies to the benefit of colonial powers, and post-colonial development efforts are merely a continuation of this legacy.6 Others have suggested that, while development is desirable as an overall concept that promotes the human quest for betterment, the process should not be seen as inherently positive, and the character of its impact depends upon how it is pursued and for what purposes.7 The modern concept of development has its roots in 1960s modernization theory, which suggested that with access to technology, industrialization and urbanization, the states of the developing world, mostly former colonies, will quickly converge economically with the developed world, mostly former colonizing powers.8 While this concept of development is now viewed as politically naı¨ve and outdated, it still informs much of development thinking. The ‘neo-liberal’ model of development that has been in vogue since the 1980s, for example, proceeds from many of the same assumptions, but stresses the importance of privatization, free trade and seeking one’s comparative advantage in the global economy.9 Despite its modification in approach, the assumed results remain essentially the same as those of modernization theory – state-centric macro-economic growth will allow ‘underdeveloped’ states to converge with the ‘developed world’. While these mainstream approaches to development have demonstrated some successes on the level of statewide economies, most notably in East Asia, even when they create general economic growth and increases in ‘Gross Domestic Product’ (GDP), they do not necessarily improve the lives of average citizens, especially when facilitated through neo-liberal policies that do not promote economic

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equity.10 Historically, such development efforts have frequently increased economic inequality in societies, benefitting some people at the expense of others. In such situations, it is also not uncommon that development becomes a source of, or at least a contributor to, conflict. Furthermore, even state-led economic development that is coupled with improvements in public services such as education, health care and economic social security does not necessarily result in contentment among all. The positions of the global indigenous peoples’ movement vis-a`-vis development projects, for example, have suggested that people desire more from life than material enhancements and economic growth.11 Especially in the context of globalization, many peoples around the world are unwilling to blindly trade the presumed advantages of economic development, technological advancement, or even improved public services for the maintenance of their group identities, the preservation of their cultural practices or languages and the integrity of their historical and/or spiritual lands. This fact should not be misunderstood as suggesting that the maintenance of culture and the fruits of development are mutually exclusive. Rather, it indicates that many people around the world want more control over how development is fostered in their communities to ensure that it neither exclusively benefits elites at their expense nor negatively impacts their cultural values and the integrity of their group identities. The Human Turn in Global Development In response to concerns about the global focus on macro-economic development voiced by developing countries, NGOs and indigenous peoples’ organizations, the primary international development actors, including the United Nations, most OECD countries, and even the World Bank Group, have adapted their approaches in the last two decades to give development a more ‘human face’. The United Nations’ ‘Human Development Index’ and ‘Millennium Development Goals’ have helped to move international development from a pursuit of state-level economic growth to goals focused on providing people with opportunities to

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pursue their own visions of progress, stressing the importance of education, health care, access to information, inclusiveness and increased citizen participation in governance.12 At the same time, the ‘UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ has forced most international development organizations and many sovereign states to adopt safeguard measures to ensure that marginalized cultural groups are able to participate in planning the development of the regions they have historically inhabited and are not unilaterally displaced by large infrastructure projects without their consent.13 While it would be naı¨ve to suggest that such innovations have resulted in either international development actors or sovereign states completely forsaking their historical obsession with state-centred economic growth, one must recognize that over the last several decades, development has become more human-centred, culturally sensitive, participatory and inclusive. Furthermore, the shrinking of time and space facilitated by globalization is making it difficult for most countries to ignore these trends given the active role of international NGOs and other non-state actors in promoting them and in holding states accountable for their actions. Chinese Development and ‘Asian Exceptionalism’ Despite these trends, the PRC is not adopting the aforementioned human approaches to development in abundance. In part, China has forsaken such approaches due to the general top-down nature of state decision making in the country, and it is able to do so without impunity because it prefers to not recognize international criticism, whether by other states or non-state actors, of what it perceives as its internal affairs. Although local governments are empowered to make many decisions in China, virtually all decision making, particularly as it relates to development priorities, remains concentrated in the national and local representatives of the country’s Communist Party. There is very little room for involving citizens in such decisions or in eliciting the demands or recommendations of common people regarding local development priorities. In this context, it is not surprising that the PRC generally implements development in a top-

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down manner that relies on models for macro-economic advancement rather than through grassroots approaches that are tailored to local particularities. As a result, China’s approach to development is decidedly fixed in approaches reminiscent of the international community’s efforts in the mid-twentieth century, perhaps with some added influences from the neo-liberal economic ideals of the last three decades. In other words, the PRC has adopted a model for development based on macro-economic growth facilitated by the top-down policies of a ‘developmentalist state’ focused on industrialization, technological advancement and urbanization, harking back to the modernization theory popular in the middle of the last century.14 In adapting this model to the present context of globalization, China has also adopted various ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies that promote free trade and have facilitated the country’s prominent place in the global production of consumer goods.15 The PRC defends such an approach to its internal development by citing the successes of other East Asian countries, including Japan and Korea, during the second half of the twentieth century, and indeed the PRC’s accomplishments have been impressive over the last three decades as China has developed into the world’s second largest economy. The results of China’s development has led some to even question whether what was thought to be an outdated modernization theory may still be an appropriate approach to development, at least in the East Asian context.16 However, there are also reasons to question the PRC’s ‘retro’ approach to development. Although China has adopted much of its approach from the successful experiences of Japan and Korea, China is a vastly larger and arguably less homogenous state than either of these neighbours, which creates particular risks non-existent in the other two countries. The PRC has already proven that combining free trade with state-driven top-down industrialization can create substantial economic growth, but there is evidence that it is also creating substantial economic inequality in the country. While official government data suggests that economic inequality in the PRC is roughly equal to that in the United States, a recent study by

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independent scholars claims the real inequality is much larger and only growing.17 Regardless of which data one believes is correct, China’s top-down approach to development unquestionably does not account for the country’s cultural diversity. Although Han Chinese account for over 90 per cent of the population of the country, there are an additional 55 ethnic groups in the PRC, accounting for roughly 105 million people. Furthermore, many of these groups, including the Uyghurs (approximately 10 million) and the Tibetans (approximately 6.2 million), feel strongly about the maintenance of their cultural and religious practices as well as of their national languages. In general, the PRC’s top-down approach to development has not taken into consideration these populations’ particular interests when planning development in regions with significant minority populations. Instead, the Chinese Government appears to assume that broad macroeconomic development will inevitably benefit all and better integrate these populations into the larger civic society of a Han Chinesedominated PRC. The PRC’s development of the XUAR over the last two decades is indicative of this attitude towards development among minority populations. Virtually all of the development undertaken in this region has been in the areas of infrastructure, industrialization, urbanization and macro-economic growth. There have been no efforts to engage local communities on development priorities, and most attempts to preserve local culture have been aimed at sanitizing that culture for touristic consumption. Furthermore, the PRC has coupled these ‘retro’ top-down development strategies with strong-arm tactics to stifle Uyghur political expressions, control and limit the local observation of Islam, and promote policies aimed at assimilating Uyghurs more into Han Chinese culture. As should be apparent from the more detailed discussion of these efforts below, this particular model of development for the XUAR has not only not mitigated any ethnic tension already present in the region for a myriad of historical reasons, but has aggravated these tensions and helped to create the violence that continues to plague the region.

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Development in the XUAR during the 1990s: Laying the Foundation for Change To understand the PRC’s development strategies in the XUAR, one first needs to return to the beginnings of these policies in the reform period that followed the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (GPCR). China’s greatest development achievement in the post-GPCR period was the establishment of a large industrial base in the southern coastal areas (i.e. the SEZs) that was fuelled by inexpensive labour and the ability to export goods throughout the world at prices that undercut local markets.18 Given the socio-economic havoc wreaked by the GPCR, this achievement was indeed astounding and brought fantastic economic growth to the country. However, it also created a highly stratified and divided society geographically. If capitalist production was thriving in the coastal south already in the 1980s, the rest of the country was governed by different rules and was not fully benefitting from this economic boom. The situation changed throughout the 1990s in eastern and Central China as wealth spread to those regions’ larger cities where substantial financial, commercial and industrial sectors soon developed, but similar processes did not immediately follow in Western China, which had higher rates of poverty and suffered from failing infrastructure. Furthermore, the west was more ethnically diverse, and in many provinces, local loyalty to the state was tenuous among non-Han minority groups, especially Uyghurs and Tibetans. In this sense, allowing development in the western provinces to lag behind the rest of the country created political risks as well, including the potential of a renewal of separatist movements, which have had a long history in these regions. Cognizant of these issues, the PRC already began to examine ways to develop its western provinces during the early 1990s. As the most western province and a potential source of instability, the XUAR was especially targeted as underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of the PRC. Although the XUAR actually had relatively high GDP growth rates for the western regions throughout the 1990s due to its largely ‘grassroots’ trade with the former Soviet Union, its industrial,

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transportation, and commercial infrastructure was lacking and, in some cases, had not been updated since the Soviet Union helped with its initial modernization in the 1950s. Furthermore, the XUAR also presented numerous economic opportunities for the PRC during the 1990s, both with regards to its rich natural resources and its proximity to the new markets of the former Soviet Union. While Beijing had long neglected this region, largely viewing it as a buffer zone to keep unfriendly western influences at bay, the emerging manufacturing and export-fuelled economic model in China suddenly made the XUAR into a zone of economic opportunity that offered both access to energy resources for the rest of the country and trade advantages with western neighbours. In an effort to address the XUAR’s ‘underdevelopment’ and lay the groundwork for the PRC to benefit from the economic potential of the region, the Party facilitated several large-scale projects inside the XUAR during the mid-1990s. Most of these projects were focused on developing the oil and gas industry in the region, but they also included substantial investments in the transportation infrastructure of the XUAR. The most notable of these projects were the construction of the Taklamakan Desert Highway between Urumqi and the southern region of Khotan, completed in 1995, and the new rail line from Urumqi to Kashgar, completed in 1999. These major transportation projects were critical to the PRC’s development of the region because they joined the province’s northern and southern regions, which were previously only connected by poor and treacherous roads that made the overland trip from Urumqi to Kashgar require multiple days.19 As a result of the existing poor transportation routes, the north and south of the XUAR were largely isolated from each other and had minimal economic interaction. They also subsequently were developing along quite different paths during the dynamic post-GPCR reform era. Xinjiang’s north already had a substantial Han Chinese population, rail links with the east, and a fairly strong industrial base, most of which was concentrated in four urban centres with majority Han populations: Urumqi, Karamay, Shihezi and Changji.20 By contrast, the south remained isolated from the rest

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of China and dominated by agriculturalist Uyghurs, who maintained their culture and Muslim faith often more strongly than their allegiances to the PRC. Predictably, the south had also been an important site for Uyghur dissent, the most vivid example of which were the events in the region of Baren near Kashgar in 1990, when a local religious leader inspired a group of Uyghurs to take over local government buildings, resulting in violent clashes with authorities.21 Although there had always been a larger Han presence in the north than in the south, the demographics of the two regions diverged even more during the 1990s as economic growth in the north of the province attracted significant numbers of Han migrants from China’s interior seeking employment opportunity. Of the almost 4.5 million people living in the northern urban centres of Urumqi, Karamay, Shihezi and Changji at the time of the 2000 census, almost 78 per cent were Han Chinese and only barely 8 per cent were Uyghurs.22 By contrast, of the almost 7,230,000 people living in the largest population centres of the south, Kashgar, Khotan and Aksu, less than 13 per cent were Han Chinese while about 86 per cent were Uyghurs.23 Correspondingly, the combined GDP in 2000 in the Han-dominated northern centres was almost three times that of the Uyghur-dominated and more populated southern centres.24 This development trajectory presented the PRC with a dangerous problem in the XUAR where society was becoming increasingly stratified geographically, economically and ethnically. The construction of two major overland transportation links between north and south offered the potential for bridging this stratification and promoting more equitable development in the 2000s, especially as the PRC was poised to invest more in the region.

The XUAR’s Development in the First Decade of the 2000s: ‘Develop the West’ Despite these early efforts to lay the groundwork for western development in China, the discrepancy between the meagre economic growth of the western provinces and the rapid development of the

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rest of the country was still growing by 2000, and the PRC was aware that this discrepancy would need to be at least partially bridged if the country as a whole was going to continue to prosper. As Tim Summers and Doris Ma point out, ‘at the end of 1999, the western regions covered 73.3% of China’s land area and contained 28.4% of its population, but they only accounted for 18.7% of national GDP, with GDP per capita levels at around 40% of those in the east, and contained 61.8% of the country’s officially-designated poor counties’.25 As a result, the PRC announced a new broad development campaign for the new millennium that targeted its western provinces and was appropriately entitled ‘Develop the West’. According to Summers and Ma, this campaign reflected ‘the dominance of a state role in economic development over that of the market’, suggesting a continuation of the previous decade of top-down efforts to create macro-economic growth.26 Human Rights Watch’s Nicolas Becquelin highlights this top-down approach more forcefully, suggesting that the campaign sought ‘to consolidate the gains of the 1990s, in order physically and institutionally to “ram into the ground” these advances and mitigate their overall consequences’.27 Thus, although this campaign had the potential to bridge the ethnic economic divide between Han Chinese and Uyghurs in the XUAR, it put little consideration into issues related to ‘human development’, equity between ethnic groups, or local concerns more broadly. Instead, most initiatives of ‘Develop the West’ looked very much like the large centrally planned macro-economic projects of the 1990s. Not only did the ‘Develop the West’ campaign not engage local Uyghur communities in its development processes, but initially the campaign did not even directly address the regional disparity in the XUAR. Rather, it focused on large-scale projects that were aimed at cultivating the long-term goal of fully integrating the region into China’s larger economy. Nicolas Becquelin has called this long-term perspective that focuses on the gradual integration of the region into the PRC’s economy ‘staged development’, and he notes that initially the majority of investment from ‘Develop the West’ was put into two

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large-scale projects that sought to build a west –east pipeline to carry natural gas from the Tarim Basin to Shanghai and an environmental rehabilitation project to restore water to the Tarim Basin, presumably in order to eventually reclaim desert lands for habitation and agriculture.28 Although the long-term goals of incorporating Xinjiang more into the larger economy of the PRC were clear in these large projects, there was nothing about them that suggested they were intended to address the immediate problems of the XUAR’s regional disparity or of Uyghur discontentment in the province. In addition to these mega-projects, other focuses of the ‘Develop the West’ campaign in its first five years were likewise infrastructurerelated. According to Becquelin, as early as 2003, Beijing ‘had reported having effectively invested more than 70 billion yuan (US$ 8.6 billion) in building highways, power plants, dams and telecommunications facilities in Xinjiang’.29 Like the mega-projects already described, these infrastructure improvements remained largely focused on the long-term macro-level development of the region. They will undoubtedly contribute to connecting Xinjiang with both the national and global economy over the long-term, but they did not provide significant immediate improvement in the daily lives of most Uyghurs. In fact, the actual construction of these various projects has additionally served to militarize the region as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a military organization dedicated to the protection of the region’s borders as well as to construction, implemented the majority of the campaign’s infrastructure projects. Thus, during the first five years of ‘Develop the West’, for most Uyghurs in Xinjiang the campaign meant an increased presence of mostly ethnic Han military personnel and mass construction that served to alter their landscape and at times displace them from their homes. They also likely associated the campaign with an increase in ethnic Han civilian migration to the region, especially in the north, where the majority of economic activity remained. In this context, the campaign appeared more like encroachment on a territory that most Uyghurs consider their own than an attempt

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to improve their lives. Uyghurs in local communities had little say in deciding the priorities of the campaign or in participating in its realization. The approaches of ‘Develop the West’ after 2005 proved similarly non-participatory, but they were also more invasive. Although infrastructure continued to be a critical part of the development of the region, fostering an extension of the Urumqi-Kashgar railway to Khotan, building new highways, and establishing an infrastructure for wind power, by 2005, the PRC was also beginning to plan and implement substantial urban development in the XUAR. By transforming urban spaces, especially in the south of the country, the PRC’s development efforts in the region increasingly impacted Uyghur communities, often creating involuntary displacement. The most vivid example of this displacement was in the city of Kashgar, which is viewed by many Uyghurs as symbolic of their cultural heritage and their historical connection to the territory of the XUAR. Ever since the railway between Urumqi and Kashgar had been built at the end of the 1990s, it had become clear that the PRC intended to better integrate this urban symbol of Uyghur identity into China proper. The future of the region became clear to me in 2000 as I travelled by bus from Khotan to Kashgar on an old dusty road that passed a massive multi-lane highway construction site as we neared the city of Kashgar. The construction of this multi-lane highway already suggested that the PRC envisioned a future for Kashgar that would be more than a population centre, tourist destination, and historical landmark; it was laying the groundwork for a future centre of commerce and trade. At the same time that such large-scale infrastructure development around Kashgar was being pursued in the early 2000s, the municipal government of the city began an urban renewal campaign, which eventually would result in the systematic dismantling of the Uyghur old city, long viewed as a centre of Uyghur culture and an important historical monument. The dismantling of Kashgar’s old city brought criticism from a variety of quarters in the international community ranging from human rights organizations to archeological and cultural preservation groups.

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As early as 2003, a UNESCO mission warned of the impending destruction of Kashgar’s old city. In their report, the mission noted that ‘if the plans of the Municipal Government are implemented, it would severely fragment the remaining authentic heart of this ancient city of mud brick houses and narrow alleyways’ and ‘create serious difficulties in identifying a site of proper proportions with related authenticity issues that would merit inscription on the World Heritage List’.30 As Ross Perlin notes, however, the PRC appears to have ‘selectively excluded’ Kashgar from its nominations to the UNESCO World Heritage List precisely because such a preservation effort would have hindered the plans that the government had for the region.31 Although the destruction of urban architecture of global historical significance is a troubling outcome of the demolition and redevelopment of Kashgar’s old city, it is even more concerning from a development perspective that this process included no engagement with local Uyghur communities in Kashgar. As an excellent report by the ‘Uyghur Human Rights Project’ (UHRP) on the Chinese State’s demolition of Uyghur communities points out, not only were the local residents of the old city not consulted with regards to the development plans, but their removal from their homes was accompanied by a large armed police presence that ensured no resistance to relocation took place.32 The same report also points out that such forcible relocations without proper consultations with local communities are in violation of numerous international and domestic legal instruments protecting property rights and indigenous groups, but this did not deter the initiation of the demolition of Kashgar’s old city in 2009 and the eventual involuntary relocation of its inhabitants. While the destruction of Kashgar’s old city was the most publicized manifestation of the PRC’s urban development in the XUAR during the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was not a unique case. In an effort to modernize the cities of the XUAR, traditional Uyghur communities were being displaced and symbols of Uyghur culture were being erased throughout the urban landscape of the region. In Urumqi, a substantial development

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project during the early 2000s turned the Erdaoqiao neighbourhood, the primary Uyghur community in the city, into a tourist attraction and centre of commerce, establishing a new expansive and sanitized bazar boasting the ‘largest market of ethnic minority goods in Xinjiang’, an ‘ethnic dance ballroom’ and numerous new commercial buildings.33 In the process, many were displaced from this area of the city, further marginalizing the Uyghurs’ position in this long Han-dominated city. Similarly, Ildiko Bellar-Hann provides an account of how the state in the city of Qomul razed parts of a Muslim cemetery at the same time to facilitate the development of a tourism centre around a former Qing palace, a process she has called ‘socialist creative destruction’.34 Furthermore, although the PRC frequently suggested that the development it was undertaking in the XUAR during the early 2000s was aimed at easing ethnic tension, its implementation, along with other state policies, looked more like an attempt to assimilate Uyghurs more thoroughly into Chinese state culture. In addition to transforming urban spaces from local Uyghur styles into more generic PRC styles and displacing traditional Uyghur communities, the state established numerous policies to integrate Uyghurs as a people more into the state culture, which is shaped largely by Han Chinese culture. These policies could perhaps be categorized as also being a critical part of state-driven development in Xinjiang since they generally sought to replace what are considered ‘traditional’ Uyghur behaviours with ones that the state perceives as more ‘modern’. Much of what the Communist Party perceives as ‘modern’, however, could also be viewed as ‘Chinese’. Thus, these policies were blatantly assimilationist in their goals and were understood by many Uyghurs as an attack on their cultural integrity. Furthermore, the policies’ focus on influencing Uyghur youth belied their long-term intentions of shaping the next generation of PRC Uyghurs. In the realm of religion, the state sought to control the content of religious teachings and observation, especially among youth in Xinjiang. During the revival of Islam among Uyghurs in the 1980s and early 1990s, there was little state oversight of religion in the

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region. Locally, Uyghurs organized informal religious instruction after school for their children, an emergent class of clerics developed their own unique teachings of Islam, and hundreds of young Uyghurs travelled to the Muslim world to be trained in madrassas.35 In response, the state began regulating religious practice in Xinjiang, punishing those who strayed from officially sanctioned religious practices as perpetrators of ‘illegal religious practices’, closing informal religious schools for children, and finally, by the late 1990s, forbidding youth under the age of 18 from even being present at mosques.36 Also targeting youth, authorities sought to change the nature of education more generally in the province, particularly with regards to the language of instruction. In March 2004, the Xinjiang Government announced that all students in the province would mandatorily receive instruction in Mandarin Chinese. Officially, this was promoted as a ‘bi-lingual education’ policy where minority students could be instructed in both Mandarin and their own language, but as Adrienne Dwyer has suggested, this is actually a ‘covert policy of monolingual education’ because the state has consolidated most minority language schools into Mandarin schools, subsequently removing the minority language curriculum.37 Furthermore, the state’s move to abolish instruction in the Uyghur language at the province’s premiere higher educational institution, Xinjiang University, in 2002 provided further incentive for all students to study first and foremost in Mandarin Chinese. As Dwyer has further demonstrated, these policies were accompanied by reductions in the number of publications produced in minority languages as well as by a trend to produce periodicals as well as radio and television programming in minority languages that are translated versions of Mandarin language material.38 As a result, not only were narratives in the Uyghur language slowly disappearing from Xinjiang, but even narratives with Uyghur cultural content were being wiped out. Finally, the state also instituted a policy to promote the transfer of young Uyghur women from rural segments of Xinjiang to Eastern China to take on work in large factories in urban areas. While

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promoted as providing young rural Uyghur women with economic opportunity and officially characterized as ‘voluntary’, human rights organizations and Uyghur political organizations in diaspora have suggested that this programme coerced young women in rural areas of southern Xinjiang to work in the east with the intent of further disrupting traditional Uyghur social fabric.39 A UHRP report on this forced transfer of female labourers, for example, cites newspaper articles in support of the programme that clearly promote it as a means to integrate Uyghur rural women into China’s ‘great socialist family’ by imparting Mandarin language skills, improved ‘thinking and consciousness’, superior manners, and of course, money.40 While these various policies obviously reflected an effort to address social development among Uyghurs amidst the many infrastructure projects being implemented, they also represented an outdated understanding of promoting progressive cultural change and social development that is reminiscent of late colonial and early development policies in the west. According to this approach, local culture is universally viewed as ‘backward’ and detrimental to progress, and the path towards improvement is to adopt the superior cultural attributes of those providing development assistance. This approach offers a model for integrating the Uyghurs into Chinese state society, but instead of seeking to integrate an emergent generation of Uyghurs into a multi-national vision of the PRC, it blatantly aims to assimilate young Uyghurs into a Han-centric state culture that neither takes note nor is tolerant of the Uyghurs’ cultural uniqueness. In general, the ‘Develop the West’ campaign transformed the XUAR during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Landscapes were altered, economic opportunities were created and urban spaces were ‘modernized’. The PRC viewed these accomplishments as great successes. Thus, its leadership was puzzled by the 2009 riots in Urumqi that killed at least 197 people and injured at least 1,700. During the first decade of the 2000s, the GDP growth of western regions, including the XUAR, was larger than for China as a whole, with an average annual growth of 11.8 per cent advancing from US$ 185.47 billion in 1999 to US$ 838.70 billion in 2008.41 At the same time, construction had been booming throughout the region,

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new industries were being created and infrastructure had been vastly improved. For the PRC and for many Chinese citizens outside the region, it was difficult to understand why violence would suddenly erupt in the context of such advancements. The complete circumstances surrounding the 2009 riots in Urumqi are not entirely clear, and it would be an oversimplification to describe them merely as a response to top-down development, particularly given their spontaneous eruption. However, the extent and vicious nature of this violence both among Uyghurs and Han do appear to have signalled the widespread frustration in the XUAR among both Uyghurs and newly arrived Han migrants. For Uyghurs in particular, this frustration in 2009 was undoubtedly at least in part related to the development that had taken place in the region during the previous decade. As noted above, development was increasingly dismantling Uyghur communities and social capital, facilitating a militarization of the region through the XPCC, encouraging more Han migrants, destroying symbols of Uyghur culture and seeking to change Uyghur behaviours. Given the mass and unorganized chaos that surrounded the riots, one can assume that these many pressures played an important role in unleashing the violence in Urumqi.

Development since 2009: Unveiling the XUAR’s New Role in the PRC Despite the apparent links between the pressure of development in the region and the 2009 riots, the state did not respond by seeking to mitigate these pressures. Rather, the state continued to view the riots as an indication of ‘underdevelopment’, and it subsequently responded by calling for more rapid development. Within a month of the riots, then president Hu Jintao announced that the only solution in Xinjiang was to ‘expedite development’.42 The new party secretary appointed in the region after the violence, Zhang Chunxian, supported this assertion, noting that the state will ensure ‘leapfrog development and lasting stability’ in Xinjiang, suggesting that these two concepts are inextricably linked.43

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As a result, the PRC began re-examining their development of the XUAR and sought ways to accelerate it. Beijing sent three investigation teams to the region in late 2009 for this purpose, replaced Wang Lequan as the party secretary of the region with Zhang Chunxian and began planning a large ‘Xinjiang Work Forum’ for May of 2010.44 This forum, in turn, laid out a new vision for the development of the XUAR, which was much more overtly linked to the aim of integrating the region into the rest of the PRC. The Forum outlined numerous plans for development assistance to the XUAR, including billions of dollars dedicated to the establishment of more infrastructure, tax reform to attract investment, modernization of the educational system, improvements in public services and job creation. However, perhaps the two most interesting plans to emerge from the forum were a ‘Pairing Assistance Program’ (PAP), partnering regions elsewhere in China with regions of the XUAR to assist in development, and the creation of two new Special Economic Trading Areas (SETAs) in Kashgar near the Kyrgyzstan border and Khorgus on the Kazakhstan border respectively. The PAP is intended to attract the investment and participation of successful regions elsewhere in China in the development of specific regions of the XUAR. The programme initially involved 19 provinces in China, all of which have pledged to contribute from 0.3 to 0.6 of their fiscal revenue for 2011 – 20 to the development of their corresponding ‘sister’ regions in the XUAR.45 This model of assistance was established on a similar approach that was taken to provide reconstruction in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan and built on a less directed and more modest programme of partnerships that had been in place in the XUAR since the 1990s. In theory, the PAP approach to Xinjiang’s development is more locally focused, and thus, has more opportunity to engage with local citizens. Furthermore, this new iteration of the PAP was particularly targeting the southern regions of the XUAR, thus obviously being aimed at bridging the economic gap between the region’s Handominated north and Uyghur-dominated south. If the theory behind

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the PAP approach may suggest a more localized approach to addressing the problems facing the XUAR and its Uyghur population, in reality the programme differs little from the development efforts that preceded it with the exception of being decentralized in its direction. The focus remains substantially on macro-economic development and the ‘modernization’ of urban spaces. Furthermore, the approach does not appear to be any more engaging of local Uyghur communities than were the Beijing-directed initiatives of the previous decade. As it facilitated pairing Handominated regions of China’s interior with regions of the XUAR with large Uyghur populations, the PAP inevitably promotes priorities that are more aligned with the Han population. In addition, it is likely that the projects developed through the PAP are creating economic opportunities for the ‘donor’ regions investing in the XUAR, thus further facilitating Han in-migration to Xinjiang. Partnership regions from the interior of China favour projects that utilize their companies and that offer potential investment opportunities including favourable terms for the purchase of land.46 Thomas Cliff has recently suggested that this initiative ‘epitomizes the logic of integration’, but one could go a step further to even suggest that it adopts a ‘logic of assimilation and displacement’.47 Along these lines, the PAP investment in the XUAR has focused substantially on developing new housing stock for Uyghur communities, which as in the case of Kashgar’s old city, frequently leads to displacing Uyghurs from their traditional lifestyle and communities. For example, the city of Shanghai, which is partnered with the Kashgar Prefecture outside the city limits, has pledged in three years to ‘complete resettlement projects for 80,000 households’ covering four different counties.48 This housing transformation is also not specific to the Shanghai partnership with the Kashgar Prefecture. Through the PAP and other development efforts, regional authorities have pledged to ‘transform’ 1.5 million houses throughout the XUAR between 2010 and 2015, primarily in the Uyghur neigborhoods of Urumqi, Kashgar, Turpan, Hotan, Ghuja, Kumul, Aksu and Korla.49 There is no evidence that any of these housing transformations and displacements are involving local

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Uyghur communities in decision making, let alone relying on their prior free informed consent. The other major initiative to come out of the first Xinjiang Work Forum was the plan to establish two Special Economic Trading Areas (SETAs) in Khorgus and Kashgar. This initiative reflects a longer-term vision for the future of the XUAR and solidifies the region’s role as China’s bridge to project the PRC’s influence and interests into Central and South Asia. In many ways, the PRC’s engagement of Central and South Asia and its development of Xinjiang have continually served each other. Michael Clarke, for example, has persuasively argued that ‘the integration of Xinjiang with Central Asia grants China significant security, economic and strategic benefits that serve two purposes – the consolidation of China’s control of Xinjiang and the expansion of Chinese power in Central Asia – which contribute to Beijing’s quest for a ‘peaceful rise’ to great power status’.50 The creation of SETAs in Kashgar and Khorgus are critical to this vision of integrating the XUAR with Central and South Asia on China’s terms. This integration has been ongoing since the fall of the Soviet Union as the XUAR almost immediately became a major source for Chinese-produced consumer goods in the former Soviet Central Asian states. By the late 1990s, China’s interests in Central Asia had grown and began to focus more on the region’s natural resources, in which the PRC quickly developed substantial interests. If China first entered the oil market of Kazakhstan in 1997, purchasing a controlling interest in the relatively small company Aktobe Munay Gas, by 2010, the PRC was in control of about a quarter of the country’s oil production.51 Furthermore, by 2003, the PRC and Kazakhstan announced the development of an oil pipeline that would reach from the Caspian Sea to Karamay, the XUAR’s primary oil production and processing centre north of Urumqi, and it was completed by 2006. Upon completion of this critical oil pipeline, China also established agreements with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to begin construction on a grand gas pipeline, completed in 2009, that now travels from Turkmenistan to the XUAR, where it joins the west – east pipeline to Shanghai. The

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establishment of these pipelines has simultaneously secured China’s interests in the Central Asian energy market and provided the XUAR, particularly in its northern areas, with substantial economic growth that has helped to propel the region’s development. While establishing its stronghold in the oil and gas industry of Central Asia, the PRC has also become a leading foreign investor in a variety of other sectors in both Central and South Asia. The PRC has invested in Kazakhstan’s uranium industry, helping to make that country the largest exporter of uranium in the world, in the gold and hydroelectric industries of Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan, in the largest copper mine in Afghanistan and in the operations of Pakistan’s port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.52 In essence, China has quickly over the last two decades established access points to many of its critical natural resource needs either within or through Central and South Asia. Furthermore, in order to facilitate the transportation of these resources into China as well as to transfer consumer products to Central and South Asia from China, the PRC has invested substantially in the region’s transportation infrastructure. In addition to upgrading existing rail links from Urumqi into Kazakhstan and the road from Kashgar into Pakistan, the PRC is pursuing numerous new transportation projects linking the XUAR with Central and South Asia, all of which go through either Kashgar in the south or Khorgus in the north. In September of 2013, China’s president Xi Jinping announced these intentions to much fan-fare in a speech at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University where he spoke of a ‘silk road economic belt’ founded on a ‘transportation channel from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea’.53 Earlier that same year, the PRC had already approved funds to establish a railway from Kashgar to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.54 There have been additional discussions about a new rail link from Khorgus to southern Kazakhstan, rail links from Kashgar to Tadjikistan and Afghanistan, and even a railway and pipeline from Kashgar through the Karakorum pass to Pakistan and down to the port of Gwadar. In addition, China is assisting Central and South Asian countries to modernize their existing domestic transportation infrastructure.55

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In this context, the importance of creating SETAs in Kashgar and Khorgus becomes clearer. Establishing special manufacturing and commercial centres in these cities will not only provide more economic growth for the XUAR; they will also be critical to China’s economic influence in Central and South Asia and to the overall energy security of the PRC. In essence, these urban centres have the potential to become critical manufacturing and commercial hubs for all of Central and South Asia, in much the same way that the SEZs of southern China have become economic hubs for Southeast Asia. However, as with most of the development that has taken place in the XUAR to date, these grand plans for the region do not necessarily offer more economic opportunities for Uyghurs, who have not participated in their formulation. Indeed, if Khorgus and Kashgar become burgeoning manufacture and commercial hubs for Central and South Asia, these cities will become much more integrated into the PRC. While Khorgus has long been a small borderland city focused on trade and already has a substantial Han population, Kashgar has long been a largely Uyghur city with its own historical and cultural character. In recent years, these characteristics of Kashgar are quickly changing as the old city that had symbolic value for Uyghurs has been levelled, and new construction is booming. To accent the ambitions of creating a SETA in Kashgar, the PRC has established the city’s primary PAP partnership with the municipality of Shenzhen, China’s first SEZ. As one observer of current events in Xinjiang suggests, this effort reflects a ‘frenzy to develop Kashgar in the model of Shenzhen’.56 In addition to the destruction of the old city and the relocation of the majority of its Uyghur inhabitants to modern apartment buildings, the state is busily focused on developing manufacturing in the city, with plans to create an industrial park 160 square kilometres in size.57 These developments are likely to further push the native Uyghur population of this ancient oasis city further into the margins if not outside the region entirely. In fact, the announcement of Kashgar’s future role in the region immediately fostered a housing boom, and the majority of new apartments were bought before

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completion by speculators from China’s interior who hope to profit on Kashgar’s future role as a manufacturing and commercial centre.58 While these major development plans that emerged from the first Xinjiang Work Forum were aimed very deliberately, at least in rhetoric, at creating ‘stability’ and ‘harmony among ethnic groups’, they appear to be having the opposite effect. Every year since the 2009 riots, instances of violence in the XUAR are increasing, and beginning in 2013, this violence appeared to be taking on a more organized and premeditated character. In short, after over a decade of claiming that the region faced a serious terrorist threat from Uyghurs, this claim is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Chinese state. Beginning with the alleged attempt by a Uyghur couple to explode a car in Tiananmen Square in October of 2013, there have been apparent organized violent attacks on Han citizens by Uyghur groups in Kunming and Urumqi as well as an alleged political assassination of a pro-state Imam in Kashgar. As with the 2009 riots, the reaction of the PRC and of many Han citizens in China’s interior has been one of disbelief. Many Chinese again view this violence as acts of ‘ungratefulness’ when the country is investing so much money in making life in the XUAR ‘better’. Obviously, these investments have not made life in the XUAR ‘better’ for everybody. They certainly make the region a more attractive place for new Han migrants seeking new economic opportunities as well as for large businesses from the interior of China considering investments in the XUAR. They may even be attractive to some Uyghurs, who are educated, fluent in Mandarin and have good standing with local authorities. However, to many Uyghurs, the development in the XUAR over the last quarter century has increasingly applied pressure to their livelihoods, has encroached on their cultural practices and religious beliefs and has in many cases displaced them from their traditional communities. Additionally, as the above analysis suggests, the thrust of the development initiatives that emerged from the first Xinjiang Work Forum have first and foremost solidified the role of the XUAR in China’s broader economy as the manufacturing and commercial hub for the PRC’s engagement with Central and South Asia. The formulation

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of this vision for the region’s future has not involved many Uyghur voices, and it remains unclear if it is even intended to involve much Uyghur participation over the long-term. Instead, it is bringing in more Han Chinese economic interests and migrants from elsewhere in the country and is pushing Uyghurs to the margins of a region, which they view as their historical homeland. While most Uyghurs are neither likely to respond to this situation by undertaking acts of violence against innocent civilians nor to condone such violence, it is not surprising that some are doing so. To address the most recent escalation of Uyghur-initiated violence in the XUAR and elsewhere in the country, the PRC held a second Xinjiang Work Forum in May 2014. Although it is yet too early to forecast what proposals from this forum will actually be realized, it is noteworthy that the focus of this forum differed from the previous one by trying to bridge ethnic tension through social efforts rather than merely through rapid macro-economic development.59 Such efforts include promoting more Mandarin language education for Uyghurs, opportunities for Uyghurs from the XUAR to study, live and work in the interior of China, incentives for inter-ethnic marriages, and regulation of Islamic dress in public. Thus, while the findings of the second forum are more focused on the human factor than in 2010, they are obviously similarly top-down and state-driven as well as even more assimilationist. As one western journalist has suggested in stressing the unlikelihood of these policies succeeding, ‘the problem. . .is twofold; the Uighurs [sic] were not consulted on any of these initiatives and none of the measures addresses their core grievance, namely the feeling that they are being deprived of their land and culture’.60 Furthermore, it should be noted that while focusing on social measures for further integrating Uyghurs into a Han-dominated PRC culture, the second forum did not forsake the development path that has been pursued in the region to date. Among other initiatives, it is accelerating its urbanization plan for the XUAR, including the establishment of dozens of new cities and towns in the region, particularly in its Uyghur-dominated south. Furthermore, the PRC is characterizing this massive urban development, which seeks to

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have 68 per cent of the XUAR’s population inhabiting cities by 2020, as an anecdote to ethnic discontent, extremism and terrorism.61 Without explicitly stating such, this plan is very obviously an attempt to bring an ever-increasing number of Han to the region and to further marginalize traditional Uyghur communities. And, given that the XPCC will build these cities, it will also lead to a further militarization of the region. At the same time, there is no evidence that the PRC is slowing down its push to create prominent SETAs in Kashgar and Khorgus, which will likely serve as manufacturing and commercial hubs for Central and South Asia, and to industrialize the rest of the XUAR to support these hubs. In essence, this is the logical conclusion of what Nicolas Benquelin identified a decade ago as the PRC’s ‘staged development’ in the region.62 Gradually, China’s ‘developmentalist state’ has adopted what appears to be a successful approach to ‘modernizing’ the XUAR through the establishment of industrial, transportation, and communications infrastructure, steady urbanization, labour in-migration and a strategy to capitalize on the region’s trade potential with neighbouring economies. In the classical development logic of economic planners, this approach should serve its intended purposes and eventually integrate this former peripheral ‘buffer zone’ into the PRC’s state economy. If there was not a local population of about 10 million people who view this region as their historical homeland and with whom nobody has consulted about this vision, these assumptions of success might indeed be true. However, such a population does indeed exist, and the further development of the XUAR is unlikely to proceed smoothly without their inclusion and voluntary participation.

Conclusions: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem? The above review of the last quarter century of development efforts in the XUAR sheds much light on the core issues that have contributed to the on-going conflict between Uyghurs and the Chinese state in the region. I have outlined this history not to suggest that development alone has been the reason for this conflict and the recent

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escalations in violence in the region. The more popular explanations of the conflict as being related to the history of Uyghur aspirations for independence from China, the state’s violation of Uyghur human rights in the region or even the influence of political Islamic ideas from abroad likely are all contributing factors to the present situation in the XUAR. However, these factors are all incidental to the allencompassing issue of contention between Uyghurs and the PRC – defining the future vision of the XUAR and the extent to which Uyghurs will play a role in that vision. Like most people in the world, Uyghurs are not adverse to economic opportunities or the comforts afforded by technology and industry. However, like many other peoples without nation states with which they closely identify, most of them also feel strongly about the maintenance of their group identity, cultural practices, language and attachment to their historical homeland. In this context, it is not development in the XUAR to which Uyghurs are reacting against; it is the fact that this development neither includes recognition of their historical relationship with the region nor ways for them to partake in new opportunities while maintaining their unique identity, cultural practices and local communities. As has been noted above, the development of this region over the last quarter century has gradually, but steadily eroded Uyghurs’ social capital, destroyed Uyghur cultural landmarks, brought large numbers of Han migrants to the region, forced Uyghurs to change their behaviours and livelihoods and forcibly displaced numerous communities. Furthermore, on-going development in the region continues to have the same impacts, thus further marginalizing the Uyghurs in what they perceive as their historical homeland. The most extreme criticisms of this process suggest that it amounts to nothing short of ‘cultural genocide’.63 Whether such a characterization is accurate or not, most Uyghurs must feel as if their place in the world is under siege. Theoretically, the PRC could accomplish their development goals in the XUAR without further alienating their Uyghur population and thus truly use development to mitigate the violence in the region. However, this would require a more ‘grassroots’ and human-

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centric approach to development of the region. It would require allowing Uyghur communities to actively contribute to development planning in the areas where they are located. It would require supporting the Uyghur language as an integral part of the landscape of the XUAR, including both in matters related to governance and commerce. Furthermore, it would likely require placing limits on the number of Han Chinese migrants allowed to come to the region. In short, a development solution to the violence and ethnic tension in the XUAR would necessitate the PRC both giving real ethnic autonomy to Uyghurs in the region and enhancing mechanisms for local citizens’ participation in governance and development planning. Unfortunately, neither of these actions is compatible with the political stances of the Chinese Communist Party either in the XUAR or elsewhere in the PRC. Furthermore, there is reason to be sceptical about whether the PRC’s plans for the XUAR’s future include any substantial role for Uyghurs at all. As has already been noted, development policy in the region has often been blatantly assimilationist, especially as it has become more entangled with anti-terrorism strategies. As Thomas Cliff has suggested, the PRC’s development policies in the XUAR may not be aimed at resolving the ‘Uyghur problem’ at all, but instead ‘are intended to make the region attractive to Han and accelerate cultural change in Xinjiang; that means privileging Han people and Han ways of doing things’.64 Such an interpretation is consistent with the central role that the PRC appears to envision for the region in its engagement with Central and South Asia, which is more about state-level than local development. In fact, in many ways, the Uyghur population of the region is less likely to be the direct beneficiaries of this new vision for the XUAR than it is to be an obstacle to its realization. In general, the PRC’s development of the XUAR demonstrates the state’s position regarding minority populations as incidental to the overall goals of the state’s economic and political rise in the world. These development efforts are following a model that is also being employed in Tibet, Inner Mongolia and other minority regions with similar results.65 As anthropologist Emily Yeh, who has studied the

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development of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), has noted, the PRC’s portrayal of such efforts as a ‘gift’ from the state to the Tibetan people only further marginalizes the recipients and helps to ‘consolidate state space as territory’.66 While in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, these efforts are enjoying substantial success in controlling minority populations and making them incidental to the regions they view as their historical homelands, in the XUAR the situation is much more contested. Unlike the pastoralists of Tibet and Inner Mongolia, the Uyghurs are agriculturalists with strong attachments to their land and cohesive self-organized communities, which may be more resistant to forced changes in their landscape and livelihoods. This may both explain why the XUAR is becoming a centre of violent resistance to the state amidst this massive development and suggest that this violence will only increase as development proceeds. Thus, while the grand plans for the XUAR held by the PRC leadership make good development sense for the future of China, they will not be easily realized and may leave a trail of violence in their wake.

Notes 1. For accounts of these events and the human rights abuses in their aftermath, see Amnesty International, ‘Justice, Justice’, the July 2009 Protests in Xinjiang, China (London: 2010); Human Rights Watch, ‘We Are Afraid to Even Look for Them’, Enforced Disappearances in the Wake of Xinjiang’s Protests (New York: 2009); Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), ‘Can Anyone Hear Us?’: Voices from the 2009 Unrest in Urumqi (Washington DC: 2010). 2. For the official state position on this violence and its relationship to international terrorism, see PRC Government White Paper: Development and Progress in Xinjiang (IV: Safeguarding National Unity and Social Stability), available at: http://www.china.org.cn/government/whitepaper/2009-09/21/ content_18565678.htm, accessed 11 November 2014. For an analysis of this position as it relates to violence in the XUAR, see Roberts, S. R., ‘Imaginary Terrorism: The Global War on Terror and the Uyghur Terrorist Threat’, PONARS Eurasia Working Paper (March 2012). 3. See Rajagobalan, M., ‘China security chief blames Uighur Islamists for Tiananmen attack’, Reuters, 1 November 2013; Page, P. and Yap, C., ‘Xinjiang Separatists said to be behind Attack at Train Station’, The Wall Street Journal, 2 March 2014.

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4. For discussion of the history of Uyghur separatism and its role in the violence of the region, see Bovingdon, G., The Uyghurs: Strangers in their Own Land (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Millward, J., ‘Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment’, Policy Studies, 6 (East-West Center, 2004); for discussions of the role of human rights violations, see Human Rights Watch 2010; Amnesty International 2009; UHRP 2010. 5. Wang, S. and Cuifen, W., ‘China’s New Policy in Xinjiang and its Challenges’, East Asian Policy, 2 (3) (2010), pp. 60 – 1. 6. See the following texts for a post-structuralist critique of development: Escobar, A. Encountering Development: The Making and the Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Rist, G., The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, 3rd Edition (London, UK: Zed Books, 2008). 7. There are numerous critics of development who support the enterprise but believe assistance is often not provided appropriately or effectively and priorities are frequently wrongly formulated. See for example, Carothers, T. and De Gramont, D., Development Aid Confronts Politics: The Almost Revolution (Washington: Carnegie Endowment, 2013); Easterly, W., The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (New York: Basic Books, 2013). 8. For the best-known representation of this theoretical framework, see Rostow, W. W., The Stages of Economic Growth: An Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). 9. For an analysis of the neo-liberal aspects of China’s development in recent decades, see Harvey, D., A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 10. For an examination of how the neo-liberal model of economic growth produces inequality, see Ibid., pp. 5– 38. 11. See Xanthanki, A., Indigenous Rights and United Nations Standards: SelfDetermination, Culture and Land (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007); United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, March 2008). 12. Much of this shift in UN development policy has been driven by the work of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, whose work has called for a more humanapproach to development that goes beyond macro-economic growth. See Sen, A., Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1999). 13. See for example Implementation of the World Bank’s Indigenous Peoples Policy, World Bank Operations Policy and Country Services Working Paper, August 2011. 14. See Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth. 15. For an argument concerning the neo-liberal character of China’s development, see Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism, pp. 120– 51. 16. For a discussion of how China’s development is being perceived by some in Africa as a model to be replicated, see Brautigam, D., The Dragon’s Gift:

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17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

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The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 1 – 42. See Yu, X. and Xiang, Z., ‘Income Inequality in Today’s China,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 111(19) (2014), pp. 6928– 33. For a detailed case-study of the development of a SEZ during this period, see Wong, K. A. and Chu, David K. Y., Modernization in China: The Case of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). When I first travelled from Urumqi to Khotan in 1990, the trip took me a total of four days (three to Kashgar and an additional day from Kashgar to Khotan), but in 1999 I was able to take a bus on the new highway through the desert that took less than 24 hours. Toops, S., ‘Development and Demographics in Xinjiang After 1949’, East-West Center Working Paper, 1 (Washington DC: May 2004), p. 9. For a description of the events in Baren, see Bovingdon, The Uyghurs, pp. 123 – 5. These figures were tabulated using census data per urban centre disaggregated by ethnicity found in Toops, ‘Development and Demographics’, p. 20. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 9, see chart for regional population and GDP distribution. Ma, D. and Summers, T., ‘Is China’s Growth Moving Inland? A Decade of “Develop the West”’, Asia Programme Paper: ASP PP 2009/02 (London: Chatham House, 2009), p. 5. Ibid., p. 5. Becquelin, N., ‘Staged Development in Xinjiang’, The China Quarterly, 178 (June 2004), p. 360. Ibid., pp. 364 – 5. Ibid., p. 370. UNESCO Mission to The Chinese Silk Road as World Cultural Heritage Route, Mission Report: A Systematic Approach to Identification and Nomination (UNESCO, August 2003), p. 25. Perlin, R., ‘The Silk Road Unravels’, Open Democracy: Free Thinking for the World (29 July 2009), available at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/thesilk-road-unravels, accessed 14 February 2013. UHRP, Living on the Margins: The Chinese State’s Demolition of Uyghur Communities (30 March 2012), p. 37. See The Erdaoqiao Bazaar of Urumqi Guide, available at: http://www.itourbeijing. com/china-travel/the-silk-road-guide/the-erdaoqiao-bazaar-of-urumqi.html. Beller-Hann, I., ‘The Bulldozer State: Chinese Socialist Development in Xinjiang’ in M. Reeves, J. Rasanayagam and J. Beyer (eds), Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), pp. 173 –97. For more on Islam in the XUAR at this time, see Gladney, D., ‘Transnational Islam and Uighur National Identity: Salman Rushdie, Sino-Muslim Missile Deals, and the Trans-Eurasian Railway’, Central Asian Survey, 11(3) (1992), pp. 1–21.

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36. For details of these campaigns against the informal practice of Islam in Xinjiang, see Human Rights Watch, Devastating Blows: Religious Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang (April 2005). 37. Dwyer, A., ‘The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse’, Policy Studies, 15 (East-West Center, Washington, DC, 2005), pp. 37– 41. 38. Ibid., pp. 46 –50. 39. See UHRP, Deception, Pressure, and Threats: The Transfer of Young Uyghur Women to Eastern China (8 February 2008). 40. Ibid., p. 3. 41. Summers and Ma, ‘Is China’s Growth Moving Inland?’, p. 7. 42. Wei and Cuifen, ‘China’s New Policy in Xinjiang’, p. 61. 43. Jia, C., ‘New Measures to Boost Xinjiang Livelihoods’, China Daily, 28 May 2010, accessed 10 February 2013, available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ cndy/2010-05/28/content_9902439.htm. 44. Ibid., p. 62. 45. Jie, C., ‘Xinjiang takes a Leaf out of Sichuan’s Book’, China Daily, 21 May 2010, accessed 14 November 2014, available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/ 2010-05/21/content_9875137.htm. 46. See UHRP, Uyghur Homeland; Chinese Frontier: The Xinjiang Work Forum, 2012, pp. 24 – 5. 47. Cliff, T., ‘The Partnership of Stability in Xinjiang: State-Society Interactions Following the July 2009 Unrest’, The China Journal, 68 (July 2012), p. 89. 48. UHRP, Uyghur Homeland; Chinese Frontier, p. 17. 49. Ibid., Living on the Margins, p. 29. 50. Clarke, M., ‘China’s Integration of Xinjiang with Central Asia: Securing a “Silk Road” to Great Power Status?’, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 6 (2) (2008), p. 89. 51. Laruelle, M. and Peyrouse, S., The Chinese Question in Central Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 70, 72. 52. For more on China’s raw materials investments in former Soviet Central Asia, see Laruelle and Peyrouse, The Chinese Question in Central Asia, pp. 63 – 79; for more on China’s involvement in managing the Port of Gwadar in Pakistan, see Giulio Barone, M., ‘Gwadar Port, The Latest of The Chinese “Pearls”, International Security Observer, 28 May 2013, accessed 11 November 2014, available at: http://securityobserver.org/gwadar-port-the-latest-ofthe-chinese-pearls/. 53. ‘President Xi Jinping Delivers Important Speech and Proposes to Build a Silk Road Economic Belt with Central Asian Countries’, press release of the November 6, 2014 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PRC, 7 September 2013, accessed, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678/ xjpfwzysiesgjtfhshzzfh_665686/t1076334.shtml. 54. Federenko, V., ‘The New Silk Road Initiatives in Central Asia’, Rethink Paper, 10 (August 2013), p. 14.

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55. For more on China’s role in the internal transportation infrastructure in former Soviet Central Asia, see Laruelle and Peyrouse, The Chinese Question in Central Asia, pp. 81 – 96. 56. Regar, A., ‘From Kashgar to Kashi: The Chinese Remaking of Kashgar’, Huffington Post, 17 April 2012, accessed February 12, 2013, available at: http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-reger/from-kashgar-to-kashi_b_1424243.html. 57. UHRP, Uyghur Homeland; Chinese Frontier, p. 19. 58. Jacobs, A., ‘Aid Fuels Change of Fortune on Silk Road’, New York Times, 14 November 2010. 59. Chaudhuri, D., ‘Second Xinjiang Work Forum: Old Policies in New Language’, Institute of Chinese Studies Analysis (Delhi, August 2013), p. 2. 60. Meyer, E., ‘China Offers Work Placements and Incentivizes Mixed Marriages as Solutions for its Xinjiang Problems’, Forbes, 13 November 2014. 61. Philips, T., ‘China Plans to Fight Terror with “Dozens” of New Cities’, The Telegraph, 19 August 2014. 62. Bequelin, ‘Staged Development’. 63. ‘Turkey Attacks China “Genocide”’, BBC News, 10 July 2009, accessed 11 November 2014, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8145451.stm. 64. Cliff, ‘The Partnership for Stability’, p. 92. 65. Human Rights Watch, ‘They Say We Should be Grateful’: Mass Rehousing and Relocation Programs in Tibetan Areas of China (New York, 2013), p. 4. 66. Yeh, E. T., Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformations and the Gift of Chinese Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), p. 267.

CHAPTER 2 `

BEIJING'S MARCH WESTWARDS': XINJIANG, CENTRAL ASIA AND CHINA'S QUEST FOR GREAT POWER STATUS Michael E. Clarke

Introduction Much ink has been spilt over the past two decades debating the impact of the ‘rise’ of China on the international relations and strategic environment of Asia. Much of this debate has concerned whether China’s rise will be peaceful or lead to conflict and war. The dominant narrative within this debate has been defined by neo-realist theoretical approaches to international relations and an almost exclusive focus on the impact of China’s ‘rise’ on the Asia-Pacific geopolitical space.1 China’s increasing material power, and consequently its growing strategic and economic footprint, has also been felt along its extensive Eurasian continental frontier, particularly in Central Asia. With few exceptions, however, this region’s interactions with China’s ‘rise’ have largely been overlooked by much of the international relations literature.2 This has arguably been due to the United States’ long-standing security and strategic alignments with many of China’s Asia-Pacific

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neighbours and, until the events of 9/11, the relative obscurity of Central Asia as a geopolitical site of international politics. When it has been a subject of scholarly or policy-making discussion in the West, Central Asia has been geopolitically constructed as the heart of the ‘world’s axial supercontinent’,3 a ‘global fault-line’,4 a potential ‘shatterbelt’5 and a ‘non-integrating gap’ of a global international system.6 China, the emerging peer competitor of the United States, not only sits astride this ‘dangerous’ geopolitical ‘fault-line’ but is in fact enmeshed in it due to its control of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Xinjiang is China’s largest province, shares borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Mongolia and possesses a variety of natural resources, including oil. This position as a ‘Eurasian crossroad’ has made Xinjiang an abiding strategic concern for China-based states for centuries.7 As demonstrated by scholars such as James Millward, Peter Perdue and Mark Elliott, amongst others, until at least the mid-nineteenth century China-based states viewed the region as a strategic buffer between the heartland of Chinese civilization and the largely Turkic and Mongol steppe world beyond.8 Just as significantly, as Laura Newby has recently noted, the retention of Xinjiang for much of this time was ultimately ‘negotiable’ and based on a strategic cost-benefit assessment as to the region’s worth to China-based empires: ‘Since its conquest in the eighteenth century, Xinjiang had been viewed as a bulwark of the empire’s defences, control of which was arguably preferable to allowing it to fall prey to petty, squabbling tribes and polities, but ultimately negotiable.’9 By the middle of the twentieth century however, this situation had been irrevocably transformed to be ‘non-negotiable’. Under the PRC Xinjiang was (and is) envisaged as an ‘integral’ province of the ‘multi-ethnic’ and ‘unitary’ Chinese state. Indeed, according to the Chinese government’s 2009 White Paper on Development and Progress in Xinjiang ‘the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang cherish dearly this hard-earned, remarkable situation’.10 However recent outbreaks of Xinjiang and Uyghur-related violence such as the 1 March 2014 Kunming train station knife attack, 30 April suicide bombing outside Urumqi’s main train station, the 5 May 2014 bombing of an

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open-air market in Urumqi and the 28 August uprising in Shule County near Kashgar, clearly demonstrate that not all of the region’s ethnic groups ‘cherish dearly’ Beijing’s rule. Sean Roberts reminded us in the previous chapter that this is not only a ‘struggle over development and the future shape of Xinjiang’ but also over the shape and nature of China’s future in Central Asia. Where Roberts amply demonstrated the nature and scope of the internal dimension of this struggle, this chapter focuses on the shape and nature of China’s recent past, present and future in Central Asia. In this regard, this chapter charts how Beijing has since the end of the Cold War gradually reimagined Xinjiang’s, and indeed Central Asia’s, potential contribution to its enduring goal of achieving, in President Xi Jinping’s phrase, China’s ‘great national rejuvenation’ – i.e. returning China to the ranks of the world’s great powers.

Xinjiang and Central Asia’s Role in China’s Rise: Strategic ‘Safety Valve’ or a ‘Terrain of Hazards’? Much of China’s contemporary influence in Central Asia derives from the success of its integration of Xinjiang. The consolidation of Beijing’s hold over Xinjiang over the past three decades has enabled it to imagine anew the contribution that this can make to China’s ‘rise’ to great power-hood. Wang Jisi, one of China’s most prominent and influential international relations scholars, for example, has argued that given the Obama administration’s ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’ to Asia, Beijing can (and should) capitalize on the success of its development strategies in Xinjiang and make ‘strategic plans to “look westwards” and “march westwards”’.11 For most of its history, Wang notes, the PRC was strategically oriented to the east due to the ‘traditional development advantages’ of the country’s eastern provinces and the fact that the major strategic and military threats to the country emanated from the Asia-Pacific. Now however a ‘march westwards’ is a ‘strategic necessity’ in order to ensure that: ‘harmony and stability’ in Xinjiang (and Tibet) are not threatened by ‘extremism, terrorism and other hostile external forces’; ‘the supply channels for oil and other bulk commodities to the west of

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China’s borders remain open’; and China can expand its economic cooperation (including the provision of economic aid) with ‘all West Asian nations’.12 In a similar vein, Li Yonghui, Dean of the School of International Relations at Beijing Foreign Studies University, drawing on historical analogies to the United States’ rise as a great power, perceives Central Asia as China’s Latin America – i.e. a ‘strategic supporting peripheral belt’ that will serve as a ‘buffer, source of growth, and a platform and channel’ for the expansion of Chinese influence.13 Finally, Yuan Peng, vice president of the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, conceives of Central Asia as playing a vital linking role between what he identifies as three geographically defined ‘rings’ of China’s contemporary diplomacy. For Yuan, China’s contemporary diplomacy is best viewed as operating across three rings: an ‘inner ring’ related to Beijing’s relations with its 14 direct neighbours; a ‘middle ring’ that encompasses Beijing’s relations with nations within East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific; and an ‘outer ring’ encompassing Beijing’s relations with nations far beyond its geopolitical neighbourhood. In this context Central Asia straddles the inner and middle rings and holds the potential to facilitate the expansion of Chinese power and influence into the ‘outer ring’ – i.e. to the truly global level.14 Common to each of these recent Chinese views is a tendency to downplay the challenges to the expansion of its influence in Central Asia and a seeming internalization of a Kaplan-esque analysis of China’s favourable geographic endowment straddling continental and maritime Asia. Two prominent American international relations scholars, Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell’s, in contrast, have conceived of China’s global foreign policy as structured by a need to navigate through a ‘terrain of hazards’ on its way to great power status.15 They envisage this ‘terrain of hazards’ as consisting of four concentric ‘rings’ of potential threats: (i) threats to political stability and territorial integrity from internal and external foes (i.e. disaffected ethnic minorities); (ii) threats derived from sharing borders with multiple neighbours; (iii) threats from China’s connection to six distinct

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geo-political regions; and (iv) threats from the ‘world beyond China’s immediate neighbourhood’. 16 These ‘rings of threat’ can usefully be seen as constituting a domestic-regional nexus (the first and second rings) and a regional-global nexus (third and fourth rings) of challenges and obstacles that Beijing must confront. China’s enmeshment in the Central Asian region through its control of Xinjiang – historically and culturally a part of Central Asia (understood here to include the five Central Asian republics, Afghanistan and Xinjiang) – exposes it to each of these ‘rings of threat’. Thus, for Nathan and Scobell, China’s engagement with regions such as Central Asia are beset by both opportunities and challenges. This chapter argues that China’s enmeshment in these ‘rings of threat’ has conditioned (and continues to condition) its foreign policy in Central Asia in three distinct ways. First, securing China’s control over Xinjiang is Beijing’s core interest within the domestic-regional nexus. China’s anxieties here stem from the fact that it has been pursuing an inherently imperial project in Xinjiang that seeks its thorough political, economic and cultural integration. Despite China’s contemporary claim that Xinjiang has been ‘an inseparable part of the unitary multi-ethnic Chinese nation’ since the Han dynasty (206 BC – 24 AD ), the historical reality, due to the region’s geopolitical position and the ethno-cultural dominance of Turkic and Mongol peoples, was one of intermittent periods of Chinese control.17 Beijing has neutralized these historical constraints via the implementation of a strategy of ‘repression, restriction and investment’ that has coupled a state-led modernization agenda with control of the political and cultural expression of the region’s non-Han Chinese ethnic groups. While this strategy has undoubtedly brought economic development to the region it has also contributed to ethnic tensions through the encouragement of Han Chinese settlement, growing rural-urban economic and social disparities and greater inter-connectivity with Central Asia.18 Second, China’s interests within the regional-global nexus are crucially shaped by the core imperatives of security and development in Xinjiang. However, Chinese perceptions of the threats and

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opportunities presented by the Central Asian geopolitical environment are also conditioned by its global foreign policy agenda of combating the perceived negative attributes of US primacy. China’s foreign policy in Central Asia can thus be understood as the product of the interaction of its interests and anxieties across the domesticregional and regional-global nexuses. This can be seen in China’s multilateral engagement of the region via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and its bilateral relationships with each of the Central Asian republics and Afghanistan. Third, China’s anxieties regarding Xinjiang have increasingly seen it adopt what a number of scholars have succinctly described as a ‘discourse of danger’ to frame its engagement with the region. Within this discourse ‘Central Asia’ is ‘scripted’ as a ‘place of great insecurity, terrorism and Islamism, where violent political conflict is ever ready to erupt’.19 This can most readily be seen through Beijing’s handling of the threat of Uyghur terrorism. Thus, Beijing’s predominant global foreign policy goal of combating the perceived dominance of the US, in the specific regional context of Central Asia, is refracted through a core domesticlevel concern (i.e. security and development of Xinjiang) and is not simply driven by structural factors as per conventional neorealist international relations formulations.

Xinjiang and Chinese Diplomacy in Central Asia: Managing the Domestic-Regional Nexus Beijing’s approach to post-Cold War Central Asia, including Afghanistan, has been underpinned by a trilogy of core interests – security, development and energy. Two factors – the collapse of the Soviet Union and Beijing’s goal of integrating Xinjiang into the PRC – generated China’s pursuit of these interests. Domestically, the fall of communism soon after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in June 1989, pushed regime survival to the forefront of the CCP leadership’s minds. For paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, regime survival could only be assured through coupling continued ‘reform and opening’ and the delivery of economic growth/development with firm one party rule. In order to effectively carry this out however China

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required, in Deng’s view, a stable international environment characterized by a return to ‘multipolarity’. These concerns combined to produce a foreign policy in which China would ‘bide its time, and build capabilities’ by seeking to develop multiple regional and global linkages to grow China’s economy, resolve long-standing disputes with neighbours and combat the ill-effects of US predominance.20 Chinese foreign policy from the mid-1990s thus demonstrated a preference for ‘cooperation’, ‘multilateralism’, and ‘regionalism’, modalities that became central to Beijing’s ‘new security diplomacy’ (NSD).21 While linked to Chinese anxieties about long-standing regional security issues, NSD was also driven by the desire to balance against perceived US predominance and NSD achieved three inter-linked goals in this regard. First, by embracing multilateralism, China’s leaders sought to ‘dampen tensions in its external security environment’ in order to ‘focus on domestic economic, political and social reform challenges’. Second, engagement in multilateralism assisted Beijing to expand its influence while simultaneously reassuring neighbours about its rise. And third, involvement in regional and global multilateralism contributed to China’s ability to counter, co-opt or circumvent US influence and ‘hegemony’ around the Chinese periphery, while simultaneously avoiding overt confrontation with the United States.22 This naturally flowed into China’s foreign policy toward the newly independent states of Central Asia, whereby it sought to enhance bilateral trade and develop a regional approach to the resolution of Soviet-era territorial disputes. This was complemented by Beijing’s reconfiguration of how it would attempt to achieve its long-standing goal of integrating Xinjiang. Until the mid-1980s Beijing had perceived Xinjiang’s geopolitical position at the ‘crossroads’ of Eurasia as an obstacle to its goal of integration due not only to the vast geographical distance between the region and the Chinese heartland but also to the obvious historical, ethnic and linguistic affinities that linked the Turkic-Muslim peoples of Xinjiang with their brethren in a Central Asia then divided between Soviet and Chinese spheres. However, with the fall of the

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Soviet Union in 1991, the region’s geopolitical position was no longer viewed as an obstacle to be overcome in pursuit of integration but rather as an important asset to achieve it.23 This reconfiguration has been no more clearly expressed than in Beijing’s consistent rhetoric since the early 1990s that has envisaged Xinjiang as a ‘Eurasian Continental Bridge’, a hub of a ‘New Silk Road’ or, in Xi Jinping’s latest iteration, a hub of a Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB). These rhetorical flourishes have encapsulated the spirit of Beijing’s policies in the region since the early 1990s which have been guided by the desire to connect the region’s economy with that of Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East through the development of direct trade relations with neighbouring Central Asian states, massive state investment in infrastructure projects in Central Asia (including oil and gas pipelines) and greater development and exploitation of Xinjiang’s own oil and gas resources.24 This strategy in the 1990s was characterized as one of ‘doubleopening’: an attempt to simultaneously integrate Xinjiang with Central Asia and China proper in economic terms, while establishing security and cooperation with China’s Central Asian neighbours. The key elements of this strategy throughout the 1990s, however, demonstrated the primacy of the internal goal of tying the province closer to China. These elements included the re-centralization of economic decision making to increase the region’s dependency on Beijing; the expansion of Han colonization of the region; increased investment for the exploitation of Xinjiang’s potential energy resources; the opening of border trading ‘ports’ with Central Asia; and significant investment in infrastructure links with Central Asia. Xinjiang’s petrochemical industry in particular was to become a ‘pillar’ industry within this strategy with the primary goal of establishing the region into a transit route and refinery zone for Central Asian oil and gas as a means of combating China’s growing dependency on Middle Eastern sources. 25 Afghanistan’s position in this approach was secondary and driven by Chinese concerns about the potential spill over of radical Islamism into Xinjiang. Symptomatic of this threat was the Baren Incident of

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April 1990 in which a group of Uyghur men conducted an armed uprising against Chinese police and security forces in the township with the aim of establishing an ‘East Turkestan Republic’. While the rebellion was forcibly quelled, the authorities subsequently claimed that the leader of the rebellion had been the leader of an ‘Islamic Party of East Turkestan’ that was bent on launching a jihad against Chinese rule with potential support from mujahideen groups in Afghanistan. While the CCP was quick to link such violent unrest to external influence it was less inclined to draw attention to the fact that it had been engaged in a renewed anti-religious campaign in the region, targeting what it termed ‘illegal religious activities’ such as construction of unauthorised mosques and madrassas. Additionally, the authorities also linked such internal unrest with the influence of so-called ‘hostile external forces’, a term that would come to denote a range of perceived threats to Xinjiang’s ‘ethnic unity’ and ‘social stability’.26 As Afghanistan descended into civil war in the mid-1990s, Beijing’s interest with respect to the country remained largely negative – i.e. to prevent any potential spill over into Xinjiang of radical Islamism and other non-traditional security threats (i.e. terrorism, weapons and drug trafficking).27 The potential for these threats to enter Xinjiang was also heightened by China’s strategy in Xinjiang noted above (i.e. push for greater economic linkages with Central Asia). Illustrative of this dilemma was the role of the Karakoram Highway in facilitating not only trade flows but also cultural-religious and smuggling flows between Xinjiang and Afghanistan and Pakistan that worked against Beijing’s integrationist project in Xinjiang.28 These concerns encouraged China to take the diplomatic initiative in Central Asia and soon after the Soviet collapse Beijing played the key role in forming what became known as the ‘Shanghai Five’ (S-5) grouping of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 1992. This dialogue, originally focused on resolving Soviet-era territorial disputes and military confidence building measures, culminated in the formal establishment of the group as a regional multilateral forum in 1996. The official communique´s released upon

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the establishment of the S-5 in 1996, while signalling an intent to broaden regional cooperation on security and economic issues, also demonstrated the inter-linkages between China’s domestic, regional and global interests as they noted the grouping’s support for China’s position in Xinjiang and Tibet, its claims to Taiwan and desire to see a ‘multipolar’ international order.29 China’s perception of Afghanistan as a source of potential threats to not only its security but that of the wider Central Asian region was heightened sharply with the emergence of the Taliban as a force in the country. The Taliban’s provision of safe haven to a variety of radical Islamists from Central Asia including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) became a major concern not only to the largely secular and authoritarian post-Soviet regimes in Central Asia but also to China and Russia (which was in the midst of its first war in Chechnya).30 The IMU’s launching of yearly incursions from its bases in northern Afghanistan into Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan from 1998 prompted the S-5 to shift some of its focus to combatting what the Chinese would come to term the ‘three evils’ of ‘terrorism, extremism and separatism’. At the S-5’s 2000 summit the group issued a joint declaration that condemned the Taliban for supporting ‘terrorism’, agreed to establish a joint ‘anti-terrorism centre’ and committed member states to greater cooperation to combat the ‘three evils’. Once again, however, this declaration also reflected Beijing’s broader foreign policy goals and interests with specific mention made of the group’s respect for ‘national sovereignty’ and adherence to ‘non-interference’ in others’ ‘internal affairs’, the group’s opposition to US plans for Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) systems, and Chinese and Russian positions on Xinjiang, Taiwan, Tibet and Chechnya.31 The overall impact of the IMU’s activities was to drive Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan toward closer relations with Russia and China. After 1998 these states thus became more receptive to Chinese requests for greater cooperation regarding what Beijing defined as Uyghur ‘separatist’ or ‘terrorist’ organizations with, for example, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz governments concluding a number of border security and extradition agreements with China.32

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The perceived growth of the threat of radical Islamist movements to the states of Central Asia, Russia and China, and the entrenchment of Taliban ascendancy in Afghanistan resulted in the expansion and reorientation of the S-5 to become the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The group’s meeting in Shanghai on 14 June 2001 transformed the organization into a fully fledged international institution complete with secretariat and interministerial committees. The organization also adopted two documents at this meeting – ‘Declaration of the Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’ and the ‘Shanghai Covenant on the Suppression of Terrorism, Separatism and Religious Extremism’ – which proved to be of lasting significance. The latter demonstrated that establishing a regional response to the perceived threat of radical Islam was a central concern of the new organization. The former, however, also explicitly outlined the principles of the SCO and demonstrated the influence of Chinese interests. This document asserted that the principles of the group, or the ‘Shanghai spirit’ as Chinese commentary would refer to it, comprised of ‘mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for multi-civilizations and common development’.33 Therefore, while the SCO’s agenda was the result of a gradual convergence in the interests of Russia, China and the Central Asian states, the guiding principles of the group strongly reflected China’s wider foreign policy interests including its desire to build regional partnerships to combat the hegemony of the US. An understated element of this latter interest was Beijing’s desire to craft alternative normative/ideological principles for multilateral cooperation. The so-called ‘Shanghai Spirit’ was one of the first such attempts to present an alternative to the Western led international order. The ‘Shanghai Spirit’ not only established ‘a set of regional norms which move beyond power differentials amongst the organization’s members and toward a consensus-based approach to resolve regional problems’ but were also promoted by Beijing as not merely tailored for the specific regional environment of Central Asia but ‘as universally applicable and as a basis for global politics’.34

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Central Asia and a Rising China’s Search for Geopolitical Leverage: The Ascendant Regional-Global Nexus? On the eve of 9/11 Beijing had thus developed a relatively successful approach to Central Asia and Afghanistan based on three core interests: security, development and access to the region’s energy resources. The rapid and successful insertion of US military forces into Afghanistan and the consequent rise in US influence amongst the states of Central Asia (including leasing of bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan) was a contradictory development for Beijing. The overturning of the Taliban was a positive in the context of Chinese concerns about their potential linkages to violent Uyghur separatism and terrorism in Xinjiang. Yet viewed from the perspective of China’s regional and global foreign policy agenda this development was a setback as it compromised Beijing’s bilateral and multilateral diplomatic efforts in Central Asia and augured the geopolitical ‘encirclement’ of China by the US and its allies. In response China attempted to ‘double down’ on its pre-9/11 strategy in the early 2000s by seeking to develop the SCO as a viable regional security organization. China’s efforts in this regard were aided by some missteps in Washington’s handling of Central Asian capitals. Most important in this respect was the US response to the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the Andijan Incident in Uzbekistan in 2005. Both of these events, from the perspective of the authoritarian regimes in the region, were attempts to overthrow the status quo and emblematic of the George W. Bush administration’s ‘democracy promotion’ agenda. States such as Uzbekistan viewed this to be clearly at odds with the US global ‘war on terror’ and the stability of the region vis-a`-vis radical Islamism. Not surprisingly China (and Russia) were able to counter-pose the SCO’s ‘noninterference’ principles and privileging of state sovereignty and security to this and began to coax the Central Asian states back into the Chinese and Russian orbit. China’s response to the Greater Central Asian Partnership (GCAP) raised by S. Frederick Starr in 2005, which detailed an

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agenda for the transformation not only of Afghanistan but the broader Central Asian region ‘into a zone of secure sovereignties sharing viable market economies, enjoying secular and open systems of government and maintaining positive relations with the United States’, highlighted Beijing’s perception of Afghanistan’s connection to its regional and global foreign policy agenda. In August 2006 the People’s Daily issued a commentary that critiqued both the concept and the motives behind the GCAP. It asserted that it had ‘always been a goal of the United States to penetrate Central Asia’ and that the ‘9/11 incident gave the US a god-sent chance’ to do so. It subsequently noted that US ‘democracy promotion’ and ‘interference’ in the internal affairs of the region in 2005 (i.e. reference to the Tulip Revolution and Andijan Incident) was a ‘policy mistake’ for Washington that rebounded to the benefit of the SCO. Moreover, the ‘main idea’ of the GCAP was ‘to take US control of the situation in Afghanistan as an opportunity to promote cooperation in security, democracy, economy, transport and energy and make a new region by combining South Asia with Central Asia’. Crucially, ‘the reason why it [i.e. US] has brought up the so-called “choosing from the South” policy in Central Asia is that it is determined to use energy, transportation and infrastructure construction as bait to separate Central Asia from the post-Soviet Union dominance’. ‘By this means’, the US ‘can change the external strategic focus of Central Asia from the current Russia-and-China-oriented partnership to cooperative relations with South Asian countries’, ‘break the longterm Russian dominance in the Central Asian area’, ‘split and disintegrate the cohesion of the SCO’ and ‘establish US dominance in Central and South Asia’.35 Significantly, the GCA concept served as a building block for the Obama administration’s ‘New Silk Road Initiative’, unveiled by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in 2011. Key to this vision would be for the US to assist countries in the region to reorient their key infrastructure southward and assist in ‘removing the bureaucratic barriers and other impediments to the free flow of goods and people’.36 The success of this initiative would also serve a geopolitical goal as the consolidation of an amenable regime in

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Afghanistan would provide Washington with the capacity to develop north – south linkages between Central and South Asia (such as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India Pipeline) to compete against the west–east linkages being developed by China and Russia. The US initiative has been undermined almost from the start however by the security situation in Afghanistan, the lack of economic integration amongst the Central Asian states themselves and the administration’s broader ‘pivot’ or ‘rebalance’ to the Asia-Pacific. The latter, from the perspective of Central Asia’s political elites, signals a decline in US attention and commitment to the region from the high point of the early 2000s.37 While Beijing’s geopolitical reading of US policy has by and large remained into the present, it has also been coupled with a clearer recognition that US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan is not an outright positive for Chinese interests in Central Asia. Zhang Jiadong writing in the Global Times in February 2013 for example argued that for China there are two ‘worst case’ scenarios here. The first would be that the US ‘stabilizes Afghanistan, establishes a steady government, and then builds frontline bases. This way the US could drive a wedge into Central Eurasia, and contain China from both sides’. The second scenario ‘is one where Afghanistan falls into anarchy with the US exit, becoming a breeding ground for international terrorism and the drug trade’ and thus become a ‘serious’ source of non-traditional security challenges for Beijing. 38 Others, such as Zhao Huasheng, argue that US withdrawal at the end of 2014 will mean a diminution of US interests and commitments not only with respect to Afghanistan but also Central Asia. Again, however, this is viewed as a double-edged sword for a China, which according to Zhao, has a steadily growing economic presence in Afghanistan but limited capacity or political will to shape the security environment.39 This recognition has had an effect on recent Chinese policy toward Afghanistan whereby Beijing has focused on three major issues: economic engagement with Afghanistan; pragmatic bilateral and multilateral political engagement, including with the Taliban; and cooperation on non-traditional security issues. Similar to its approach to the Central Asian republics, Beijing has invested heavily in the

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resource sector in Afghanistan including the Anyak copper mine in Logar Province and in exploration for oil and gas in the Amu Dayra Basin in the country’s north. As in other regions of strategic investment, Chinese corporations reportedly secured these deals by providing additional inducements to the Afghan Government that many Western corporations could or would not. In the instance of the Anyak deal, China Metallurgical in cooperation with the Chinese Government undertook to construct a 400-megawatt, coal-fired power plant and a freight railroad that will connect Xinjiang with Pakistan via Tajikistan and Afghanistan.40 China’s political engagement with Afghanistan has also increased, particularly through the vehicle of the SCO. Although Afghanistan is not a member of the SCO, the organization, through the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group (established in 2005), has recognized the near and long-term significance of stability in Afghanistan for the wider Central Asian region. Animated by the need to combat the ‘three evils’, the SCO now shares a common interest with the US to defeat and/or contain the Taliban-led insurgency. However, the organization’s so-called ‘Shanghai Spirit’, based on the commitment to ‘non-interference’ in the internal affairs of member states, promises to continue to limit its ability to actively contribute to this goal. While this has precluded the organization or any of its members individually from committing military personnel to the US-NATO effort, it has oriented the group to focus on supporting issues such as provision of military/ police training for Afghan security forces and military equipment and counter-terrorism. In this latter regard the SCOs RATS has been active as a site of counter-terrorism intelligence sharing and cooperation. These activities remain relatively underdeveloped and are limited to sharing of ‘watch lists’ of ‘terrorist/extremist’ organizations and RATS does not itself engage in any interdiction/apprehension of suspected militants but liaises with the relevant security bureaucracy in each member state.41 The SCO states’ concerns with the potential spill over of Afghan instability into their states has clearly been the main driver of such activities. The potential linkages between the heroin trade and

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terrorist organizations have been of particular concern for Beijing due to the increase in traffic of the narcotic into Xinjiang over the past decade.42 This aspect of China’s Afghan problem is not simply of concern for Beijing due to such linkages (i.e. funding of terrorist groups) but also because it plays an indirect role in exacerbating social and ethnic instability in Xinjiang. As China’s demand for illicit drugs has risen over the past two decades so too have the related problems of HIV/AIDs and organized crime in areas intimately connected with the trafficking of heroin from the ‘Golden Crescent’ (i.e. Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan). In Xinjiang, in particular, China faces rising rates of heroin use and a ‘pandemic’ of HIV/AIDs among the Uyghur.43 Thus, for one Chinese analyst, US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, regardless of what government emerges in the post-transition period, ‘may leave China facing many uncertainties in nontraditional security’.44 China has come to recognize that ongoing instability in Afghanistan is a brake on not only the economic wellbeing of Afghanistan itself but also an obstacle and potential threat to their investments in the country and its integrated strategy in Central Asia, and hence the security of Xinjiang. Most significantly for Beijing continued instability in Afghanistan threatens its investment in the country’s mineral resources and the viability of trans-Afghan infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines that, if successfully brought online, will facilitate the continued penetration of Chinese power and influence throughout Central Asia. This has led to a pragmatic approach to post-2014 Afghanistan with Zhao Huasheng noting that ultimately China’s position is ‘based on the consideration that China will have enduring interactions with the Taliban. . .China is not opposed to the organisation but is instead opposed to terrorism, separatism and extremism’.45 Such sentiment has ultimately been expressed in policy terms with China’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Sun Yuxi, meeting with representatives of the Afghan Taliban in Peshawar in November 2014 to discuss potential for a negotiated political settlement to ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.46 China’s apparent move to become more involved in Afghanistan also brings a

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number of challenges. An editorial in the Global Times titled, ‘China Faces a Delicate Task in Afghanistan’, not only neatly encapsulated the challenges facing Beijing here but also the increasingly common Chinese self-image that it has ‘arrived’ as a great power: A comprehensive involvement in Afghan affairs by China will bring huge risks. It will have to confront the mess that the US experienced, the different views of Afghan sects in addition to the remaining US influence, making it a nearly impossible idea. But the West insists China is taking a free ride in Afghanistan, urging us to offer more. Kabul also has high expectations on China over its rebuilding. China has many interests in Afghanistan. No matter how risky Afghanistan’s peaceful reconstruction is, China needs to be there. . .This is the cost of being a major power and we need to get used to it.47

A ‘March Westwards’ into a Shifting ‘Terrain of Hazards’: China, Uyghur Terrorism and Central Asia’s Changing Geopolitics into the Twenty-First Century Despite the success of China’s approach to Central Asia since the 1990s, Beijing nonetheless currently faces three major challenges that demonstrate the linkages between the domestic-regional and regional-global nexuses: a rise in Uyghur terrorism; an apparent disjuncture between elite and public opinion in Central Asia regarding China’s growing influence; and geopolitical change in Central Asia after the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. The rise of Uyghur terrorism over the past two decades constitutes not only a challenge to Beijing’s integration of Xinjiang but also threatens to complicate its management of its Central Asian diplomacy and relations. This is due to the fact that increased violence in Xinjiang, and Chinese claims of the externally generated nature of it (i.e. the influence of radical Islamist movements in Central Asia/Afghanistan), has raised debates within China as to the continued viability of Beijing’s non-interventionist approach to counter-terrorism and trans-national threats in its Central Asian

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diplomacy.48 This of course would threaten one of the core supporting pillars of Beijing’s bilateral and multilateral diplomatic success in the region since the 1990s. Beyond the issue of terrorism itself, Beijing’s approach to Xinjiang and the Uyghur is also potentially detrimental to Central Asian perceptions of China. In this context, Chinese diplomacy has been successful in isolating official inter-state relations from this but much less successful in ameliorating the often negative views of Central Asian publics. China’s rising economic role in Central Asia has also been characterised by a similar dynamic, with Central Asian political and economic elites generally favourably disposed to increased Chinese economic engagement while publics remain much more ambivalent. Meanwhile, the looming draw down of Washington’s substantial post-9/11 presence in Central Asia and Afghanistan promises to reconfigure the calculations of the region’s remaining external great powers, Russia and China. China and the Rise of Uyghur Terrorism Xinjiang has experienced periodic ethnic and anti-state violence since the establishment of the PRC in 1949. However it was only in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 that Beijing chose to publicly frame such violence as ‘terrorism’. China’s publication of its first official account of Uyghur ‘terrorism’ in Xinjiang in January 2002 was notable on two counts. First, this was the first time that Beijing officially detailed what it claimed were ‘over 200 terrrorist incidents’ in Xinjiang from 1990 to 2001. Second, the report contained the first identification of a specific organization, the ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement’ (ETIM), as responsible for such ‘terrorism’ and the claim that it was ‘supported and directed’ by Osama bin Laden.49 While this report has since been the subject of considerable criticism,50 it nonetheless assisted Beijing in obtaining international recognition of its struggle with terrorism in Xinjiang with both the US State Department and the UN Security Council listing ETIM as an ‘international terrorist organization’ in September 2002.51 Although Chinese claims regarding ETIM’s links to Al Qaeda were given some credence when

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it emerged that American forces had captured 22 Uyghurs in Afghanistan (who were subsequently detained at Guantanamo Bay), it became clear as early as 2004 that the majority of these men were not in fact ‘enemy combatants’.52 China’s claims that it faced Islamist-inspired terrorism in Xinjiang increased again after large-scale inter-ethnic violence rocked the regional capital, Urumqi, in July 2009, in which up to 200 people were killed and hundreds injured. Since then numerous incidents of violence have occurred in the region including antigovernment protests, attacks on police stations and inter-ethnic clashes which the regional authorities have claimed were the handiwork of ‘gangs’ of ‘extremists and terrorists’ bent on jihad with links to ‘hostile external forces’.53 The trend toward greater extremism and violence was underlined by four major incidents in 2014: 1 March mass knife attack at Kunming train station in Yunnan that left 29 people dead and over 140 injured; 30 April suicide bombing outside Urumqi’s main train station that killed 2 and injured 70; 1 May attacks on an open-air market in Urumqi that killed 43 and inured 94; and 28 July ‘mass incident’ in Shache township near Yarkand in which a ‘mob’ of Uyghurs attacked local police and government buildings, the quelling of which resulted in the deaths of 59 ‘attackers’ and 37 ‘civilians’.54 Beijing’s response has focused on three fronts: strengthening of security and counter-terrorism measures; renewed exhortations regarding the importance of ‘stability’ and ‘ethnic unity’; and a renewed effort to demonstrate the links between Uyghur ‘terrorism’ and ‘hostile external forces’ to the international community. With respect to the first issue, Beijing rapidly increased Xinjiang’s internal security budget in 2014 to some $US 1 billion and President Xi Xinping now heads a specially formed committee on China’s new National Security Council to deal with security and counter-terror strategies in Xinjiang. The authorities have also stepped up repressive measures in the region with Xinjiang CCP Chairman Zhang Chuxian calling for a ‘people’s war’ in which the state will ‘exterminate’ the ‘savage and evil separatists’ who are influenced and directed by foreign ‘extremists’.55 This has entailed not only

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accelerated arrests and trials of suspected terrorists – including public, mass sentencing rallies of Uyghur suspects – but also ongoing sweeps of Uyghur neighbourhoods and mosques in search of potential militants and their weapons.56 The authorities have also attempted to elicit the assistance of ordinary Uyghurs through the offer of financial rewards for ‘tip-offs’ to police regarding suspicious individuals and activities.57 Finally, Beijing has continued its post-9/11 strategy of attempting to publicize links between violence in Xinjiang and radical Islamists beyond China’s borders in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the wider Middle East. Chinese Government spokesmen have linked the Kunming attackers to the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) (based in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border) which it claims is a successor organization to the East Turkestan Islamic Party (ETIM), a group it has previously held to be responsible for various attacks in Xinjiang.58 ETIM is believed to have functioned for a brief period from the late 1990s to early 2000s and effectively ceased after the death of its leader Hasan Mahsum during a Pakistani military operation in Waziristan in October 2003. Despite Chinese claims there has been little concrete evidence that ETIM mounted successful attacks in Xinjiang during that time. TIP emerged as a successor organization sometime between 2006 and 2008 and consists of between 200 – 400 militants based near Mir Ali in North Waziristan allied with the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).59 In contrast to ETIM, TIP has maintained a higher profile through regular statements by its leadership regarding events in Xinjiang (i.e. its leader issued a statement praising the Kunming attack) and its use of the internet as a vehicle to disseminate its calls for ‘jihad’ against Chinese rule.60As with ETIM, however, TIP’s operational capabilities remain unclear and due to its geographic isolation from Xinjiang, lack of resources and limited number of militants it seems probable that its influence in the region may be limited to the virtual realm of the internet. This is not an inconsiderable problem for Beijing and it has made clear that it views such influence as a threat to security with Xinjiang’s CCP chairman, Zhang Chunxian,

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for instance, asserting that the easily accessible nature of Islamist propaganda on the internet had facilitated the Kunming attack.61 The major attacks in 2014 suggest a much deeper problem for Beijing than simply combatting small groups like ETIM and TIP. Despite the limited evidence available as to the effectiveness of such groups, Beijing’s current rhetoric is a continuation of a campaign launched after 9/11 to portray its struggle against Uyghur separatists and ‘terrorists’ as part of the ‘War on Terror’. Beijing faces two core problems here however. First, Beijing appears to be incapable of acknowledging that its policies in Xinjiang have played a role in generating violence. In fact the over-whelming sentiment appears to be one of incredulity that Uyghurs could be so ungrateful for the modernity and development that Beijing has delivered to Xinjiang. Violent Uyghur opposition from this perspective, in particular, is an abnormality to be cauterized from society. Zhang Chunxian revealed this sentiment when he asserted after the Kunming attack: ‘Will it [terrorism] not take place if you don’t strike hard?. . .Terrorism is not something that happens because you fight it; it is a malignant tumour that is borne from society.’62 Second, the use of indiscriminate violence in the Kunming and Urumqi attacks and the tactical use of suicide bombers, suggests that at least some Uyghurs may be in the process of adopting the modes of political violence associated with globally oriented radical Islamist organizations. The rhetoric deployed by TIP in connection to the Kunming and Urumqi attacks points toward an endeavour to reframe their struggle as an ideological-religious rather than an ethnic one.63 Thus, TIP spokesman, Abdulheq Damolla, praised the Urumqi bombings of March 2014, asserting that they ‘would fill the suppressed hearts of believers with joy, and fill the apostates and infidels’ hearts with fear’ before lauding his ‘mujahideen brothers’ for ‘the voluntary act that you carried out. . .when the filthy paws of Chinese leader Xi Jinping were stepping onto our motherland East Turkestan’.64 ‘Taking part in this soldierly act’, he continued, ‘proves that the Muslims of East Turkestan will never welcome the Chinese immigrant invaders’. Significantly, the statement made few references to Uyghurs but rather only to ‘the Muslims of East

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Turkestan’ and ‘immigrant Chinese invaders’ in an effort to clearly link the struggle of Uyghurs against the Chinese state to the perceived persecution of Muslim minorities by non-Muslim majority states that is so often central to the rhetoric of contemporary Islamists. China and the Shifting Geopolitics of Central Asia Although Beijing has been successful in convincing the governments of the Central Asian states to accede to its conception of the Uyghurs as ‘terrorists, extremists and separatists’, the same cannot be said for the general population of key Central Asian republics. In recent years the Uyghur populations in these states such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have been very critical of these governments for ‘colluding’ with China in extraditing alleged Uyghur terrorists. The July 2009 unrest in Xinjiang, for example, prompted some protests amongst the Uyghur populations in these states, although both governments remained circumspect in their responses to the violence.65 The cause of the Kazakh and Kyrgyz government’s subdued responses to the Xinjiang unrest not only stems from their own interest in maintaining domestic stability but also their countries’ SCO and economic relationships with China.66 Central Asian publics remain ambivalent at best and fearful at worst about Chinese intentions in the region. Kazakhs, for example, are concerned about potential Chinese territorial and demographic expansion into their country and Chinese economic domination of their economy, particularly its energy sector.67 China’s image, however, is most clearly tarnished amongst the publics of these states by the perceived maltreatment of the Uyghurs. One study notes that many Central Asian China experts are highly critical of what they judge to be Beijing’s political, economic and social ‘marginalization’ of the Uyghur in Xinjiang and argue that the ‘Chinese refusal to listen to any autonomist demands, even cultural ones, can only encourage radical separatism to take root’.68 A further spur to negative perceptions amongst Central Asian publics may also come if China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) passes a new draft anti-terrorism law currently before it. The new law

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will, if passed, create a legal framework for Chinese security forces to engage in counter-terror operations in neighbouring countries and establish a domestic counter-terrorism body that would have powers to designate organizations and individuals as ‘terrorist’ without due process.69 This would be remarkable and run counter to Beijing’s explicit commitment in both its Central Asian and global diplomacy to the principle of ‘non-interference’ in others’ ‘domestic affairs’. China under Xi Jinping’s leadership has also signalled its intention to further entrench its growing power and influence in Central Asia. President Xi’s plans for the construction of a SREB, although linked to Beijing’s desire to secure Xinjiang’s economic development, also has an important function to play in China’s foreign policy in the context of the Obama administration’s ‘pivot to Asia’. Prominent Chinese scholar Wang Jisi, has argued in this context that China’s ‘march westward’ is thus a ‘strategic necessity’ as the ‘eastward shift’ in strategic focus of the Obama administration (i.e. the ‘pivot’) threatens to lock Sino-US relations into a ‘zero-sum game’ in East Asia. If China’s ‘march westwards’ succeeds ‘the potential for US-China cooperation’ across a variety of fields will increase and ‘there will be almost no risk of military confrontation between the two’.70 Central Asia thus emerges as a strategic ‘safety valve’ for the expansion of Chinese influence given the perceived decline of US influence and interests in the region after its withdrawal from Afghanistan.71 The motives behind Beijing’s desire to build the SREB are also in some ways complementary to the interests of some of the Central Asian states. Most immediately, China’s focus on greater economic interconnectivity in the region through the improvement of critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines, highways, railways and telecommunications networks gels with the long-held desire of Central Asia’s energy rich states (i.e. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) to diversify export routes for their oil and gas. Additionally, a number of the Central Asian states have also identified diversification of their economies beyond resource exports as a core priority for their future economic wellbeing.72 China’s contribution of US$ 40 billion to a ‘Silk Road Fund’ to assist in the necessary infrastructural

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development for the SREB has also been seen by Central Asian states as a token of the seriousness of Beijing’s commitment to the project.73 Yet the SREB and increasing bilateral economic relationships with Beijing are not unproblematic for much of Central Asia. The former, despite some recent Russian protestations to the contrary, runs counter to Moscow’s protectionist agenda within the rubric of its Eurasian Union as Beijing is clearly focused on facilitating freer economic interaction throughout Central Asia. One analyst has remarked in this respect that ‘the real concern’ for Russia vis-a`-vis the SREB is ‘China’s business-is-business approach with others, which differs from both the West’s political strings for economic intercourse and Russia’s heavy doses of geopolitics’.74 Underlying China’s push here, however, is its state-building imperatives in Xinjiang. As Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen have noted, ‘the web of connections that China is forging across the region is of global consequence. It is the realization of the “New Silk Road” vision articulated by the US State Department but with the connections oriented largely toward Xinjiang’.75

Conclusion As we have seen, China has three core interests in Central Asia: security, development and access to energy resources. These interests, while deriving from Beijing’s integrationist project in Xinjiang, have also become inextricably linked to its regional and global foreign policy. For Beijing, the integration of Xinjiang is now not simply an end in itself but rather an important mechanism through which to facilitate the expansion of Chinese power and influence in Central Asia. The SREB in particular is emblematic of this linkage. China’s enduring anxieties with respect to Xinjiang also critically shape its perception of the motives of other key actors in Central Asia. This is most clearly seen in reactions to international expressions of concern regarding human rights abuses in the conduct of China’s antiterrorism activities in Xinjiang. The historical tenuousness of Chinese control over the region combined with contemporary concerns with the region’s openness to trans-national and non-

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traditional security threats feeds into an official narrative that lays the blame for unrest or violence in Xinjiang at the feet of amorphous ‘hostile external forces’. Depending on the context, this label can denote the US Government, Uyghur exile organizations (i.e. World Uyghur Congress), or militant groups such as ETIM or TIP. Criticism of Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang often reinforces, rather than ameliorates, its predilection to see domestic opposition as inspired by meddling outsiders. Additionally, this mindset also colours Beijing’s reading of the initiatives of others in Central Asia. This has been especially the case with respect to US initiatives as we saw with the Chinese response to the Obama administration’s ‘New Silk Road Initiative’. The withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan also emerges as a problematic development for Beijing. As noted above, China perceives Central Asia (including Afghanistan) to be a source of potential trans-national and non-traditional security threats (i.e. terrorism, drugs/weapons trafficking) rather than conventional threats to Xinjiang. While China has successfully embedded its agenda on the ‘three evils’ within the SCO process and does not fear that Central Asian governments could collude directly or indirectly with Uyghur separatists or ‘terrorists’, the mechanisms for Sino-Central Asian cooperation (i.e. the SCO RATS centre) remain underdeveloped. More broadly China’s pragmatism is undoubtedly attractive to the majority of the ruling regimes in Central Asia. However the perception of increasing Chinese influence particularly in the economic realm has produced varying degrees of public disquiet regarding possible future dependence on Beijing.76 Russia’s agenda in Central Asia under Putin, which has focused on retaining its dominant position in the energy sector and in maintaining its foothold in the strategic/military sphere, has been challenged or eroded by Chinese gains in each of these sectors.77 The SCO’s and China’s insistence on centrality of principles of sovereign equality and ‘non-interference’ in internal affairs as the basis for multilateral security cooperation in Central Asia are also more favourably viewed in Central Asian capitals than the alternative presented by the Kremlin in Ukraine. Yet, as we have previously noted, the likelihood of increased Uyghur terrorism and increased Chinese

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engagement in Afghanistan hold the potential to prompt significant changes in Beijing’s diplomatic approach to the region that could erect new obstacles to China’s ‘march west’.

Notes 1. For a representative sample see Art, R. J., ‘The United States and the Rise of China: Implications for the Long Haul’, Political Science Quarterly, 125 (3) (2010), pp. 359 – 91; Friedberg, A. L., A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012); Liff, A. and Ikenberry, G. John., ‘Racing toward Tragedy?: China’s Rise, Military Competition in the Asia-Pacific and the Security Dilemma’, International Security, 39 (2) (2014), pp. 52– 91. 2. A notable recent exception is Cooley, A., Great Game, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest for Central Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 3. Brzezinski, Z., ‘A Geostrategy for Eurasia’, Foreign Affairs, 76 (5) (1997), p. 50. 4. Klare, M. T., ‘The New Geography of Conflict’, Foreign Affairs, 80 (3) (2000), pp. 49 – 61. 5. Cohen, S. B., ‘The Eurasian Convergence Zone: Gateway or Shatterbelt?’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 46 (1), pp. 1 – 22. 6. Barnett, T., ‘The Pentagon’s New Map’, Esquire (March 2003). 7. Millward, J. M., Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 8. See Ibid.; Perdue, P. C., China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard: Belknap Press, 2005); and Elliot, M., The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identities in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). 9. Newby, L. J., ‘Evolving Representations of Xinjiang in Chinese Travel Writings’, Studies in Travel Writing, 18 (4) (2014), p. 323. 10. Information Office of the State Council of the PRC, ‘White Paper on Development and Progress in Xinjiang’, China Daily, 21 September 2009, available at: http:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/ethnic/2009-09/21/content_8717461.htm. 11. Wang, J., ‘“Marching Westwards”: The Rebalancing of China’s Geostrategy’, International and Strategic Studies Report, 73 (Center for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University: October 2012), p. 1. 12. Ibid., pp. 3– 4. 13. Li, Y., ‘Constructing a Strategic Peripheral Belt to Support the Wings of China’s Rise’, Contemporary International Relations, 23 (6) (2013), p. 66. 14. Yuan, P., ‘China’s Grand Periphery Strategy’, Contemporary International Relations, 23 (6) (2013), pp. 59– 60. 15. Nathan, A. and Scobell, A., ‘How China Sees America: The Sum of Beijing’s Fears’, Foreign Affairs, 91 (5) (2012), pp. 32–47.

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16. Ibid., pp. 33 –4. 17. Millward, Eurasian Crossroads, pp. 85– 90. 18. Bovingdon, G., The Uyghurs: Strangers in Their Own Land (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 19. Heathershaw, J. and Megoran, N., ‘Contesting Danger: A New Agenda for Policy and Scholarship on Central Asia’, International Affairs, 87 (3) (2011), p. 589. 20. Gill, B., Rising Star: China’s New Security Diplomacy (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010). 21. Zhao, S., ‘China’s Periphery Policy and Its Asian Neighbors’, Security Dialogue, 30 (3) (1999), pp. 335– 46; and Chung, C., ‘The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: China’s Changing Influence in Central Asia’, China Quarterly, 180 (December 2004), pp. 989– 1009. 22. Gill, Rising Star, p. 29. 23. Clarke, M. E., ‘China’s Integration of Xinjiang with Central Asia: Securing a “Silk Road” to Great Power Status?’, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 6 (2) (2008), p. 88 – 9. 24. Becquelin, N., ‘Staged Development in Xinjiang’, China Quarterly, 178 (2) (2004), pp. 358– 78. 25. Becquelin, N., ‘Xinjiang in the Nineties’, The China Journal (2000), pp. 65–90. 26. Clarke, M. E., ‘Xinjiang in the “Reform” Era, 1978– 1991: The Political and Economic Dynamics of Dengist Integration’, Issues and Studies, 43 (2) (2007), pp. 39 – 92. 27. Chang, F. K., ‘China’s Central Asian Power and Problems’, Orbis, 41 (1) (1997), p. 410. 28. Haider, Z., ‘Sino-Pakistan Relations and Xinjiang’s Uighurs: Politics, Trade and Islam along the Karakoram Highway’, Asian Survey, 45 (4) (2005), pp. 522 – 45; and Roberts, S., ‘A “Land of Borderlands”: Implications of Xinjiang’s Transborder Interactions’ in S. Frederick Starr (ed.), Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), pp. 226 – 7. 29. Clarke, Xinjiang and China’s Rise in Central Asia, pp. 128 – 9. 30. Rashid, A., ‘The Taliban: Exporting Extremism’, Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 1999). 31. For the text of the joint declaration see ‘“Shanghai Five” Nations Sign Joint Statement’, People’s Daily, 6 July 2000. 32. Clarke, Xinjiang and China’s Rise in Central Asia, pp. 127 – 30. 33. SCO Secretariat, ‘Declaration on the Establishment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’, 15 June 2001, available at: http://www.sectsco. org/502.html; ‘Shanghai Five Mulls Expansion in Search of Regional Stability’, Eurasianet, 13 June 2001, available at: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/ insight/articles/eav061401.shtml; Uzbekistan also formally joined in 2001. 34. Ambrosio, T., ‘Catching the “Shanghai Spirit”: How the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Promotes Authoritarian Norms in Central Asia’, Europe-Asia Studies, 60 (8) (2008), p. 1327.

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35. ‘US Scheming for a “Great Central Asia” Strategy’, People’s Daily, 4 August 2006, available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200608/03/eng200608 03_289512.html. 36. Hormats, R., Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, ‘The United States’ “New Silk Road” Strategy: What is it? Where is it Headed?’, Address to the SAIS Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and CSIS Forum Washington, DC, September 29, 2011, available at: http://www.state.gov/e/rls/ rmk/2011/174800.htm. 37. Kucera, J., ‘Clinton’s Dubious Plan to Save Afghanistan with a New Silk Road’, The Atlantic, 2 November 2011, viewed 15 January 2015, available at: http:// www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/clintons-dubious-plan-tosave-afghanistan-with-a-new-silk-road/247760/; Kim, Y. and Indeo, F., ‘The New Great Game in Central Asia post 2014: The US “New Silk Road” Strategy and Sino-Russian Rivalry’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 46 (2) (2013), pp. 275 – 86. 38. Zhang, J., ‘Can China be a Winner in Afghanistan?’, Global Times, 26 February 2013, available at: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/764325.html; Zhang is an Associate Professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University. 39. Zhao, H., ‘US Central Asia Diplomacy in the Post-Afghanistan War Era’, China International Studies (March/April 2014), p. 126. 40. Clarke, M. E., ‘China’s Strategy in “Greater Central Asia”: Is Afghanistan the Missing Link?’, Asian Affairs: an American Review, 40 (1) (2013), pp. 15 – 16. 41. Roy, M. S., ‘Role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Afghanistan: Scope and Limitations’, Strategic Analysis, 34 (4) (2010), pp. 545 – 61. 42. Weitz, R., ‘The Limits of Partnership: China, NATO and the Afghan War’, China Security, 6 (1) (2010), p. 24. 43. On this issue see Gill, B. and Song, G., ‘HIV/AIDs in Xinjiang: A Growing Regional Challenge’, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 4 (3) (2006), pp. 35 – 50; and Hayes, A. and Qarluq, A., ‘Securitising HIV/AIDs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 65 (2) (2011), pp. 203 – 19. 44. Zhang, ‘Can China be a Winner in Afghanistan?’. 45. Zhao, H., ‘Chinese Views on Post-2014 Afghanistan’, Asia Policy, 17 (1) (2014), p. 55. 46. Weitz, R., ‘Assessing China’s Afghan Peace Play’, China Brief, 14 (23) (2014), available at: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews %5Btt_news%5D ¼ 43158&cHash ¼ cdf9d3723aea6491802a49aad8f898be. 47. ‘China Faces a Delicate Task in Afghanistan’, Global Times, 30 October 2014, available at: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/889070.shtml. 48. For example see Small, A., ‘China’s Caution on Afghanistan-Pakistan’, The Washington Quarterly, 33 (3) (2010), pp. 81– 97; Zhang, ‘Can China be a Winner in Afghanistan’; and Zhao, H., ‘China’s Afghan Policy: The Forming of the “March West” Strategy?’, Journal of East Asian Affairs, 27 (1) (2013), pp. 1 – 29.

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49. Information Office of the State Council of the PRC, ‘East Turkistan Terrorist Forces Cannot Get Away with Impunity’, People’s Daily, 1 January 2002, available at: http://www.peopledaily.com.cn/200201/21/print200020121_89078.htm. 50. See Clarke, M.. E., ‘China’s “War on Terror” in Xinjiang: Human Security and the Causes of Violent Uighur Separatism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 20 (2), (2008), pp. 271–301; Millward, J. M., ‘Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment’, Policy Studies, 6 (Washington: East-West Center, 2004); and Roberts, S., ‘Imaginary Terrorism? The Global War on Terror and the Narrative of the Uyghur Terrorist Threat’, PONARS Eurasia Working Paper (Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, March 2012). 51. ‘Treasury Dept. on addition of ETIM to terrorist list’, US State Department, 12 September 2002, available at: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/ texttrans/2002/09/[email protected]#axzz 3Q4aBDfAp. 52. In early 2004 US military officials had already acknowledged that 16 of the 22 were not ‘enemy combatants’, although it would take until 2013 for all 22 to be cleared and find asylum in third countries. See Lewis, N., ‘Freedom for Chinese detainees hinges on finding a new homeland’, New York Times, 8 November 2004, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/national/08uighur. html?pagewanted ¼ print&position¼; and Savage, C., ‘US frees last of the Chinese Uighur detainees from Guantanamo’, New York Times, 13 December 2013, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/us/us-frees-last-ofuighur-detainees-from-guantanamo.html?_r ¼ 0. 53. See Branigan, T., ‘China: 21 Killed in Kashgar Clashes’, The Guardian, 24 April 2013, available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/24/chinesegangsters-police-shootout; ‘Ethnic Unrest in Xinjiang: Unveiled Threats’, The Economist, 6 July 2013, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/ china/21580491-more-outbreaks-violence-show-governments-policies-arenot-working-unveiled-threats; and Kaiman, J., ‘Chinese Police Arrest Suspects after Kashgar Violence’, The Guardian, 17 December 2013, available at: http:// www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/violence-china-kashgar-dead-xinjiang-muslim. 54. ‘China arrests three suspects in Kunming station attack’, Australia Network News, 4 March 2014, available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-04/an-chinacaptures-three-suspects-in-kunming-station-attack/5296304; Wen, P., ‘China makes Xinjiang death toll public’, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 August 2014, available at: http://www.smh.com.au/world/china-makes-xinjiang-death-toll-public-20140803-zzy4o.html. 55. ‘China’s Xinjiang doubling anti-terror budget’, Associated Press, 17 January 2014, available at: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/chinas-xinjiang-doublinganti-terror-budget; Jacobs, A., ‘China says nearly 100 killed in week of unrest in Xinjiang’, New York Times, 3 August 2014, available at: http://www.nytimes. com/2014/08/04/world/asia/china-says-nearly-100-are-killed-in-week-of-unrestin-xinjiang.html?_r5.

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56. For 2014 statistics on the number of trials involving charges of ‘endangering state security’ in Xinjiang see ‘Xinjiang State Security Trials Flat, Criminal Trials Soar in 2014’, Dui Hua: Human Rights Journal, 10 March 2015, available at: http:// www.duihuahrjournal.org/2015/03/xinjiang-state-security-trials-flat.html. 57. ‘China offers $49m rewards to Xinjiang residents who help hunt suspected “terrorists”’, Radio Australia, 4 August 2014, available at: http://www. radioaustralia.net.au/international/2014-08-04/china-offers-49m-rewards-toxinjiang-residents-who-help-hunt-suspected-terrorists-xinhua/1352416. 58. ‘China says Uygur militant’s support for knife attack “proof of China’s terror threat”’, South China Morning Post, 19 March 2014, available at: http://www. scmp.com/news/china/article/1452534/china-says-uygur-militants-supportknife-attack-proves-terror. 59. See Zenn, J., ‘Jihad in China? Marketing the Turkistan Islamic Party’, Terrorism Monitor, 9 (11) (2011), available at: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews [tt_news] ¼ 37662&no_cache ¼ 1#.U-g4e0hYO7A; Zenn, J., ‘Turkistan Islamic Party Increases its Media Profile’, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 5 February 2014, available at: http://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/ item/12909-turkistan-islamic-party-increases-its-media-profile.html; Rana, M., ‘Threat to Sino-Pak Friendship’, Dawn, 1 July 2014, available at: http://www. dawn.com/news/1109886/threat-to-sino-pak-friendship. 60. Tiezzi, S., ‘Turkestan Islamic Party Expresses Support for Kunming attack’, The Diplomat, 20 March 2014, available at: http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/ turkestan-islamic-party-expresses-support-for-kunming-attack/. 61. Wen, P., ‘Internet behind terrorism in China, including Kunming railway massacre, Xinjiang leader’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 2014, available at: http://www.smh.com.au/world/internet-behind-terrorism-in-china-includingkunming-railway-massacre-xinjiang-leader-20140307-hvghi.html. 62. Ibid. 63. For the distinction between the two see Juergensmeyer, M., Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, 2003). 64. ‘Militant Islamist group says deadly Xinjiang bomb attack “good news”’, Radio Free Asia, 15 May 2014, available at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/ attack-05152014171933.html. 65. Golovnina, M., ‘Central Asian Uighurs Harbor Revenge for Xinjiang Kinfolk’, Reuters, 16 July 2009, available at: http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint? articleId ¼ USTRE56F2EU20090716; ‘Central Asia Uighurs Look On with Fury at Bloodshed’, ABS-CBN News Online, 9 July 2009, available at: http:// www.abs-cbnnews.com/print/619995; and Ali-uul, M. ‘Uighur Demonstration in Kyrgyzstan Ends with Arrest of Leaders’, Central Asia Online, 13 August 2009, available at: http://centralasiaonline.com/en/articles/090913_arrested_nws/. 66. For China’s economic relationships with these states see, Laurelle, M. and Peyrouse, S., The ‘Chinese Question’ in Central Asia: Domestic Order, Social Change and the Chinese Factor (New York: Hurst & Co., 2014).

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67. See Syroezhkin, K., ‘Social Perceptions of China and Chinese: A View from Kazakhstan’, China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 7 (1) (2009), pp. 36 – 45; and Clarke, M., ‘Kazakh Responses to the Rise of China: Between Elite Bandwagoning and Societal Ambivalence’ in Kavalski, E. and Horesh, N. (eds), Asian Thought on China’s Changing International Relations (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), pp. 155 – 64. 68. Laurelle and Peyrouse, The Chinese Question in Central Asia, pp. 178 – 9. 69. Martina, M., ‘Draft Chinese law paves the way for counter-terror operation abroad’, Reuters, 27 February 2015, available at: http://www.reuters.com/ article/2015/02/27/us-china-military-idUSKBN0LV0PN20150227; and Deyner, S., ‘China’s new terrorism law provokes anger in U.S., concern at home’, Washington Post, 5 March 2015, available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-invokes-terrorism-as-it-readies-additionalharsh-measures/2015/03/04/1e078288-139c-497e-aa8a-e6d810a5a8a2_story. html. 70. Wang, ‘“Marching Westwards”’, pp. 7 – 8. 71. Tao, X., ‘Back on the Silk Road: China’s Version of a Rebalance to Asia’, Global Asia, 9 (1) (2014), available at: http://www.globalasia.org/Issue/ArticleDetail/548/ back-on-the-silk-road-chinas-version-of-a-rebalance-to-asia.html. 72. Weitz, R., ‘Assessing Kazakhstan’s Revised National Development Strategy’, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 5 March 2014, available at: http://www.cacianalyst. org/publications/analytical-articles/item/12928-assessing-kazakhstans-revisednational-development-strategy.html. 73. Beijing has also intensified its economic engagement with Kazakhstan. President Xi signed 22 trade and commercial agreements during his September 2013 state visit valued at US$ 30 billion, while Premier Li Keqiang signed economic cooperation deals, including a renewal of a currency swap deal, during his state visit of December 2014 worth US$ 14 billion. Almaganbetov, A. and Kurmanov, B., ‘China Challenges Russian Influence in Kazakhstan’, East Asia Forum, 28 February 2015, available at: http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2015/02/28/ china-challenges-russian-influence-in-kazakhstan/. 74. Yu, B., ‘China-Russia Relations: Putin’s Glory and Xi’s Dream’, Comparative Connections, (January 2014), p. 6. 75. Pantucci, R. and Petersen, A., ‘China’s Inadvertent Empire’, The National Interest (Nov/Dec 2012), p. 39. 76. Clarke, ‘Kazakh Response to the Rise of China’, pp. 157 – 9. 77. Gallo, E., ‘Eurasian Union versus Silk Road Economic Belt?’, Policy Brief, 159, (Institute for Security and Development Policy, August 2014), p. 1.

CHAPTER 3 CHINA'S ECONOMIC MODERNIZATION IN TIBET AND ITS IMPACT ON TIBETAN IDENTITY Elizabeth Davis

Introduction At the roof of the world, where China and India meet in Tibet, Tibetans are striving for economic development and for a modern Tibetan identity. Beijing has decided to maintain its major push to further fold Tibet into the economic and cultural success that has spread throughout Asia by using the tools of economics. Those tools continue to be refined and adjusted over time in an attempt to demonstrate to Tibetans that they have a promising future in China. There are several questions regarding how Beijing views and implements its economic modernization imperatives in Tibet, especially the impact of those on Tibetan identity. One question is, do those economic imperatives genuinely benefit Tibetans or nonTibetan economic immigrants in the Tibet Autonomous Region? The other major question is whether economic incentives are the right or sufficient tools to address deep-seated issues that concern Tibetans and Tibetan identity.1

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The Chinese Government has launched several expensive economic development programmes with important political implications for Tibetans within China and stability within Tibet. China’s long standing ‘Develop the West’ campaign (xibu da kaifa 西部大开发) was intended to reduce economic inequality and thereby neutralize political tensions among the ethnic minorities of China’s western regions. China’s recent 12th Five-Year Plans emphasize protecting Tibetan culture through costly restorations2 and building even more infrastructure,3 emphases that represent yet more ambitious and costly efforts by the Chinese Government to improve the life of Tibetans. Both Develop the West and the ongoing economic plans are part of a political strategy aimed at convincing Tibetans that being part of China is beneficial to their economic and social wellbeing. There are signs within Beijing that there are new attempts to see the issues in Tibet through a different lens with a more nuanced economic policy, with non-economic tools still remaining secondary. There are other deep-seated issues of concern, however, such as the dual development of Tibetan identity building from within and without China, a new corrupt ruling class,4 religious adaptation and language barriers, which are not economic issues and may need more than economic tools to resolve. The international community, especially in India and the West, will be focused on these noneconomic issues in considering the broader international implications for China.

China’s Economic Modernization in Tibet Economic incentives continue to be a major tool in the Chinese central government’s policies toward Tibet and the Tibetans. Many in the West and some in China are looking at the Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang administration, which has been in power since 2013, for signs of new policy initiatives on Tibet because new leadership presents opportunities for new ideas and new policies.5 And it does appear that the newly installed Xi Jinping presidency is looking at Tibet policy. Overall, this emerging policy is a

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continuation of the economic policies6 and political sanctions of earlier eras,7 but with some careful new nuances. In part, this new look is simply the effect of a new president with his own inclinations about Tibet. His father, for instance, was very interested in ethnic minority policies8 and was fond of the 14th Dalai Lama.9 In part, there seems to be a new look at ethnic minority policies due to an apparent failure of these policies at a cost-benefit level. For instance, the large amount of money that the Chinese central government puts in minority areas like Tibet seemed to be less than effective in the aftermath of the notorious March 2008 riots that drew so much anger from the Chinese people at the rioting Tibetans.10 The rioting Tibetans were cast as ungrateful11 and the populous wondered at the inability of their investment in Tibet to create content and useful citizens. Most Chinese were baffled by what they saw as Tibetan ingratitude for years of central government transfers that have resulted in rapid growth in the region’s economy and a surge in incomes.12 The new Xi Jinping policy has been labelled the ‘carrot and stick’ policy for its continuation of economic ‘carrots’ and police crackdowns as ‘sticks’. The nuance involves economic incentives, while continuing policies for much needed infrastructure like roads, rail and electricity, focusing on education and agriculture, with money for Tibetan cultural restoration and for Tibetan language. The need for agriculture reform, given that the majority of Tibetans still work in agriculture and agriculture related fields, was highlighted in new policy. Bi Jiyao notes in this regard that: China has taken a series of policy measures to increase the income of farmers and encourage rural development. These measures include reducing the fiscal burden on farmers by (1) restructuring rural taxation by introducing tax-for-fee reform, (2) abolishing agricultural tax, (3) granting direct subsidies to grain planters, (4) increasing government expenditure on rural education, science and technology, public health, and infrastructure, and (5) helping rural surplus labour find jobs in non-farming sectors.13

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The chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Lobsang Jamcan, said the Tibetan economy was strong and vibrant, and the government invested more than half its 2013 budget to raise the living standards of Tibetans, focusing on agricultural and infrastructure improvement. It tried to strengthen industries that take advantage of Tibet’s unique strengths and ecology. Tibet’s GDP exceeded 80 billion RMB (US$ 13 billion) in 2013, an annual increase of 12.1 per cent. The annual per capita net income of farmers and herdsmen was 6,578 RMB in 2013, an increase of 15 per cent year-on-year. The average per capita disposable income for urban residents was 20,023 RMB, an annual increase of 11.1 per cent. Eighteen types of subsidies were given to local residents, and 28,000 people were newly employed in 2013. More than 2.48 million people were incorporated into the social security system last year. Additionally, a power supply is available for many villages where no electricity was available before. The water supply for many farmers and herdsmen in remote areas is no longer a problem. Moreover, the subsidy for each student at primary and high schools was raised to 2,900 RMB per year to cover food, accommodation and tuition plus the government established 23 nursing homes for the elderly and five children’s welfare institutes to provide homelike care for underprivileged groups.14 China’s Develop the West campaign (xibu da kaifa 西部大开发) is a long standing policy that focuses on the less developed western regions, more than half of China’s vast expanse of land, consisting of six provinces and three autonomous regions, including Tibet. The previous government, under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao (2002 – 12), was also aware of the challenges and dangers that lesser development in the western regions means not only for China’s overall continued prosperity but also for political stability – the calls for riots and calls for Tibetan nationalism. In 2006, Wang Jinxiang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, assured the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that the national strategy to develop China’s western region had made great progress. He said that a total of 1 trillion

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RMB (US$ 125 billion) was spent building infrastructure in Western China with an annual average regional economic growth rate of 10.6 per cent for six continuous years.15 For instance, in the middle of the Hu Jintao administration, Tibet invested 28 billion RMB (US$ 3.7 billion) in ten key construction projects in 2008, including an extension of the Qinghai– Tibet Railway that runs 1,956 kilometres from Xining, Qinghai province to Lhasa, Tibet and began operating in July 2006, said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of Tibet Autonomous Region. ‘Experts are still working on the designs and environmental assessments of the extension line and government officials have started calculating compensations to those who will lose their land and properties to the railway,’ said Qiangba Puncog. The 254-kilometre extension line, which links the two largest cities in Tibet, Lhasa and Xigaze, is the first feeder line for the Qinghai– Tibet Railway. Construction was completed in 2010 at a cost of 11 billion RMB (US$ 1.42 billion). The Qinghai–Tibet Railway is the highest railway in the world and ended Tibet’s history without a railway. Nine other 2008 projects include the Zangmu Hydropower Station on the Yarlung Zangbo River, the water control project in Pundo County and the renovation of the Sichuan– Tibet highway.16 The Develop the West policies were first an economic development strategy to reduce poverty, and second an urgent social necessity. In the early 1980s, then-leader Deng Xiaoping developed a policy to first develop the eastern coastal regions, which already had a better economic foundation than the western regions, and then increase the development of the western regions after the development of the eastern regions reached a certain point. In the following decades the poverty gap between eastern and western China widened, resulting in Beijing’s June 1999 creation of a leading group responsible for the development of the western regions with thenPremier Zhu Rongji and 17 ministerial-level officials as members. The attempt to use economic tools to address ethnic unrest in Tibet reflects the Chinese government’s longstanding belief that most people, Tibetans included, primarily want a good economic life for themselves and their children.17

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The past four decades has been a period in which Beijing has offered the Tibetans the most substantial economic benefits in the history of China.18 In addition to the national Develop the West policies, Beijing implemented huge increases in financial support to promote rapid economic growth in Tibet, hoping individual and regional prosperity would lead Tibetans to solidarity with the rest of China. This policy was clarified by former secretary of the Party committee of the Tibetan Autonomous Region who was in charge of Tibet for nearly a decade: ‘The CCP Central Committee and the State Council have mobilized the country’s entire population to assist Tibet, helping Tibet speed up its development and the Tibetan nationality rid itself of poverty and become rich. This is the most realistic and concrete nationality policy of the CCP.’19 Between 1994 and 2001, the central government financed 62 infrastructure projects, involving 4.86 billion RMB in direct investment. An additional 716 projects were financed and constructed with aid from 15 provinces, central ministries and commissions, involving a total investment of 3.16 billion RMB.20 At the Fourth Forum on Work in Tibet, held by the central authorities in 2001, it was decided to further strengthen the support for Tibet’s development by investing 31.2 billion RMB in 117 projects during the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001–5) with funds from the central government, coupled with a 37.9 billion RMB financial subsidy. According to government statistics, in the 50 years since the Tibet Autonomous Region was founded, of Tibet’s 87.586 billion RMB of financial expenditure, 94.9 per cent came from central government subsidies.21 There are also provincial and local economic development policies in Tibet. Tibetan businesses enjoy a preferential tax rate three percentage points lower than any other part of China, and farmers and herdsmen are exempt from taxes and administrative charges. In banking, Tibet long enjoyed a preferential interest rate on loans two percentage points lower than in any other place in China, as well as a low rate on insurance premiums.22 Although major economic resources are being put into Tibet by the Chinese Government through direct investment and through

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incentives, the question remains whether those economic imperatives are going to Tibetans or to non-Tibetan economic immigrants from the provinces in the surrounding areas. Therefore, a coherent and nuanced economic policy must consider the issue of migration. Studies inside and outside Tibet make clear that there is no massive influx of Chinese permanently settling in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. However, there are many temporary migrants that come from the surrounding provinces during the warmer months to conduct commerce and to work as labourers in the cities and to occasionally lease farm land from the Tibetans.23 As Fischer argues: This is not because of the fears of a population invasion, which are probably not well founded. It is because of this very specific migration scenario in the urban areas, wherein (temporary) migrants possess an overwhelming competitive superiority over locals. . .The challenge would be to attract skilled labour from outside the Tibetan areas while avoiding the immigration of semi-skilled and low-skilled labour, in combination with affirmative and preferential strategies.24 This approach of permitting skilled migrant workers would only allow the maximum room for Tibetans to participate in the labour market rather than having large numbers of unemployed or underemployed youths. While internal and external observers question the effectiveness of large Chinese investments in development in Tibet going disproportionately to non-Tibetan temporary economic migrants, Melvyn C. Goldstein’s research25 has shown that even so there is a significant trickle-down effect that provided rural Tibetans opportunities to actively compete in the market economy to improve their standard of living. However, it is not enough. Without new affirmative action laws and programmes that give preferences to Tibetans in jobs and contracts while simultaneously expanding vocational training, it is difficult to see how Tibetans can reach parity with the rest of China.

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While China is busy trying to build a more economically prosperous Tibetan Autonomous Region, some Western countries, most notably the United States, are supporting the Tibetan diaspora. A diaspora is a term used to describe peoples who have left their homeland. It is applied to a wide body of peoples, from the Jews to the Tamils. The reasons the Western countries are supporting the diaspora are multiple and complex,26 but since before the turn of the nineteenth century, no state has recognized Tibet as an independent country. The US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which took over this funding from the CIA in the 1980s, supported the Tibetan diaspora in the amount of US$ 417,456 in 2013 according to the NED website.27 Moreover, according to the American Congressional Research Office, ‘Since 2000, Congress has authorized US assistance for sustainable development, environmental conservation, and cultural preservation in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and Tibetan communities in China.’28 In addition: US programmes aim to expand citizen involvement in local economic enterprises, development planning, and social services. Between 2002 and 2012, over US$ 48 million was appropriated for these purposes. As funding for US assistance programmes in China overall has declined in recent years, assistance for Tibet programmes as a proportion of total assistance to China has increased, from 16% in 2009 to over 26% in 2012. Foreign operations appropriations legislation restricts assistance for Tibet to non-governmental organizations and prohibits US support for multilateral projects that may erode Tibetan culture, identity, or economic influence.29 The Tibetan diaspora also receives money from other Western countries. Other Western powers’ roles are more focused than the American broad-brush approach, although much of the work has been based out of and in collaboration with Washington. For instance, regarding the 2008 Tibetan riots and Tibetan protests to the 2008 Olympic torch as it moved through Western countries, the

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Tibetan diaspora held a 2007 meeting in Brussels, sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation with ties to the German Government,30 of all the major Tibet diaspora community organizations and the International Tibet Support Network. Three young women from Canada spent much of seven years organizing thousands of international volunteers and hundreds of Tibet-related organizations into a six-month campaign that culminated in the 2008 riots and protests.31 The complete coordination leaves little doubt that the Tibetan diaspora communities planned the disturbances with the aid of Western supporters.32 It does not address the issue of whether Tibetan youths in China were ripe for rioting.

Tibetan Identity One element that is influenced by this funding, money from the Chinese Government on a massive scale to the Tibet regions within China and small but significant sums of economic support for the Tibetan diaspora,33 is the Tibetan identity that is morphing to meet the demands of the modern world. Identity is often used in a sociohistorical way to refer to qualities of sameness in relation to a person’s connection to others and to a particular group of people. Rooted in social constructivist theory, identity is formed primarily by political and social choices of characteristics. Social constructivist theory suggests that identity is impossible to define empirically and instead questions the idea that identity is a natural, or characterized by objective, criteria. Identity is often built through the use of commonalities such as political approaches, religion, education, language and a territorial concept of homeland, and is usually recognized by other states and communities. One issue with Tibetan identity is that it is taking two distinct routes: one identity is being conscientiously developed and recreated by the Tibetan diaspora; the other is emerging less deliberately in the Tibetan areas of China. Conflicting views of identity are becoming pronounced when comparing diaspora and Chinese Tibetans. As with many diasporas, the Tibetans in diaspora see themselves as the

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legitimate custodians and emissaries of the Tibetan culture through its political aspirations, religion, education and language. But the gap between Tibetans abroad and in Tibet widens as they become steadily immersed in the popular cultures, media, values, languages, thought, and education systems of the places where they live – the diaspora in India amid Indian culture and in the West amid Western culture, the Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and neighbouring provinces in China amid Chinese culture – as well as deliberate attempts to modernize Tibetan identity. The Tibetan diaspora, which includes the 14th Dalai Lama and other social leaders, is working to create a new Tibetan identity that is acceptable to the twenty-first-century community of peoples. They have left behind the insistence that the Dalai Lama should be both spiritual leader and political leader in 2011. While the Dalai Lama remains the spiritual leader, and even this is in question for a 15th Dalai Lama, the political head is now elected by the Tibetan diaspora. Lobsang Sangay, the new political leader within the diaspora, has the difficult job of uniting and winning the trust of a fracturing Tibetan diaspora without also having any religious authority. Moreover, China is unlikely to even contemplate talking to him.34 Other institutions based on democratic principles – developed in the 1989 charter which gives stronger authority to the political departments that handle everything from public health to elections for the 43member parliament held every five years in South Asia, Europe and North America – are also replacing the theocracy of historic Tibet. Religion is central to the Tibetan diaspora’s identity. However, even Tibetan Buddhism is undergoing modernization and change. The 14th Dalai Lama announced that he might consider changing the centuries-old method of succession, perhaps a sign of his advancing years, his increasing concern that China will choose their own Dalai Lama from within the Tibetan Autonomous Region, that Tibetan Buddhism may want to move away from a lama-based system as it modernizes, or perhaps all of these elements. ‘If the Tibetan people want to keep the Dalai Lama system, one of the possibilities I have been considering with my aides is to select the next Dalai Lama while I’m alive,’ he said.35 That could mean either an election among senior

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Tibetan Buddhist monks or a personal selection by the current Dalai Lama himself. Traditionally monks fanned out across Tibet with relics of the deceased Dalai Lama to try and find his next incarnation – a boy who recognized the objects, signalling that the Dalai Lama’s soul had passed into a new earthly child. The ritual affirms and reflects the foundations of Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnation and the hierarchical rule of a revered group of repeatedly reborn monks. For the Dalai Lama to consider scrapping another core tenet of Tibetan tradition is a major indication that Tibetan Buddhism is changing in important ways. The religion is adapting in order to meet the needs of an evolving Tibetan identity and to avoid squabbles with China over finding a successor who has an unsullied legitimacy.36 The Tibetan diaspora is placing heavy emphasis on education of diaspora Tibetans, administering 80 schools in India, Nepal and Bhutan. The 14th Dalai Lama has spoken about the importance of education many times noting that: Considerable effort was made to set up schools. . .because it was extremely obvious that one cause of the miserable situation in which the Tibetan race found itself in was attributable to our major failure of being up to the standard in the field of modern knowledge. This resulted in our inability to set out strategies as a people at par with the rest of the world; it exposed us as too backward to be able to meet the challenges of modern times.37 Not only is the need for education to assure that Tibetans are able to interact with the international community on an equal footing, but also to educate Tibetans to achieve a higher level of literacy in Tibetan and the local languages where they live. A central element of this education is a focus on the use of the Tibetan language, since the diaspora communities are not surprisingly being influenced by their locations in India and throughout the West. Not only do the diaspora Tibetans need to deal with different clans and their different characteristics, but the Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern

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Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau, northern India and Sikkim, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan. The classical written form is a major regional literary language, particularly for its use in Buddhist literature. The dialects of central Tibet are generally considered to be dialects of a single Tibetan language, especially since they all share the same literary language, while Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi are generally considered to be separate languages.38 When the Tibetans in diaspora, most of whom have never lived in Tibet, speak of the Tibetan homeland, they do so with deep nostalgia. They talk of a land filled with mysticism and happiness. One of the key features of the classical victim diaspora39 – the idea of dispersal following a traumatic event in the homeland to two or more foreign destinations – is the salience of the homeland in the collective memory of the group. Members of a diaspora idealize their ‘ancestral home’ and are committed to the restoration of ‘the original homeland’ and continued in various ways to ‘relate to that homeland’40 and attempt to share this with the Tibetans in Tibet.41 The Tibetans in diaspora retain a collective vision or myth about their original homeland including its location, history and achievements.42 This is not the Tibetan homeland that Tibetans who live in Tibet now remember or see on a daily basis. The Tibetans in China do not necessarily agree that the diaspora, with its ruling class clans and benefiters under the old theocracy, are the sole legitimate custodians and emissaries of the Tibetan culture, language, and political aspirations. Regarding the emergence of a Tibetan identity in China, one common complaint is that Tibet’s culture is weakened by China. ‘To some extent this seems to be the case. . .In reality, old Tibet. . .was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty,’43 not at all as it is portrayed by the much wealthier, and better educated, diaspora. The Tibetans in China, much as the Tibetans in diaspora, are therefore in a position of needing to recreate Tibetan culture in a modern era. Tibetans residing in China were often, although not exclusively, poorer and less educated. They are attempting to create a Tibetan identity in the midst of a dominant Chinese culture, this time based on a reality that

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includes land ownership, bilingualism and the pressures of rapid urbanization, a different urbanization than that facing the Tibetans in diaspora.44 Indeed, few ordinary Tibetans in China want a return to the political order the Tibetan diaspora remembers, although they still revere and would welcome back the Dalai Lama. A 1999 story in the Washington Post noted in this respect that: Few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China’s land reform to the clans. Tibet’s former slaves say they, too, don’t want their former masters to return to power. ‘I’ve already lived that life once before,’ said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, ‘I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.’45 The Tibetans in China have smaller political aspirations that focus on political issues that help ordinary Tibetans make sense of the growing modernization and succeed within their existing political structure. The internal Chinese report on ‘The Social and Economic Causes of the 3.14 Incident in Tibetan Areas’, which looked at the massive Tibetan riots in 2008, considered history and politics as possible causes behind the willingness of Tibetans in China to riot. One of the primary political problems that this report uncovered was the ongoing inability of the state to find a healthy way for Tibetan governance to exist in the region – although there was no question of a reversion to the past – and that this inability was hampering Tibetan adaptation to inevitable modernization: Objectively speaking, as of now these problems have still not been properly resolved. Naturally, the evident contradictions in Tibetan areas are mainly products of the process of

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modernization, but among them there are also historical ailments which have been transformed and changed under modern conditions, and which are the accumulation of certain unsuccessful factors in the search since the Qing dynasty to find a model of governance for Tibetan areas.46 One major obstacle in creating a positive Tibetan political identity in China is the dominant presence of a new Tibetan political elite. This Tibetan elite has hampered ‘effective supervision over local power structures in the implementation of regional ethnic autonomy policies’.47 This new elite are funded by Beijing, without close supervision of the corruption this is causing or the poor administrative abilities this is allowing, in return for loyalty to the Chinese Government. To mask their shortcomings, and reinforce their power, they consistently blame the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan diaspora for all of Tibet’s social problems.48 This has resulted in the Chinese Government having neither the information nor the inclination to create a more nuanced policy for Tibet before now. A major component in all discussions about Tibet is the concept of the religious freedom to adhere to Tibetan Buddhism. This is the element where the Tibetans in diaspora and the Tibetans in China are the closest together. In part, this is due to an opening in religious freedom in China. The word ‘religion’ was first used in an amendment to the Chinese Constitution adopted in October 2007 at the closing session of the 17th Party National Congress. Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Administration of Religious Affairs said, ‘Their insertion in the Party Constitution shows the Party is sincere, and capable, of its implementation of policies on the freedom of religious beliefs.’ Hao Peng, vice Party chief in Tibet, described the relations between China and the religious Tibetans as ‘united, cooperative and mutually respectful’. Tibet currently has more than 1,700 religious sites, 46,000 monks and nuns and more than 30 living Buddhas whose reincarnation has been recognized by the central or regional governments.49 Nonetheless, ‘There is a rigidity and backwardness in political discourse at the national level with regard to religion and

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relevant policies and measures, which has led to inconsistencies in the relationship between modernization and religion.’50 An aspect of religion in Tibet that is too often ignored but is an important side note is that although the Dalai Lama’s branch of Tibetan Buddhism – Gelugpa – is the largest, it is not the only branch of Tibetan Buddhism. ‘Deliberately or not, many of these Western presentations give the impression that the Gelugpa system is more or less equivalent to Tibetan Buddhism.’51 Clearly not all Tibetan Buddhists in China accept the Dalai Lama as their theological leader. Though he is referred to as the ‘spiritual leader of Tibet’, this title is largely a courtesy. It gives the Dalai Lama no authority over the religious schools of Tibet other than his own, ‘just as calling the U.S. president the “leader of the free world” gives him no role in governing France or Germany’.52 Concerns regarding education in Tibet have not abated. In terms of no-schooling rates, the Tibetan education levels were the worse among the large ethnic groups in China, and the fifth worst among the entire set of 56 ethnicities.53 While China has managed to create a tremendous rate of literacy nationwide, they have not been able to translate this into universal literacy within Tibet itself. One problem is finding highly qualified teachers that are willing to work for low pay at an extremely high altitude. A different problem is the lack of relevant Tibetan history and culture in the primarily Chinese characteristics of education. The major problem, however, is the plethora of languages and writing systems that a well-educated Tibetan must master: the Sanskrit of Tibetan, the characters of Chinese and the phonetic alphabet of English. The central government encourages bilingual education in Tibetan schools, where Chinese and English are taught alongside Tibetan language. One element of education in the Tibet Autonomous Region is a concern regarding the use of the Tibetan language, since Tibetan communities in China communities are also being influenced by their locations in China. The government of the Tibet Autonomous Region is establishing a more sweeping regulation in 2014 to promote the Tibetan language amid concerns the local language is dying out. The region’s Tibetan Language Work Committee, which

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was established in 1988, is the principal drafter of the policy, which has a broader scope than existing regulations such as a 1987 provision on the learning, use and development of the Tibetan language, which was amended in 2002.54 In Tibetan areas, most classes are taught in Tibetan. In an attempt to boost technological application of the Tibetan language, the Chinese central government and Tibet’s regional government invested more than 1 billion RMB (US$ 163 million) since 2008 for the development of Tibetan-language office software and digital dictionaries. The first Chinese-Tibetan bilingual smartphone went on the market in Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, in 2013. It supports both Chinese and Tibetan input and allows many Tibetan-language applications. The phone was jointly developed by the technology firm Huawei, China Telecom’s Tibetan branch, and the University of Tibet.55 It is not clear that the identity markers of political aspirations, religion, education and language will merge any time soon between the Tibetan diaspora and the Tibetans in China, with the one possible exception of religion. Even the religious aspect, however, could become a crisis point if the succession of the Dalai Lama issue is not resolved. While there is conversation going on between the diaspora and the community in China,56 the political, education and language issues are trending further apart with the passage of time.

Conclusion In the midst of the deep-seated issues that concern Tibetans and that impact Tibetan identity, the question remains whether economic incentives are sufficient tools to address these issues. Clearly aggressive economic measures are necessary in Tibet as the region moves to catch up with the rest of China and even catch up with the rest of the western regions. Just as clearly there are major obstacles to be overcome in Tibet and the calls for better and more nuanced economic policies are warranted. Nonetheless, other policies may be needed as well.

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One point seems to have general consensus among the scholars inside and outside of China regarding the existing economic policies: it will be favourable both for Tibetans and for Beijing’s own longterm interests in the Tibetan areas to reconsider the prevailing government development strategies that have been dominant since the 1990s. The current policies of ‘opening to the nation’ and ‘using the best’ are allowing non-Tibetan temporary migrants to reap too many of the economic benefits and to take those economic benefits home with them to the provinces around Tibet. To concentrate the economic benefits intended for Tibetans in Tibetan hands, most suggest a return to a paradigm of ‘Tibetanizing’ development, prioritizing as much as possible the use of Tibetan labour, business decision making and so forth, parallel with the innovation of similar policies in the cultural realms of politics, religion, education and language. Such policies were advocated by a variety of leaders in the 1980s, of whom the most prominent was the 10th Panchen Lama, and are still supported now by many Tibetan and Chinese scholars and officials.57 In practical terms this would mean changing economic policies in Tibet to favour Tibetans by requiring: (1) all government funded contracts to hire a high percentage of Tibetan labourers; and that (2) a high percentage of all contracts in Tibet must be awarded to Tibetan companies and individuals. An effective economic policy must also take into consideration the issue of migration. This is not because of a permanent migration of non-Tibetans into the area, but rather that temporary migrants possess a superiority in skills and education over locals. The challenge is to attract skilled labour from outside the Tibetan areas while avoiding the immigration of semi-skilled and low-skilled labour to move the money back to their own provinces, in combination with affirmative and preferential strategies.58 Central policy makers are looking at a functional economic issue: how to deploy capital more efficiently in an area where, at the moment, investment is simply ending up elsewhere. The Chinese central leadership looks poised, and has taken small initial steps, to create more nuanced and sophisticated economic policies in Tibet. A better fiscal regime would ensure that economic

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activity is targeted at the very people – young underemployed Tibetans – who are most strongly expressing their feelings of disenfranchisement. It would also be a powerful counter-move against some of the fiercest critics of central government policy in the region. In terms of fiscal structure and efficiency of economic decision making, the issues in Tibet are related to social justice and policy stability through economic policy – precisely the areas that the Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang administration want to address.59 The question remains whether these economic policies are sufficient to address some of the more persistent Tibetan identity issues of political aspirations, religion, education and language. Regarding the Tibetans in diaspora’s political aspirations, it seems unlikely that with ongoing Western economic support that the diaspora will waiver in its ambitions to once again rule Tibet. Economic policies that truly reach Tibetans in China, making them more content with their standard of living, may quell some of the appeal of these outside forces. Nonetheless, it seems that the Tibetans in China must also be shown that their own political wellbeing in China is also being addressed. Regarding the political aspirations of the Tibetans in China, their chief concerns appear to be a corrupt new Tibetan elite and lack of spreading the wealth that is focused in a small sector of Tibetans. ‘The relatively educated Tibetans – a snug 15 per cent of the population – tend to fill the (stagnant) administrative and professional positions within the government sector. . .Nonetheless, these state-sector employees are touted as evidence that Tibetans are indeed benefitting from the expansion, although their affluence is largely fuelled by salary and wage increases decided in Beijing and it has underlain the rapidly mounting inequality between Tibetans themselves. Ironically, in their enthusiasm to create the appearance of Tibetan prosperity, the Communist Party has resuscitated strong class divisions in the Tibetan areas through administrative means, particularly in the TAR and most obviously in Lhasa. However, at best this accentuation of inequality between Tibetans only partly offsets the wider structural process of ethnic marginalization.’60 While attempts to fix the problem of a new corrupt elite is not

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exclusively an economic problem, this can be addressed through economic policy, anti-corruption policies and merit-based leadership that reaches into a broader base of Tibetans. Regarding the religious concerns of the Tibetans both in China and in diaspora, economic policies are unlikely to be key. Here the need seems to be for policies that carefully walk the line between allowing religion to proceed unfettered, while still dealing with subtle anti-government tone. The Chinese central government is not alone in the international community in facing this problem, but a more gentle hand seems to work better in the long run. Regarding the education and language skills of Tibetans in diaspora, it is difficult to disagree with the Dalai Lama’s assertion that education is important for all Tibetans as they meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. The biggest challenge here is to develop education that not only meets the needs of modernization, but also maintains an essence that is Tibetan whether in diaspora or in China. This means that the Chinese Government needs to improve its educational focus in Tibet to include mandatory education through high school for children and include adult literacy programmes that reach rural Tibetans. The language policies of the Tibetans in diaspora or in China can be addressed in economic policy by increasing the funding for the Tibetan language as it modernizes and coalesces into a unified language. Perhaps the biggest current challenge for education policy and investment in Tibet is the lack of access to vocational training – the kind of training that will allow Tibetans to compete with migrants from the east in construction, tailoring, food production and a host of other jobs in the dynamic service sector.61 Creating vocational training for underemployed ethnic minorities is not new. It has been successfully implemented in many other countries. The Chinese Government needs to create an environment in which Tibetans in diaspora want to return, much as Han Chinese began to return to China as the economy grew. Not only does the economy in Tibet need to increase for Tibetans in China to entice other Tibetans to return, but there also needs to be a political and social environment in which Tibetans feel included.

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Notes 1. Davis, E., ‘Tibetan Separatism in China,’ Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, 21/2 (2009), pp. 155– 70. 2. ‘Tibet confirms 46 cultural projects in 12th Five-Year Plan,’ China Tibet Online, 10 May 2013, available at: http://chinatibet.people.com.cn/8238972.html. 3. Gu, J., ‘China Approves 12th Five-Year Plan for Western Regions,’ China Briefing, 27 February 2012, available at: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/ 2012/02/27/china-approves-12th-five-year-plan-for-western-regions. html#sthash.Rx5GEYJg.dpuf. 4. Moore, M., ‘Chinese Report on Tibet Reveals the Roots of Unrest,’ The Telegraph, 22 May 2009, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/asia/china/5368440/Chinese-report-on-Tibet-reveals-the-roots-ofunrest.html. 5. Brown, K., ‘How Xi Can Solve the Tibet Problem,’ The Diplomat, 11 January 2014, available at: http://thediplomat.com/2014/01/how-xi-can-solve-the-tibetproblem/. 6. ‘A presumably authoritative interview with the vice office director of the Party’s Financial Leading Small Group, Yang Weimin, published in the People’s Daily on November 15, which adds much useful interpretive detail. Together they make clear that the crucial parts of the Decision are as follows: China is still at a stage where economic development is the main objective. . .the Decision spells out the positive roles of government that must be strengthened: macro management and regulation,’ Kroeber, A., ‘Xi Jinping’s Ambitious Agenda for Economic Reform in China,’ Brookings Institute, 17 November 2013, available at: http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/11/17-xijinping-economic-agenda-kroeber. 7. ‘The current domestic security mechanisms built under former President Hu Jintao, the “System for Maintaining Stability (维稳系统)”, encompasses the secret services, para-military and public security forces. Its mission is to keep social unrest under control. To obtain this goal, it features a fast growing budget that exceeds the defence budget. But its focus on supressing the dissent with force not only fails to address the causes, but also creates resentment among the population. The government is also struggling to consolidate its counterterrorism operations and fight against separatists’ movements surging in Xinjiang and Tibet, which are believed to be supported by “subversive foreign forces”.’ As Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang stated during a regular Foreign Ministry press briefing when asked about the NSC, ‘with the establishment of the National Security Council in China, terrorists are getting nervous, separatists are getting nervous and extremists are getting nervous’ (Foreign Ministry of PRC, 2013). Qin, L., ‘Securing the “China Dream”: What Xi Jinping wants to achieve with the National Security Commission (NSC),’ China Monitor, 4 (24 February 2014).

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8. ‘Xi Jinping Reviews Situation in Tibet Amid Self-Immolation Protests,’ The Economic Times, 10 March 2013, available at: http://articles.economictimes. indiatimes.com/2013-03-10/news/37598264_1_immolations-tibetan-delegation-tibetan-government-in-exile. 9. ‘Ahead of Xi’s take over, Dalai Lama has expressed hope that Xi whose reformist father Xi Zhongxun, he knew before fleeing Tibet for self-exile to Dharmasala, would initiate steps to ease the situation in Tibet and its prefectures.’ ‘Xi Jinping Reviews Situation in Tibet’. 10. Gongmeng Law Research Center, ‘An investigative report into the social and economic causes of the 3.14 incident in Tibetan areas.’ ‘藏区3.14事件社会、经济 成因调查报告’. 11. Yeh, E., Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. ii. 12. Hillman, B., ‘Money Can’t Buy Tibetans’ Love,’ Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2008), pp. 8– 12. 13. Bi, J., ‘China’s New Concept for Development,’ China in a Globalizing World (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2005), p. 119. 14. Hu, Y., Wang, H. and Daqiong, ‘Region Makes Major Leaps in Standard of Living,’ China Daily, 20 March 2014 http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/201403/20/content_17364427.htm, accessed 10 March 2014. 15. Zhou, Y., ‘Independence in Disguise,’ China Security, 4 (2) (2008), p. 39. 16. ‘Qinghai-Tibet Railway to be Extended this Year,’ Xinhua, 20 January 2008. 17. Davis, ‘Tibetan Separatism in China’. 18. Yang, M. and Lu, Z., ‘Perspective of Religion and Economic Development in Tibet,’ Journal of Tibet Nationalities Institute, 1 (2005); and Han, Q., ‘The Evolvement of Economic Policy of Central Government in Tibet since the Reform,’ Journal of Tibet University, 4 (2004). 19. Chen Kuiyuan’s speech at the fifth conference of the responsible party members of the Sixth People’s Congress and Political Consultative Council of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, May 14, 1997. 20. Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, ‘Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet,’ May 2004, available at: http://www. fmprc.gov.cn/ce/celt/eng/xwdt/t125488.htm. 21. Information Office, ‘Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet’. 22. Davis, Ruling, Resources and Religion in China (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 118. 23. See Ma, R., Population and Society in Contemporary Tibet (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011); and Fischer, A. M., State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet: Challenges of Recent Economic Growth (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2005); and Yeh, Taming Tibet. 24. Fischer, State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet, p. 151. 25. Goldstein, M. C., Childs, G. and Wangdui, P., ‘Beijing’s “People First” Development Initiative for the Tibet Autonomous Region’s Rural Sector—A

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

CHINA’S FRONTIER REGIONS Case study from the Shigatse Area,’ The China Journal, 63 (January 2010), pp. 57 – 75. Davis, ‘Tibetan Separatism in China’. National Endowment for Democracy web site http://www.ned.org/where-wework/asia/china-tibet, accessed 4 April 2014. Lum, T., US Assistance Programs in China (Washington DC: Congressional Research Center Report, 2 December 2014), p. 8. Ibid. ‘The Olympic Torch Relay Campaign,’ German-Foreign-Policy.com, 8 April 2008, available at: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56145. Saunders, D., ‘How Three Canadians Upstaged Beijing,’ Globe and Mail, 29 March 2008, available at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ article676657.ece. Bhadrakumar, M. K., ‘India Wakes to a Tibetan Headache,’ Asia Times Online, 18 March 2008, available at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ JC18Df01.html. Some Tibetans prefer the term ‘exile’ to that of ‘diaspora’ since ‘exile’ implies that they were pushed out rather than ‘diaspora’ that emphasizes social coherence within the diaspora community and its ties to the ancestral lands. ‘Welcome Signs that Some Officials are at Last Starting to Question policies on Tibet,’ The Economist, 22 June 2013, available at: http://www.economist.com/ news/china/21579847-welcome-signs-some-officials-are-last-starting-question-policies-tibet-bold-new. Elegant, S., ‘The Dalai Lama’s Succession Rethink,’ Time Magazine, 21 November 2007, p. 23. Simon, ‘The Dalai Lama’s Succession Rethink,’ p. 23. 14th Dalai Lama, ‘The Importance of Education,’ available at: http://www. dalailama.com/messages/tibet/importance-of-education, accessed 26 April 2014. Nicolas Tournadre describes the language situation of Tibetan as follows: ‘Based on my 20 years of field work throughout the Tibetan language area and on the existing literature, I estimate that there are 220 “Tibetan dialects” derived from Old Tibetan and nowadays spread across 5 countries: China, India, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan [which] may be classed within 25 dialect groups, i.e. groups which do not allow mutual intelligibility. The notion of “dialect group” is equivalent to the notion of language but does not entail any standardization. Thus if we set aside the notion of standardization, I believe it would be more appropriate to speak of 25 languages derived from Old Tibetan. This is not only a terminological issue but it gives an entirely different perception of the range of variation. When we refer to 25 languages, we make clear that we are dealing with a family comparable in size to the Romance family which has 19 groups of dialects.’ See Tournadre, N., ‘Arguments Against the Concept of “Conjunct”/“Disjunct” in Tibetan,’ in Chomolangma, Demawend und Kasbek, Festschrift fu¨r Roland Bielmeier zu seinem 65, Geburtstag; B. Huber, M. Volkart,

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39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

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P. Widmer, P. Schwieger, (eds), vol. 1 (2008), pp. 281– 308, available at: http:// tournadre.nicolas.free.fr/fichiers/2008-Conjunct.pdf. Cohen, R., Global Diasporas (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. An academic article written by a member of the diaspora provided a Tibetan diaspora assessment of the Tibetan resistance as driven mainly by identity insecurity by examining the evolving goals, strategies and multiplicity of actors in the exile Tibetan community as well as inside Tibet including the ways in which Tibetans inside Tibet and the diaspora interact and influence each other. See Topgyal, Tsering, ‘Identity Insecurity and the Tibetan Resistance against China,’ Pacific Affairs, 86/3 (2013), pp. 537– 8. Cohen, Global Diasporas, p. 6. Palenti, M., ‘Friendly Feudalism: the Tibet Myth,’ January 2007, available at: http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html#notes, accessed 2 April 2014. ‘In just a few short decades, the Tibetan people’s world has changed from tradition to modern against the background of a great and unified China’s rise, and the renaissance of a modern China on a rapid path of marketization.’ See Gongmeng Law Research Center, ‘An Investigative Report’. Pomfret, J., ‘Tibet Caught in China’s Web,’ Washington Post, 23 July 1999, as cited in Michael Palenti’s ‘Friendly Feudalism’. Gongmeng Law Research Center, ‘An investigative report’. Ibid. Moore, ‘Chinese Report on Tibet’. ‘Religion Mentioned in CPC Constitution,’ Xinhua, 22 October 2007, A1. Gongmeng Law Research Center, ‘An investigative report’. Brunnholzl, K., The Center of the Sunlit Sky (Snow Lion Publications, 2004), p. 17. Curren, E., ‘Not So Easy to Say Who is Karmapa,’ correspondence, 22 August 2005, www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id ¼ 22.1577,0,0,1,0. as cited in Michael Palenti, ‘Friendly Feudalism’. Fischer, State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet, p. 146. Meng, A., ‘Tibet Officials Push for Stronger Law to Safeguard “Dying” Ethnic Language,’ South China Morning Post, 8 April 2014, available at: http:// www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1468789/tibet-officials-push-stronger-lawsafeguard-dying-ethnic-language. ‘Tibetan Tongue,’ China Daily, 4 March 2014, available at: http://usa.chinadaily. com.cn/epaper/2014-03/04/content_17322130.htm, accessed 20 April 2014. Topgyal, ‘Identity Insecurity and the Tibetan Resistance’, p. 538. Fischer, State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet, p. 157. Ibid., p. 151. Brown, ‘How Xi Can Solve the Tibet Problem’. Fischer, State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet, p. 155. Hillman, ‘Money Can’t Buy Tibetans’ Love’.

CHAPTER 4 SOUTH ASIAN RESPONSES TO CHINA'S RISE: INDIAN AND NEPALESE HANDLING OF THE TIBET ISSUE Tsering Topgyal

Introduction The growing might of China and the responses to its rise have consumed considerable ink and paper. Foremost in this stillburgeoning literature is the consideration of what it means for America and the West and the countries of East Asia. Occasionally, there are examinations of the implication of China’s rise for the farflung regions of Africa and Latin America. Curiously, South Asia has missed the attention of the cottage industry that is the scholarship on the implications and responses to China’s rising pre-eminence. To be sure, there has been considerable writing on Sino-Indian relations, but that literature views the relationship through the lens of the traditional rivalry between the two civilizational states. The occasional inclusion of India in research projects on the rise of China does not fully capture the dynamics of the South Asian engagement with China in the same way they do for Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia. This chapter aims to fill this gap to some extent by

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examining the continuities and changes in how India and Nepal has dealt with the Tibet issue. This chapter will first review the theoretical perspectives on how states other than the status quo hegemon respond to rising states. The second section provides an overview of the literature on how Asian states have responded to China’s rise. After surveying the broader South Asian strategies towards China, the third section examines the role that the Tibetan issue plays in Sino-Indian relations and how Indian management of this issue has changed in the last couple of decades. Following that, the dramatic changes in Nepal’s policies towards the Tibetans and China’s role in that transformation will be examined. The concluding section restates the more significant empirical findings and their theoretical implications.

Theoretical Perspectives: Responding to a Rising Power International Relations Theory provides a number of prescriptions or even predictions for how states that are not the incumbent hegemon would respond to the emergence of a new power. Different theories are useful in explaining the behaviours of different states. Balancing, Bandwagoning, Hedging and Subordination Drawing largely from the realist tradition, one course of action available for such states is to balance the power of the rising power. Balancing is the act of matching or surpassing the capabilities of the emergent power for security and deterrence purposes.1 As such, states engage in balancing only to increase their own security, not to gain dominance over others. Balancing can be done either through internal or external efforts or both.2 Internal balancing involves building up one’s own economic, military and other capabilities. The best-known method of external balancing is through formal or informal alliances with other states. This could mean aligning with the status quo hegemon or banding together with like-minded smaller states, pooling capabilities together to constrain the rising power. The adequacy or availability of any of these options is a function of the size of the weaker state and the nature of its relations with other

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states. Yet, as Schweller points out, states are also prone to underbalancing even in the face of real threats.3 Another option, in contrast to the adversarial step of balancing or the naivety of under-balancing, is to actively side with the rising power. This behaviour is popularly known as bandwagoning in the international relations literature.4 There is a debate about whether the weaker states bandwagon for security benefits5 or for economic opportunities.6 Bandwagoning is a deliberate strategy designed to profit from the economic and/or security benefits provided or promised by the rising power. It should not be mistaken for the simple lack of choices or coercion by stronger states that may be the condition of very weak powers.7 In this context, the probability of a given state bandwagoning with the new power depends upon the provision or expected provision of public goods such as economic benefits, trade and security. For many states, bandwagoning entails the wrenching exercise of choosing between the established hegemon, with whom they may be formally or informally allied, and the rising power. While the benefits of bandwagoning are obvious, it could also prove a costly miscalculation if the rising power turns against its weaker partners. Balancing or bandwagoning takes place under conditions in which the core interests of the given state are sufficiently divorced from or aligned with that of the rising state, respectively. This is not always the case though. When the international order, regionally or globally, is not sharply split by polarity (the existing hegemon and the rising power are not engaged in conflict or war with each other), ideology, religion etc., when the foreign relations and international interests of a given state are sufficiently diversified, that state can adopt a strategy designed to exploit different benefits provided by different states, usually the hegemon and the rising power and other great powers. This usually entails maintaining equidistance from the hegemonic, rising and other great powers and pushing back against pressures to choose sides. Such a strategy has been labelled ‘hedging’ in the international relations literature, especially as it pertains to the American and Asian responses to the rise of China.8 Hedging is predicated upon the hope that the rising power will not become a

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threat. In fact, to forestall such an eventuality, engagement is actively pursued vis-a`-vis the rising power.9 Yet, the weaker states are also impelled to prepare for the possibility that the rising state could turn into a brutish threat. ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst’ is the essence of hedging as a strategy. Of course, hedging is also employed by the hegemon and the rising power towards each other, as US-China relations in the last two decades illustrate.10 Finally, some states just align with the rising power because of lack of choice or the resources to resist coercion. Subordination is their inescapable fate. Economic Interdependence and Institutional Enmeshment Neoliberal theories furnish alternative strategies. Reflecting the foundational purpose of liberalism/neoliberalism of explaining international cooperation, these strategies for the most part prescribe engagement or accommodationist measures designed to induce the rising power to be more cooperative in return. The first prescription involves enticing the rising power into a deep pool of economic exchanges. This strategy of economic interdependence organizes the incentive structure in favour of cooperative behaviour.11 If the rising power values the economic benefits from the relationship, it will refrain from threatening behaviour so as to continue to profit economically. A related notion is the trade expectations theory, which argues that greater the promise of actual or future trade between two states, greater is the potential for cooperation and peaceful relations between them.12 Realists counter, especially focusing on the years preceding World War I and World War II, that economic linkages do not prevent the outbreak of conflict and war. In fact, economic disputes that arise out of greater interactions could exacerbate other disputes, driving the two states further apart. A second line of thinking draws upon the liberal institutionalist claim that institutional practices mitigate conflict and foster cooperative behaviour.13 Institutions, they argue, foster cooperation and peace by transmitting information (enhancing transparency and reducing uncertainty), deterring deception (also known as defection or cheating in the literature), reducing transaction costs

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by providing fora and channels for states to air their differences and find diplomatic solutions, and conferring or denying legitimacy. What this means by way of a strategy for states confronted with the sharp rise of a neighbouring state, is to tie-down that power with overlapping institutional and multilateral ropes, Gulliver in Lilliput-style. This will serve the dual-purpose of reassuring as well as deterring the rising power and forewarning the less powerful states of the former’s aggressive intentions. Thus, such institutions will be useful in pre-empting or mitigating security dilemmas between the rising power and its weaker counterparts. Neo-realists, especially Mearsheimer, have famously dismissed institutions as epiphenomenal and possessing no independent causal effect on international relations.14 Sociality and Construction of Identity Working with subjective and inter-subjective variables such as ideas, identity, norms and culture, constructivists and their critical siblings go beyond the liberal-rationalist claims for the importance of institutions. For them, institutions ‘not only regulate state behaviour, but also constitute state identities’. Through interaction and socialization, states may develop a ‘collective identity’ that would enable them to overcome power politics and the security dilemma.15 Weaker states can transform the identities (ultimately the interests) and behaviour of the rising power not just through the intensity of their intercourse with and the manner of their own physical and discursive conducts towards the rising power, but also through institutions which serve as sources, conduits and keepers of normative standards. By enmeshing the new power in a thick web of institutions, weaker states can not only regulate and check its behaviour, they can transform its very identity and interests into congruence with their own interests. Realists like Mearsheimer see this as an ‘ambitious’ agenda. The English School has a similar conception of the role of institutions, although their main focus is on primary institutions such as sovereignty, territoriality and diplomacy. A variant of the constructivist approach is to deploy common cultural traditions and historical experiences with the rising power.16

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Other scholars have attempted to transcend the theoretical straitjackets to develop theoretical frameworks combining realist, liberal and constructivist elements.17 These analytic eclecticists prescribe other strategies for weaker powers to deal with threatening hegemons or menacing rising powers. Robert Pape developed the concept of ‘soft-balancing’ whereby states may use ‘international institutions, economic statecraft, and diplomatic arrangements to delay, frustrate, and undermine aggressive unilateral U.S. military policies’, without challenging US power or interests directly.18 Neorealist, neo-liberal and constructivist perspectives also converge in the concept of ‘institutional balancing’, defined as countering ‘pressures or threats through initiating, utilizing, and dominating multilateral institutions. . .to pursue security under anarchy’.19 Like Pape, institutional balancing also involves the interactive deployment of economic and institutional resources to manage the behaviour of rising powers. Therefore the theoretical possibilities for addressing the challenges presented by a rising power are numerous. The following section overviews the actual paths chosen by Asian states in response to China’s rise.

Asia’s Response to China’s Rise The literature on Asian responses to the rise of China appears fixated on the Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian sub-regions.20 South Asian and Central Asian states appear to get only passing attention. All East Asian states use one or a combination of the above strategies. While even neighbouring states with unsettled disputes with Beijing desire strong economic relations with China, many of them remain wary on the security front and take concurrent steps to shield themselves against potential threats from China. Like America, most Asian states are employing some variant of hedging against China, but within a broad band ranging close to appeasement on one end to balancing on the other extreme. This variation is not just observable across states, but also across time in the foreign policies of individual states. The evolution can be observed in either direction.

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America’s Ambiguous Allies and China’s Wary Economic Dependants Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand and Australia have formal security alliances with America, but all of them are deeply interdependent in economic terms with China and clearly value that relationship.21 Not only do they strive to preserve their economic relations with China, they also prefer not to be caught up in tense disputes between America and China where they have to make an explicit choice between the two. Within this group, Japan and Philippines are closest to balancing against China internally and externally through their alliances with America, while South Korea and Thailand have moved considerably closer to China since the end of the Cold War.22 The hardening territorial disputes with China and its creeping expansionism in the East China Sea and the South China Sea between Japan and Philippines, respectively, explains much of the deterioration of relations between these countries. When economic relations flourished and China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ gestures appeared to be working in the 1990s and 2000s, even Philippines and Japan were rather negligent of their alliance with the US. Philippines compelled the US to pull out militarily in 1992 and Japan used a strategy of ‘double hedge’ vis-a`-vis America and China to arrive at a ‘new equilibrium’ in relations with China.23 China’s new assertiveness after 2010 in its territorial disputes in the South China Sea (Spratly and Paracel Islands) with four ASEAN nations and with Japan in the East China Sea (Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands) drove Japanese and Philippino policies decisively closer to the balancing end of hedging.24 These two countries could therefore be labelled ‘balancing hedgers’. Australia, along with Singapore and Vietnam, who are not allied with any great powers, practice a brand of hedging which contains a moderate dose of balancing against China. Yet, Thailand, a formal US ally is in the same category as Indonesia, Myanmar and Malaysia in pursuing what can be called ‘pure hedging’, staying equidistant from America, China and other great powers to extract maximum benefits from them. Cambodia and Laos have clearly decided to put their lots with China in order to profit economically and to forestall potential threats from China.

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Cambodia’s actions, during its ASEAN presidency, on the South China Sea dispute on behalf of China are illustrative. North Korea remains China’s lone, but troublesome ally. In addition, arguably most Southeast Asian states, apart from Cambodia and Laos, practice some form of ‘institutional balancing’ against China through ASEAN and its off-shoots. Most East Asian nations will attempt to use the institutional and economic elements of softbalancing to manage their relations with a rising China in the same way many states have soft-balanced against the United States to constrain its unilateralist policies.25

South Asian Responses to China’s Rise As noted above, the literature on the responses to China’s rise continues to be US-centric and East Asia-focused. To the extent that South Asia features in this literature, it is viewed through the prism of Sino-Indian relations, especially the competition between the two simultaneously rising powers. Even if the exact phrase is not used, the other South Asian countries are treated as ‘beads’ in the so-called ‘strings of pearls’ strategy. Be that as it may, there are some distinctive features that define the nature of South Asian engagement with rising China. First, the sub-regional dynamics of adjusting to the rise of India colours South Asian approaches towards China. Second, with the exception of India, no South Asian state has the strategic and economic heft to dabble in balancing against China. Third, South Asia badly lacks the institutional capital to employ institutions in the neo-liberal and constructivist senses. The lack of economic and institutional capital rules out institutional balancing and soft-balancing until at least their economies grow more dynamically and the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) grows stronger and develops wider tentacles. In South Asia too, one observes a full-spectrum reaction to China’s rise, two of which are examined in this chapter. It ranges from Pakistan’s ‘all weather friendship’ with China, practically an alliance, Nepal’s selective bandwagoning, the ‘pure hedging’ of states like

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Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives, Bhutan’s studied rejection of Chinese overtures for formal ties and bandwagoning with India. Like Japan, India is practicing a form of hedging that contains a strong element of balancing in its relations with China, putting it in the category of a ‘balancing hedger’. The following sections consider India’s and Nepal’s responses to China’s rise by examining the different ways in which they have responded to Chinese pressures on the Tibet issue. Tibet is salient and useful in this context for a number of reasons. First, China has framed it as a ‘core issue’ since 2006, signifying its priority as both a domestic security and foreign policy issue.26 Both India and Nepal are apprised of this classification at the highest levels. Second, India and Nepal are hosts to the biggest Tibetan diaspora (about 120,000 in India and 20,000 in Nepal), which has been a thorn in Beijing’s side at the very least. Third, before 1989, India and Nepal had similar policies and practices towards the Tibetan exiles, so the comparative analysis of their diverging practices after 1989 is revealing. It demonstrates two different Chinese approaches and two different South Asian responses. Finally, the analysis of the Nepalese treatment of the T7ibetans because of nothing else, but Chinese pressure and incentives, is important because Nepal’s present could be the future of a number of middleranking powers when confronted with a more powerful and less constrained China. India’s Cautious Hedge on Tibet27 When India’s new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was sworn in on 26 May 2014, Lobsang Sangay, Sikyong or Prime Minister of the Tibetan administration-in-exile, was invited as a ‘special guest’.28 The Tibetans became excited at this unprecedented gesture. However, a couple of weeks later when the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited New Delhi as a ‘special envoy’ of President Xi Jinping, the Indian police was in full force barricading the Tibetans inside their locality and preventing them from carrying out anti-Chinese protests within earshot of Mr Wang. This episode is reflective of the broader Indian approach towards the Tibetans which constitutes a ‘cautious hedge’:

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keeping alive the Tibetan ‘card’, while not using it actively in pursuit of Indian interests. Tibet impinges more directly on Sino-Indian relations than on any of China’s other bilateral relations. As Norbu observes: ‘The crux of the Sino-Indian strategic rivalry is this: if the Chinese power elite consider Tibet to be strategically important to China, the Indian counterparts think it is equally vital to Indian national security.’29 Independent India’s Tibet policy was defined by Nehru’s dreams of a Sino-Indian anti-imperialist, non-aligned Asian alternative to the Soviet and American superpowers. The 1962 border war with China changed India’s practice, if not policy, towards the Tibetan refugees. Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in 1989 brought about a thaw in relations and a return to India’s China-friendly policy statements on Tibet before 1962. Yet, there were no discernible practical fall-outs on the Tibetan exiles. This is in keeping with the new realism and confidence in the post-Cold War Indian foreign policy, tempering the ‘idealism in its foreign policy with a strong dose of realism’.30 Mohan writes, ‘Facing its own acute vulnerabilities in Kashmir, Punjab and the North-East, [India] was unwilling to confront China on the issue. At the same time, India refused to bend by reducing or suspending its support to the Tibetan exiles and the Dalai Lama in India.31 Eventually, as one Indian analyst counselled, India will need ‘a more sophisticated policy that goes beyond simply curbing the Dalai Lama’s activities, remaining in a state of denial, or restating its acceptance of Tibet as a part of China’.32 This anticipates that at some point Beijing will demand that India dissolve the Tibetan administration-in-exile and India will need a smarter strategy with regard to Tibet. There are four major Tibet-related issues with implications on Sino-Indian relations: the status of Tibet, Chinese unease with the activities of Tibetan refugees, including the Dalai Lama, Indian fears over China’s military activities on the Tibetan plateau, and the longstanding border dispute.33 First, India’s position on the status of Tibet has changed from the British policy of recognising the de facto independence of Tibet – ‘completely Autonomous State’ – under an ill-defined Chinese suzerainty (1947–51) to accepting Tibet as a part of China in

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1954.34 On 29 April 1954, India relented to Chinese insistence on referring to Tibet as ‘Tibet Region of China’.35 After the 1962 border war, India merely used ‘Tibet’ until the 1988 visit of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when the ‘Sino-Indian Joint Press Communique’ referred to Tibet as ‘an autonomous region of China’.36 In 2003, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed a declaration that recognized ‘that the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China’.37 This position was reiterated in the Joint Statement during the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to India in 2005.38 These formulations led an Indian scholar to observe that India’s acceptance of Tibet as a part of China is conditional upon Tibet’s enjoyment of autonomy.39 China, therefore, demands stronger and more unambiguous statements from New Delhi on China’s sovereignty over Tibet.40 Second, India’s official policy has been consistently to disallow anti-Chinese activities by Tibetan refugees on Indian soil. In practice, India has allowed the Tibetans to run a government-in-exile, registered as the Central Tibetan Administration, given material assistance for the running of various projects under its aegis, and facilitated the international activities of the Dalai Lama. India has so far refused to bend to Chinese pressure for ‘reducing or suspending its support to Tibetan exiles and the Dalai Lama in India’ (Kharnad, interview). A relevant question is whether India will revise this policy after the demise of the current Dalai Lama. One Indian scholar noted that India would continue to support Tibetan exiles because it is in India’s national interest.41 Another proposes that India should take upon itself the responsibility to nurture Tibetan language and culture as it faces ‘cultural genocide’ in Tibet.42 For the foreseeable future, India’s tolerance and, at times, facilitation of the Tibetan struggle looks set to continue. This is a sore point for China.43 The Chinese complain that ‘such open encouragement and support given by the Indian Government to the Tibetan rebel bandits in their traitorous activities constitutes interference in China’s internal affairs’ and harms the progress of Sino-Indian relations.44 Cohen argues that in the minds of the Chinese elite, ‘India’s gravest threat to China resides in Tibet’ because India provides sanctuary to over

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100,000 Tibetans and the goal of some Indian elite to resurrect Tibet as a buffer zone between China and India.45 Wu Xinbo also writes, ‘So long as the exiled community exists, Tibetan separatism will remain a major concern for PRC leaders.’46 Third, Indians have their reciprocal fears arising from Chinese military presence on the Tibetan plateau from the historical memory of perceived Chinese betrayal and humiliation during the 1962 war and from uncertainties about Chinese intentions now and in the future. The true extent of China’s military presence in Tibet is not clear, given the secrecy surrounding military information, but rough estimates are available.47 Margolis notes that in the early 1990s, China had deployed around 500,000 troops on the Tibetan plateau with some of the best weaponry.48 Norbu estimates, however, that the likely size of the PLA in Tibet is around 150,000 in eastern Tibet and 40,000 on the border between India and TAR.49 The presence of Chinese strategic forces on the Tibetan plateau adds another dimension to India’s China threat perception.50 Not lost on the Indian elite are the several airbases and tactical airstrips and the network of roads that China has built, criss-crossing the Tibetan plateau right up to the Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani borders with Tibet and Xinjiang, and the expanding railway network.51 China’s management of water resources emanating from Tibet, which feed the Indian subcontinent, also features in Indian security conceptions.52 In sum, the ‘ghosts of 1962’, as one Indian analyst referred to the combination of historical memory, humiliation and sense of betrayal from the war in 1962, casts a long shadow over Indian perceptions of China today.53 Essentially, the host of mutually conflicting security concerns germane to Tibet reinforce the larger strategic rivalry between these two Asian giants. Finally, the border dispute between India and China continues to elude a resolution ever since they acquired a common border when China annexed central and western Tibet in 1950.54 The two countries came to share 2,520 miles of border that has never been delimited by a treaty between the two disputants. Specifically, India claims that China is occupying 38,000 square kilometres in Aksai Chin in the northeastern corner of Jammu and Kashmir, which

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China occupied after the war in 1962. India also claims that Beijing is holding 5,180 square kilometres of land in Kashmir that Pakistan ceded to China in 1963. On their part, the Chinese claim 90,000 square kilometres in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as ‘Southern Tibet’.55 The border row remains a major obstacle to further improvement in Sino-Indian relations.56 It is noteworthy that although China has resolved territorial disputes with Russia, Vietnam, Burma, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal and Pakistan,57 the border with India continues to bedevil bilateral relations.58 In 1987, India and China almost went to war in the Northeastern frontier region of Sumdorung Chu.59 There was some optimism after the signing of the ‘Agreement on the Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary Question’ during Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in April 2005. Since then not only has the prospect for a resolution dimmed, the border has become more contentious.60 A week before Hu Jintao’s visit to India in 2006, the Chinese ambassador in New Delhi, Sun Yuxi, raised temperatures in India when he said, ‘In our position, the whole of the state of Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. And Tawang is only one of the places in it. We are claiming all of that.’61 In May 2007, China refused visa to an Indian Administrative Service Officer from Arunachal Pradesh, saying that he did not require a visa to visit his own country.62 India responded by allowing then Taiwanese presidential candidate Ma Yingjeou to visit Delhi and to hold talks with senior Indian officials in June 2007. Not long after that, Indian media reported border incursions by Chinese soldiers and the supply of small arms to separatist insurgents in India’s northeast. Reports of Chinese military incursions into Sikkim, another bone of contention, in June 2008 reveal the volatility of the border issue.63 Some of these incursions seem to arise from the fact that the two countries have not even managed to agree a mutually agreed-upon line of control, although officially they refer to it as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).64 On account of these factors, India is considered one of the ‘hostile forces’ exploiting the Tibet issue against China’s interests. Fears of Indian entanglement in Tibet and loss of strategic advantage to India

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are long-standing.65 Even when there were very few Indians in Tibet, Mao told Khrushchev in 1959: ‘The Hindus [Indians] acted in Tibet as if it belonged to them.’66 Although, successive Indian governments have been extremely wary of rattling the Chinese on Tibet and despite the overall improvement in Sino-Indian relations, Beijing continues to suspect India of bad intentions in Tibet. The presence of the Dalai Lama and TGIE in India provide the basis for these Chinese fears and suspicions. History also impinges on the present and the future. As Norbu wrote, ‘If India dominates Tibet (as the British Raj had done until 1947), the Chinese feel insecure and threatened.’67 Wang warned ominously: ‘Preparing for a possible future conflict with India is the bottom line as to why the Central Government cannot allow Tibetan independence [or “covert independence” meaning autonomy].’68 Zhao identified three areas of Sino-Indian geopolitical rivalry: Sino-Pakistan alignment, Tibet and the 2,500 kilometres long border dispute.69 In short, the apparently flourishing exile cultural and political apparatus in India, Tibet’s closer civilizational links to India, the history of British-Indian policy towards Tibet, contemporary SinoIndian strategic rivalry, and uncertainties over Indian intentions fosters Chinese insecurities in Tibet. As quoted above, Wang describes how India gives rise to the worst-case calculations driving Beijing’s Tibet policy. Yet, there are analysts in both China and India, who counsel that a resolution of the Tibet issue, one way or the other, holds the key to not just solving the border row, but easing the larger strategic rivalry.70 Chellaney wrote, ‘A genuine China-India rapprochement fundamentally demands a resolution of the Tibet issue through a process of reconciliation and healing initiated by Beijing with its Tibetan minority.’71 Malik opines that until Tibet has been totally ‘pacified’ and ‘[s]inicised as Inner Mongolia’, China would prefer an undefined border as a bargaining chip because of its belief that India prefers an independent Tibet and aids Tibetan separatists.72 Norbu argues that, ‘Tibet has shaped the informal and invisible dynamics of Sino-Indian relations and politics from 1950 to the present [. . .] Tibet is the legal foundation

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on which both India’s and China’s border claims rest.’73 India is reluctant to countenance Chellaney’s advice that it should condition any final border delineation between China and India to an agreement between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, so as to push Sino-Tibetan reconciliation forward. This does not bode well for the resolution of the often-tense Sino-Indian border dispute as the Tibet issue is neither close to a resolution nor are the Tibetans supine enough for assimilation any time soon. Some Chinese scholars also advised Beijing in 2001 that resolving the Tibet issue with the Dalai Lama would ‘reduce China’s strategic risks in the volatile region of the Indian sub-continent’.74 The hard-liners undercut their advice and nothing came of it as the current deadlock in dialogue shows. Hence, the Sino-Tibetan insecurity dilemma is intimately entwined in a mutually reinforcing relationship with the SinoIndian strategic rivalry.75 The upshot from the above is that India is following a policy of ‘cautious hedging’ with a significant element of balancing on the Tibet issue whereby the Tibetan card is kept alive, but not deployed actively in the pursuit of India’s political objectives. This is in stark contrast to Nepal’s policies towards the Tibetans since at least 1989. Nepal’s Increasingly Hostile Policy towards the Tibetans According to the Central Tibetan Administration (Tibetan government-in-exile), Nepal is home to approximately 13,514 Tibetan refugees.76 They live in clusters in parts of Kathmandu city, Pokhra and smaller settlements along the border between Nepal and Tibet Autonomous Region. Tibetan refugees have been living in Nepal since the failed Tibetan uprising on 10 March 1959. The Nepalese Government used to provide Refugee Certificates (RC), which entitled the Tibetans to live and travel within Nepal, but not right to own property, employment, higher education and foreign travel.77 In 1989, Nepal stopped giving this document even to Tibetans born in Nepal to holders of RCs. Nepal’s policy towards the Tibetans have worsened gradually from the high of hosting a CIAfunded Tibetan guerrilla base until 197478 to even arresting visiting

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Tibetan Americans wearing T-shirts with ‘Tibet’ written on them.79 So how did we get here? Change came gradually initially. From the early 1960s to 1974, Kathmandu tolerated a Tibetan guerrilla base in the autonomous kingdom of Mustang, from which the Tibetans conducted raids against the People’s Liberation Army in Tibet.80 Under intense Chinese pressure and America’s ending of support, the Nepalese authorities forcibly closed down the Tibetan base. However, there were no negative fall-outs on Tibetans who were simply passing through or residing in Nepal. In fact, the Tibetans living in Nepal prospered through their traditional Tibetan carpet factories and cultural/religious institutes attracting large numbers of foreign tourists, which served as the main sources of foreign exchange for the Nepalese Government.81 Then, in 1989 Nepal ended its policy of granting RCs to the Tibetans under conditions of improving relations with China82 and increasing number of Tibetans escaping a Chinese crackdown following the pro-independence protests in Tibet that started in 1987. This setback was partly assuaged by an informal agreement between the Nepalese Government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has come to be known as the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’.83 Under the terms of this ‘Agreement’ Tibetans escaping from Tibet are provided ‘safe passage’ to India. When the Nepalese authorities intercept Tibetan escapees, they should be handed over to UNHCR to be processed as refugees before being escorted to India, and not deported to Tibet Autonomous Region. However, the situation for the Tibetans quickly deteriorated when Nepal descended into political chaos because of coalition government instability and frequent government turnovers, the Maoist insurgency that had been raging since 1996, and the assassination of King Birendra in June 2001 by crown prince Dipendra.84 During the bloody civil war with the Maoists, Kathmandu valued not just China’s economic support, but also needed to ensure that the Chinese did not support the Maoists in any form. The Tibetans became a convenient and valuable bargaining chip for the Nepalese Government vis-a`-vis China. The assumption of absolute power

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by King Gyanendra worsened an all-ready precarious situation for the Tibetans. Under Gyanendra’s autocratic rule, the Office of Tibet, the de facto embassy of TGIE, which had functioned in Kathmandu untroubled since the 1960s, was forcibly shutdown. The head of that office, formally known as the ‘Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’, was arrested and kept in detention. Even the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ was flouted. Tibetans were deported into Chinese hands on three separate occasions.85 If the Tibetans are apprehended at or near the border, even the ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ gives them no protection from refoulement. Nepalese observance of the agreement works only if the detention of the Tibetans has been witnessed or brought to the attention of the UNHCR or the Tibetan community. The Nepalese authorities have increasingly ramped up restrictions on Tibetans’ rights of assembly, organization, movement and expression of their political aspirations under the guise of stopping the ill-defined and catch-all category of ‘anti-Chinese’ activities. Rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have extensively documented these deprivations.86 They have documented rights violations that include excessive use of force in quelling peaceful Tibetan rallies and dispersal of crowds, sexual assault of women during arrests and violence against journalists (freedom of movement and peaceful association); arbitrary, pre-emptive arrests and detention; torture, sexual harassment, denial of medical attention during detention; threats of violence, deportation, police surveillance and home-visits, taking photographs and maintaining lists of detained Tibetans. These repressive methods became more pervasive when Kathmandu became the site of almost daily Tibetan protests around the Chinese embassy and the UNHCR compound in response to the Chinese crackdown against a general uprising against Chinese rule all over the Tibetan plateau in 2008.87 As alluded to above, the state of the freedoms of the Tibetan refugees in Nepal has worsened to the point of arresting Tibetans for merely wearing clothing with ‘Tibet’ written on them. This is a stark contrast to the pre-1990s when the Tibetans prospered

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economically and contributed immensely to Nepal’s economy and enjoyed considerable freedoms to organize, move and express their opposition to Chinese rule over their homeland. What accounts for this sharp change in Nepal’s policy and practices towards Tibetans? ‘Handshake over the Himalaya’: Nepal Jumps on Rising China’s Bandwagon An explanation of this shift in Nepal’s policy towards the Tibetans involves a number of domestic, regional and international factors, but the growing Chinese influence and pressure was a crucial driver in itself as well as in tandem with these broader factors. First, the domestic political instability pushed Nepal towards greater vulnerability to and dependence upon China. The monarchical, Republican and Maoist forces reduced Nepal to a failing/weak state.88 These political forces needed not just to keep China happy, but also became dependent upon it for international diplomatic cover and economic aid. Second, the Nepalese elite has always chaffed under the asymmetric power of India over their country, seething at the lack of options, and wary of imagined Indian designs over Nepal.89 India’s imposition of an economic embargo on Nepal in 1989, which threw Nepal’s economy into disarray, was a response to Nepal’s closer ties with China, but it also had the effect of increasing anti-Indian feelings in Nepal and driving it even closer into China’s embrace.90 Given the importance China attaches to the Tibetan issue, Tibet became a relatively cost-free issue to bandwagon with as a counter-balance to India’s ‘hegemonism’. The decline of the Tibetan carpet industry tilted the economic calculus towards China. Third, with its greater economic resources, China became increasingly important as a source of economic support for Nepal relative to the traditional multilateral (World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations and European Union) and bilateral donor-investors (Japan, India, United States and European countries). They have lobbied Nepal’s Government for better treatment of Tibetans in the past.91 Since aid from these traditional sources is still indispensable, Nepalese authorities use what James Scott called ‘weapons of the weak’ to resist pressures from its

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traditional benefactors on Tibetan rights: ‘administrative delays, false compliance, and feigned ignorance. . .in the context of multilateral intervention’.92 These tactics were not used without reason or even willingly, but to satisfy the wishes of Beijing who has a much more pressing issue with the Tibetans.93 It is clear that even in these domestic and South Asian contexts, China’s influence has been unavoidable. So what is the nature and role of Chinese interests in the context of Nepal’s harsher treatment of the Tibetans? First, China has declared Tibet as a ‘core issue’ along with Xinjiang and Taiwan and occasionally its maritime disputes with East Asian neighbours.94 The earliest record of the official description of Tibet as a core issue was during the meeting of then-vice-president Zeng Qinghong with then Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Wickremanayake. Zeng reportedly stated: ‘The Chinese government appreciates the government of Sri Lanka for adhering to the one-China policy for a long period of time and offering precious support to China on Taiwan, Tibet and other questions involving China’s core interest.’95 Since then, Tibet has been repeatedly framed by Chinese authorities as a ‘core issue’, and not the least to the Nepalese officials. As former Maoist Prime Minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, revealed after his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in April 2013, ‘[China’s] major concern [in its relations with Nepal] was security in Tibet’.96 A member of a Nepalese delegation to Beijing revealed that ‘More than anything else, the Chinese seemed wary about the anti-China activities of Tibetan refugees living in Nepal.’97 For Beijing, the 20,000 Tibetans resident in Nepal and their ‘anti-Chinese’ political activities, their ties and influence over Tibetans inside Tibet, and the fact that Nepal is the key route through which Tibetans escape towards the larger Tibetan diaspora in India and further afield, are key challenges that they would like to be addressed by their Nepalese partners.98 To cut off links between Tibetans inside Tibet and the diaspora is a publicly stated goal of the Chinese authorities. As Chen Quanguo, Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region, wrote in 2013:

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We should resolutely resist infiltration and sabotages. . .We should try our best to enable the voices and images of the Central Party Committee to be heard and seen in the vast territory of over 1.2 million square kilometres, and prevent voices and images of hostile forces and the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s clique from being heard and seen.99 Controlling the Tibetans in Nepal through the Nepalese Government and shutting down the routes through which they escape or clandestinely return to Tibet is considered key to estranging the two Tibetan communities. Apart from playing on the residual Nepalese fears of a Chinese invasion, using Tibetan activities as a pretext, Beijing mainly uses economic means to shape Nepal’s behaviour towards the Tibetans.100 According to the Chinese media, China has replaced other bilateral donors as Nepal’s top provider of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).101 According to Nepal’s Department of Industry, between mid-July and mid-December, China contributed US$ 174 million, over 60 per cent of Nepal’s total FDI. This eclipsed India as Nepal’s top FDI contributor as well as Japan and the United States. Mostly soft-loans, Chinese investment projects have security and infrastructure components that target its Tibetan problems in Nepal. When General Chen Bingde, Chief of General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, visited Nepal in 2011, he offered US$ 19 million in military aid to Nepal.102 Then domestic security czar and now-incarcerated Zhou Yongkang came visiting with US$ 50 million.103 In 2012, then Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, declared US$ 113 million in aid, US$ 20 million in grant to Nepal and a three year economic and technical cooperation grant of RMB 750 million.104 China also gave US$ 42,500 to all the 14 districts in Nepal that border Tibet. Since stemming the flow of Tibetans across the Nepal-Tibet/China border is a primary objective, a key focus of Chinese investment in Nepal has been building roads and dry-ports along the border so that the Chinese and their Nepalese allies can control and manage the flow of Tibetans across the border.105

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Nepal’s growing dependence on Chinese economic aid has resulted in high levels of security cooperation on the Tibetan issue. A pattern of increasing security cooperation is observable in correlation with the level of economic largesse Nepal receives from China. In response to the Tibetan uprising in 2008, Beijing put forward a comprehensive security agreement, which was adopted and signed during the visit of Zhou Yongkang in 2011. The agreement was mainly concerned with ‘border security’, ‘inter-agency cooperation’, ‘smuggling’, ‘trafficking’, ‘illegal border crossing’ and ‘intelligence-sharing and cooperation’ between the security forces of the two countries.106 However, more specific security agreements targeting ‘illegal immigration’, which is how Chinese authorities represent escaping Tibetans, intelligence sharing, deployment of Nepalese armed police at the border and the funding and training of Nepalese security forces have been signed and implemented. All these agreements have two key common drivers: cutting off the escape routes for Tibetans and stopping the political activities of the Tibetans living in Nepal. In 2009, Nepal agreed to create ‘border security bases’ to ‘curb illegal activities’ in locations which are all key entry-points for Tibetan escapees with all bases to be manned by a squad of Armed Police Force (APF).107 For instance, a 50-strong contingent of the APF was dispatched to set up base at the border in Mustang.108 A year later, Nepal and China signed a 13-point intelligence sharing agreement on security issues designed to combat anti-China activities in Nepal.109 In exchange for Nepalese information and intelligence on Tibetans and security measures to contain their political activities, China undertook full support in capacity building and training of Nepal’s security forces for deployment along the border with Tibet (Ibid.). True enough, Nepalese security officials from the districts bordering Tibet were given two weeks of training in Beijing ‘to bolster [Nepal’s] immigration system’.110 In November 2010, Chinese authorities convened a meeting with senior Nepalese officials from the border districts in a border town named Chautara where it was agreed to ‘tighten the entry of Tibetan

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nationals into Nepal. . .’111 This was followed by a visit to Nepal by the director of the Public Security Bureau of Tibet Autonomous Region, who met the Nepalese Home Minister and top officials from the security forces and intelligence department and pledged financial assistance of US$ 80,000 to the Nepalese security forces, citing the importance of tackling cross-border ‘drug trafficking and human trafficking’.112 As noted earlier, General Chen Bingde came calling with military aid of US$ 19 million in March 2011. From 30 June to 14 July 2011, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security gave ‘high-level’ training for Nepalese security officials in Beijing, aimed at ‘striking illegal border exit-entry activities’.113 Close on the heels of the above-mentioned Comprehensive Agreement in 2011, the Chinese Public Security Border Defence Force invited a high-level Nepalese delegation to Tibet Autonomous Region to set up ‘an effective system of repatriation of illegal immigrants’ and to create a ‘border to border, point to point, police to police comprehensive mechanism’ for communication and cooperation between the security forces of the two countries.114 These points were driven home once again by Meng Jianzhu, the Chinese Public Security Minister, when the Nepalese deputy Prime Minister visited China in December 2011, emphasizing ‘joint efforts. . .to enhance coordination in exit and entry administration, intelligence and information sharing, and law-enforcement education and training. . .to push forward bilateral law-enforcement cooperation’.115 When Wen Jiabao visited Nepal in 2012, he doled out US$ 1.6 million to ‘enhance the capacity’ of the Nepalese Police. Another US$ 65,000 was given to establish a new APF academy.116 Chinese and Nepalese authorities also agreed to establish district-level links to strengthen border control and monitoring.117 Clearly, China has coerced Nepal through economic instruments and other incentives into a highly coordinated security crackdown on the escape and political activities of the Tibetans living in Nepal. Due to a combination of weakness and calculation of its place in the South Asian balance of power, Nepal has eagerly bandwagoned with China on the Tibetan issue.

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Conclusion This chapter is an effort to add a South Asian dimension to the literature on responding to the rise of China, which remains understudied and fixated on the Sino-Indian competition. It pointed out further that the literature is US-centric and East Asia-focused, treating the South Asian engagement with China only as a function of the simultaneous competitive rise of China and India. For analytical focus, the chapter compared the respective policies of India and Nepal towards the Tibet issue in the context of strengthening Chinese pressure and influence commensurate to its growing resources and clout. The chapter began by surveying in turn the theoretical perspectives on how non-hegemon states respond to rising states and the different responses of East Asian states to China’s rise. Next, after an overview of the broader picture of South Asian engagement with China, the chapter conducted a detailed examination of Indian and Nepalese management of its policies towards the Tibetans, the chapter argued that India practises a strategy of ‘cautious hedging’ on the Tibetan issue – keeping the Tibetan card alive without deploying it strongly in the pursuit of its other political objectives – within a broader strategy of hedging with a considerable element of balancing towards China. When it comes to Nepal’s policies towards the Tibetans since at least 1989, Nepal has practised a strategy of ‘selective bandwagoning’ with China. With these two cases, the South Asian dimension is added to the literature dealing with how the Asian states are responding to the rise of China.

Notes 1. Waltz, K., Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 125–6. 2. Roy, D., ‘Southeast Asia and China: Balancing or Bandwagoning?’ Contemporary Southeast Asia, 27/2 (2005), p. 306. 3. Schweller, R. L., Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2008).

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4. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 125– 6; and Goldstein, A., From Bandwagon to Balance-of-Power Politics: Structural Constraints and Politics in China 1949– 1978 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 5. Walt, S. M., The Origin of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 17. 6. Schweller, R. L., ‘Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In’, International Security, 19/1 (1994), pp. 72 – 107. 7. Goldstein, A., Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 34– 5. 8. See Medeiros, E., ‘Strategic Hedging and the Future of Asia-Pacific Stability’, Washington Quarterly, 29/1 (2005), pp. 145– 67; and Sutter, R., China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 9. Denny Roy treats ‘engagement’ as a separate strategy, but this chapter categorizes it as an element present in both hedging and bandwagoning. See Roy, ‘Southeast Asia and China’. 10. Medeiros, ‘Strategic Hedging’. 11. Keohane, R. and Nye, J., Power and Interdependence (New York: Harper Collins, 1989); Mueller, J., Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (Basic Books, 1989); and Van Evera, S., ‘Primed for Peace: Europe after the Cold War’, International Security, 35/3 (1990/1991), pp. 14 – 16. 12. Copeland, D. C., ‘Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations’, International Security, 20/4 (1996), pp. 5 – 41. 13. Krasner, S. (ed.), International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Ruggie, J., Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of International Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 7. 14. For a robust debate see, Mearsheimer, J., ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, International Security, 19/3 (1994/95), pp. 5–49; and Keohane, R. and Martin, L., ‘The Promise of International Institutions’, International Security, 20/1 (1995), pp. 39–51. 15. Acharya, A., ‘Theoretical Perspectives on International Relations in Asia’ in Shambaugh, D. and Yahuda, M., International Relations of Asia, (New York and Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pp. 69 – 70. 16. For a critique and rebuttal, see Acharya, A., ‘Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?’ International Security, 28/3 (2003/2004), pp. 149– 64; and Kang, D. C., ‘Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks’, International Security, 27/4 (2003), pp. 57 – 85. 17. Sil, R. and Katzenstein, P., ‘The Contributions of Eclectic Theorizing to the Study and Practice of International Relations’ in C. Reus-Smit and D. Snidal (eds), Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 109– 30. 18. Pape, R., ‘Soft Balancing against the United States’, International Security, 30/1 (2005), pp. 7 – 45. 19. He, K., ‘Institutional Balancing and International Relations Theory: Economic Interdependence and Balance of Power Strategies in Southeast Asia’, European Journal of International Relations,14/3 (2008), p. 492.

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20. See for example, Gilley, B. and O’Neil, A. (eds), Middle Powers and the Rise of China (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014); Luttwak, E., The Rise of China v. The Logic of Strategy (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); and Tellis, A., Tanner, T., and Keough, J. (eds), Strategic Asia 2011– 12: Asia Responds to Its Rising Powers – China and India (Washington: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2011). 21. See Takahara, Y., ‘Resilience and Fragility in Japan-China Relations’ in N. Swanstro¨m and R. Kokubun (eds), Sino-Japanese Relations: The Need for Conflict Prevention and Management (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008); and Sutter, R., Brown, M. and Adamson, T., Balancing Acts: The US Rebalance and Asia-Pacific Stability (Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, 2013). 22. See for example, Medeiros, E. et al., Pacific Currents: The Responses of U.S. Allies and Security Partners in East Asia to China’s Rise (Berkeley: RAND, 2008). 23. Heginbotham, E. and Samuels, R., ‘Japan’s Dual Hedge’, Foreign Affairs (2002); Mochizuki, M., ‘China-Japan Relations: Downward Spiral or a New Equilibrium?’ in Shambaugh, D., Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 135 – 50. 24. Christensen, T., ‘The Advantages of an Assertive China: Responding to Beijing’s Abrasive Diplomacy’, Foreign Affairs (March/April 2011), p. 59. 25. Pape, ‘Soft Balancing’. 26. Swaine, M., ‘China’s Assertive Behavior—Part One: On “Core Interests”’, China Leadership Monitor (November 15, 2010). 27. A portion of this section has been published as Topgyal, T., ‘Charting the Tibet Issue in the Sino – Indian Border Dispute’, China Report, 47 (2) (2011), pp. 115 – 31. 28. Zeenews, ‘Narendra Modi invite to PM-in-exile thrills Tibetans,’ 27 May, 2014, available at: http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/narendra-modiinvite-to-pm-in-exile-thrills-tibetans_935200.html (accessed 15 January, 2015). 29. Norbu, D., China’s Tibet Policy (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001), p. 297. 30. Mohan, C. R., Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Penguin, 2003), pp. xiv –xv; and Chellaney, B., Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2006). 31. Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon, p. 169. 32. Stobdan, P., ‘Fifty Years and Counting’, The Times of India, 13 March 2009, available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/TOP-ARTICLEFifty-Years-And-Counting-/articleshow/4256728.cms (accessed 30 October 2015). 33. See Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon, pp. 168– 71; Chellaney, Asian Juggernaut, pp. 159 – 62, 189– 94; and Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, pp. 283 – 97. 34. See British Foreign Office, ‘Tibet and the Question of Chinese Suzerainty’, FO371/35755, 10 April 1943; Goldstein, M., A History of Modern Tibet, 1913–

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35.

36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

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1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), p. 634; and Shakya, T., Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 119. Jain, R. K. (ed.), ‘India-China Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India’, 29 April 1954, China-South Asian Relations: 1947 – 1980, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: The Harvester Press, 1981), pp. 61 – 7, 77 – 80. ‘Sino-Indian Joint Press Communique’, 23 December 1988, available at: http://www.cctv.com/lm/1064/13/6.html. ‘Declaration on Principles for Relations and Comprehensive Cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of India’, 25 June 2003, available at: http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID¼ 505&As pxAutoDetectCookieSupport ¼ 1. ‘Joint Statement of the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China’, 11 April 2005, available at: http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm? dtl/6577/Jointþ Statement þ of þ the þ Republic þ of þ India þ and þ the þ Peoples þ Republic þ of þ China. Author interview with Bharat Karnad, Centre for Policy Studies, New Delhi, 10 August, 2007. Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon, p. 168. Author interview with Brahma Chellaney, Centre for Policy Studies, New Delhi, 10 August 2007. Subrahmanyam, K., Shedding Shibboleths: India’s Evolving Strategic Outlook (Delhi: Wordsmith, 2005), p. 189. Cohen, S., India: Emerging Power (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), p. 259. See Jain, ‘India-China Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India’, pp. 473– 4; and ‘Prudently handle Tibet issue: China tells India’, Times of India, 24 August 2010, available at: http://timesofi ndia.indiatimes.com/india/Prudently-handle-Tibet-issue-China-tells-India/ articleshow/6424968.cms. Cohen, India: Emerging Power, p. 259. Xinbo, W., ‘Security Practice of a Modernizing and Ascending Power’ in Muthiah Alagappa (ed.), Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 130. Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, pp. 228–59; and Margolis, E., War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 266. Margolis, War at the Top of the World, p. 266. Norbu’s lower figure takes into account the disengagement that took place in October-November, 1995 following an agreement during the eighth session of the Joint Working Group (consisting of Indian and Chinese representatives tasked to find a resolution to the border dispute) in August 1995. See Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, p. 239.

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50. See Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, pp. 242–6; Margolis, War at the Top of the World, pp. 267– 8; and Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, pp. 223 – 4. 51. Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, pp. 231– 8; and Margolis, War at the Top of the World, pp. 266– 7. 52. Chellaney, Asian Juggernaut, p. 38. 53. Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, pp. 319– 27; and Ganguly, S., ‘Why India Must Stand up for Tibet’, Newsweek, 18 March 2008, available at: http:// www.newsweek.com/india-must-stand-tibet-84417. 54. Chellaney, Asian Juggernaut, p. 169; Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, pp. 285 – 92; Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, pp. 216– 28; and Malik, M., ‘IndiaChina Competition Revealed in Ongoing Border Disputes’, Power and Interest News Report (PINR), 9 October 2007, available at: http://www.policypointers. org/Page/View/6326. 55. Malik, ‘India-China Competition Revealed in Ongoing Border Disputes’. 56. Garver, J., ‘Sino-Indian Rapproachement and the Sino-Pakistan Entente’, Political Science Quarterly, 111/2 (1996), p. 337. 57. Carlson, A., Unifying China, Integrating with the World: Securing Chinese Sovereignty in the Reform Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 49 – 91; and Zhao, S., ‘The Making of China’s Periphery Policy’ in Zhao, S. (ed.), Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), pp. 265– 6. 58. Ramachandran, S., ‘China Toys with India’s Border’, Asia Times, 27 June 2008, available at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JF27Df01.html. 59. Subrahmanyam, Shedding Shibboleths, pp. 216– 28. 60. Malik, ‘India-China Competition Revealed in Ongoing Border Disputes’. 61. See ‘Arunachal Pradesh is our territory: Chinese Envoy’, Rediff India Abroad, 14 November 2006: available at: http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/nov/ 14china.htm; Goswami, N., ‘China’s Territorial Claim on Arunachal Pradesh: Crafting an Indian Response’, IDSA Issue Brief, 25 October 2010, available at: http://www.idsa.in/system/files/IB_Chinasterrorialclaim.pdf. 62. Goswami, ‘China’s Territorial Claim on Arunachal Pradesh’, p. 2. 63. ‘China Incursion to Be Raised, Sikkim is a Closed Chapter: India’, Indian Express, 20 June 2008, available at: http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/chi na-incursion-to-be-raised-sikkim-is-a-closed-chapter-india/325132/. 64. Chellaney, Asian Juggernaut, p. 169. 65. Whiting, A., ‘The PLA and China’s Threat Perception’, China Quarterly, 146 (June 1996), p. 614; and Wang Lixiong, ‘Tibet: China’s 21st Century Soft Underbelly’, SWB, 18 May 1999, FE/D3537/G. 66. Zedong, Mao, ‘Discussion between N.S. Kruschev and Mao Zedong’, Cold War International History Project, 10 March 1959, available at: http://digitalarchive. wilsoncenter.org/document/112088 (accessed 30 October 2015). 67. Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, p. 297. 68. Wang, ‘Tibet: China’s 21st Century Soft Underbelly’. 69. Zhao, ‘The Making of China’s Periphery Policy’, pp. 268 – 9.

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70. See Zhao, ‘The Making of China’s Periphery Policy’, p. 181; and Chellaney, Asian Juggernaut, p. 263. 71. Chellaney, Asian Juggernaut, p. 263 72. Malik, ‘India-China Competition Revealed in Ongoing Border Disputes’. 73. Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy, p. 296. 74. Rabgey, T. and Sharlho, T. W., ‘Sino-Tibetan Dialogue in the Post-Mao Era: Lessons and Prospects’, Policy Studies, 12 (Honolulu: East-West Center, 2004), p. 29. 75. Topgyal, T., ‘Charting the Tibet Issue in the Sino – Indian Border Dispute’, China Report, 47/1 (2011), pp. 115– 31. 76. This figure probably does not capture those who are not registered with agents of the Central Tibetan Administration. Other organizations have provided the larger number of 20,000 Tibetans living in Nepal, which is probably more accurate. Central Tibtean Administration website can be accessed at: http://ti bet.net/about-cta/tibet-in-exile/. 77. Tibet’s Stateless Nationals: Tibetan Refugees in Nepal (Berkeley CA: Tibet Justice Centre, June 2002), p. 104. 78. Knaus, J., Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle For Survival (New York: Public Affairs Press, 1999), pp. 236– 310. 79. Human Rights Watch, Under China’s Shadow: Mistreatment of Tibetans in Nepal, (New York: March 2014), pp. 77; Voice of America, ‘Tibet Jacket Causes Arrest of American and Canadian Tourists In Nepal’, (22 May 2014). 80. Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War, pp. 236– 54. 81. Frechette, A., Tibetans in Nepal: The Dynamics of International Assistance among a Community in Exile (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002). 82. In 1986, China and Nepal signed a treaty titled ‘Agreement on Trade, Intercourse, and Related Questions Between the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and Nepal’, P.R.C.-Nepal, 1 August 1986, arts., 1(3)-(5), reprinted in Nepal’s Relations with India and China: Documents, 1947 –1992, supra note 20, pp. 1381– 6. 83. Frechette, Tibetans in Nepal, pp. 18– 19. 84. See Bassnet, Y., ‘From Politicization of Grievances to Political Violence: An Analysis of the Maoist Movement in Nepal’, Development Studies Institute Working Paper, 07– 78 (London: London School of Economics and Political Science, March 2009); and Nepali Times, ‘It was Dipendra Probe team finds smoking gun’, (15 June 2001). 85. International Campaign for Tibet, ‘Nepal deports 18 Tibetan refugees to Chinese authorities; refugees face immediate danger’, 31 May 2003 and ‘New refoulement case in Nepal: Tibetan exile returned to Tibet’, 3 August 2007. 86. See Human Rights Watch, Appeasing China: Restricting the Rights of Tibetans in Nepal (New York: July 2008); Human Rights Watch, Under China’s Shadow; and Amnesty International, ‘Nepal: Respect Basic Freedoms during Tibetan Holiday Season: Joint press release,’ 9 March 2011.

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87. Human Rights Watch, Appeasing China, pp. 14– 49. 88. See Shah, S., Civil Society in Uncivil Places: Soft State and Regime Change in Nepal, (Washington DC: East-West Center, 2008); and Vaughn, B., Nepal: Political Developments and Bilateral Relations with the United States (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service, 7 April 2011). 89. Dhruba, K., ‘Reconsidering Nepal-India Bilateral Relations,’ Contributions to Nepal Studies, 21/1 (1994), pp. 73– 89. 90. Dhruba, ‘Reconsidering Nepal-India Bilateral Relations’, pp. 75 – 7. 91. Frechette provides a variation on this theme see, Frechette, Tibetans in Nepal, pp. 123 – 48. 92. Ibid., p. 123; for Scott’s theory, see his Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 93. ‘Tried to Allay China’s Federalism Fears’, Kathmandu Post, 21 April 2013, available at: http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2013/04/20/ top-story/tried-to-allay-chinas-federalism-fears/247799.html. 94. Swaine, ‘China’s Assertive Behavior’. 95. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, ‘Zeng Qinghong Meets with Wickremanayake’ (22 April 2006), available at: http://www.fm prc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/yzs/gjlb/2782/2784/t248856.htm. 96. ‘Tried to Allay China’s Federalism Fears’. 97. Republica, ‘Nepal, China to combat cross-border crimes’, (27 July 2012). 98. See ‘Expert analysis: Friendly relations between China and Nepal benefit the stability of Tibet,’ Wenweipo (Hong Kong), 15 January 2012 [’专家解读：中尼友 好利西藏稳定’, 文汇报 (香港), 2012/01/15], available at: http://trans.wenweipo. com/gb/paper.wenweipo.com/2012/01/15/CH1201150002.htm; and ‘Xi Jinping meets with Nepal UCPNM President Prachanda’, Xinhua, 18 April 2013 [习近平会见尼泊尔联合 尼共 (毛) 主席普拉昌达，新华网, 2013/04/18], available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-04/18/c_115444446. htm. 99. Chen, Q., ‘Conscientiously Studying and Implementing the Important Essence of the Speech Made by the General Secretary Xi Jinping at the National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference’, Qiushi (‘Seeking Truth’), 21 (Beijing: 2013). 100. Frechette, Tibetans in Nepal, p. 135. 101. ‘China Becomes Largest FDI Contributor in Nepal’, Xinhua, 22 January 2014, available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-01/22/c_133066 134.htm. 102. ‘Chinese Army Chief Concludes Nepal Visit’, Times of India, 26 March 2011. 103. ‘China seeks measures to curb cross-border crime’, Kathmandu Post, 22 December 2010, available at: www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2010/ 12/22/nation/china-seeks-measures-to-curb-cross-border-crime/216358/. 104. ‘China pledges Rs 9.75b grant’, Republica, (15 January 2012), available at: http://archives.myrepublica.com/2012/portal/?action¼ news_details&news_ id ¼ 40812.

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105. The Kathmandu Post, ‘China encourages investment in Nepal’ (15 January 2012); Republica, ‘Nepal to Seek US$ 5b Credit during Wen Visit’ (13 December 2011). 106. Human Rights Watch, Under China’s Shadow, p. 29. 107. Nepalnews.com, ‘Govt mulls security deployment to Nepal-China border’ (16 July 2009). 108. ‘APF team unable to settle on border with Tibet’, eKantipur.com, 15 April 2011. 109. ‘Nepal-China info sharing cell’, eKantipur.com, 7 August 2010. 110. ‘China seeks measures to curb cross-border crime’. 111. ‘Nepal, China to check movement of Tibetans’, Press Trust of India, 29 November 2010. 112. ‘China seeks measures to curb cross-border crime’. 113. ‘Department Head Zhou Shukui and senior police officer delegation from Nepal hold talks’, Ministry of Public Security (PRC), July 7 2011 [‘周书奎副局长 与尼泊尔内政部高级警官代表团举行会谈’ 公安部网站, 2001/07/07], available at: http://www.mps.gov.cn/n16/n80254/n81081/3134813.html. 114. ‘Delegation of Nepalese Border Police Concludes Visit to the Tibet Autonomous Region’, People’s Daily, 2 September 2011 [‘尼泊尔边境警务代表 团圆满结束对西藏自治区参观访问’, 人民网, 2011/09/02], available at: http://bf. people.com.cn/GB/15569569.html. 115. ‘Meng Jianzhu: Actively Promoting law enforcement security cooperation between China and Nepal’, China News.com, 26 December 2011 [‘孟建柱：积极 推动中国与尼泊尔两国执法安全合作’, 中国新闻网, 2011/12/26], available at: www. chinanews.com/gn/2011/12-26/3560546.shtml. 116. ‘China pledges Rs 9.75b grant’. 117. Republica, ‘Mechanism to check crime on China border’ (5 June 2012).

CHAPTER 5 SINO-MONGOLIAN RELATIONS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: THE INNER MONGOLIA FACTOR Sharad K. Soni

Introduction Although sporadic interaction between nomadic Mongols and sedentary Chinese occurred over the centuries, a good starting point to study Sino-Mongolian relations can be traced back to the legacy of Mongol conquests in the thirteenth century. The two peoples came into direct contact under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) but this contact resulted in conflict under the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The Mongols fell victims to the ‘divide and rule policy’ pursued by the Ming rulers so much so that it affected the nature of Sino-Mongolian relations which took a U-turn after the Manchus came to power and established the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). The rise of the Manchus gave way to the vigorous Mongol fragmentation that led to the sharp geographical division of the Mongols. Consequently, what came to the fore was the emergence of mainly two Mongolias – ‘Outer’ and ‘Inner’, strikingly distinct from each other. The Manchus were very specific in making the distinction between the inhabitants of two

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Mongolias, i.e., Northern and Southern Mongols who came to be called as Wei Meˆng-Ku (Outer Mongols) and Nei Meˆng-Ku (Inner Mongols).1 While Inner Mongolia has remained a part of China from 1636, Outer Mongolia (now Mongolia), which came under Manchu overlordship in 1691, declared its independence under the influence of Chinese revolution in 1911. But it was the Mongolian revolution of 1921, which paved the way for proclamation of Mongolia as the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) that truly signalled Outer Mongolia’s exit from the Chinese orbit. However, in the post-1921 period Mongolia got drawn into the Soviet orbit, and ultimately became a major irritant in Sino-Soviet relations. The state of Sino-Soviet relations determined the course of Mongolia’s relations with China, which adversely affected Sino-Mongolian relations. As such, as a pawn of geopolitics Mongolia could not escape from being embroiled in the Sino-Soviet rivalry and eventually it had to take the Soviet side in what Clubb termed the ‘Sino-Soviet Cold War’.2 A major element of this of course was that the PRC (as with its Republican predecessors) claimed Outer Mongolia as part of its ‘lost territories’. From 1921 until the end of the Cold War the former Soviet Union dominated Mongolia’s internal and external policies, while on the other side, relations between China and Mongolia became strained. But the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and the end of the Cold War altered the geopolitical situation of Mongolia. This changed the whole scenario, which also encouraged China to consider its future relations with Mongolia in the framework of new geopolitical realities on the northern side of its border. In fact, normalization of Sino-Mongolian relations owes much to a series of events in the middle and late 1980s that led to Sino-Soviet rapprochement following a radical shift in Moscow’s China policy.3 What was termed as substantial break-through in the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations, came only after the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced his Vladivostok initiative on 28 July 1986, which marked a significant shift in Moscow’s Asia policy in general and China’s policy in particular.4 Improvement in relations with China was the key issue addressed by Gorbachev during his

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Vladivostok speech, and hence, Mongolia too figured prominently in his overtures. For Gorbachev, normalization of Sino-Soviet relations to a great extent also rested on improvement in Sino-Mongolian relations, and it was thus necessary to address the issue of Soviet troop withdrawals from the MPR. This had been a core Chinese security concern throughout the Cold War and remained an impediment to normalization of both Sino-Soviet and Sino-Mongolian relations.5 This issue was resolved with the conclusion of the 2 March 1990 Soviet-Mongolian Protocol that declared that all Soviet troops would be removed by 1992. Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Mongolia not only marked the removal of a major obstacle to the full normalization of Sino-Mongolian relations but also paved the way for the two sides to define their relationship in terms of a ‘mutually beneficial partnership’ in several key areas. Soviet troop withdrawals, and ultimately the Soviet collapse, provided Mongolia a rare historical opportunity to regain its ‘de-facto independence’ though at the cost of economic stagnation. Dependence and dominance – the two fundamental features that had characterized the bilateral ties between Mongolia and the former Soviet Union – then went into oblivion. It was around this time that Chinese interest in Mongolia began improving so quickly, ‘as if to fill in the power vacuum left by the Soviet Union’.6 Favourable Chinese policies came to light as the concept of reforms and restructuring began to take hold in Mongolia with ‘first moves made to rationalise the administration along with the drive for economic efficiency’.7 It was in 1994 that the two sides put a seal on their commitments towards restoration of normalized relations when a new Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed on quite a new basis during Chinese Premier Li Peng’s visit to Mongolia. According to Article 1 of the treaty, Mongolia and China made commitments to ‘develop their good neighbourly relations and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect for each other’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, for the principle of mutual non-attack, non-interference in internal affairs, for equality of rights, for mutual advantages, and for peaceful co-existence’. Since then Sino-Mongolian relations have witnessed a marked shift from mistrust and hostilities to confidence building in matters

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of bilateral and multilateral concerns. This has been given further impetus by the development of China’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy. In the past decade, one could witness profound changes in China’s foreign relations, especially with its neighbours. In the Chinese academic and policy-making circles, the focus is now no longer on the need to maintain a favourable regional environment that was a core policy of the Deng Xiaoping era after 1989. Instead, Chinese policies lay emphasis more on developing close trade and economic ties with its neighbours in order to make China the nucleus of regional integration. Beijing’s logic for this strategy appears to be that growing economic interdependence between China and its neighbours provides a uniting factor that limits the potential for them to align against China. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership the ‘periphery’ diplomacy has received a sustained push as China, for the first time ever, has categorized its neighbours as ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’. Nevertheless, the role played by the Chinese frontier provinces in the development of Beijing’s relations with its neighbours is of paramount importance. Sino-Mongolian relations too can be seen in the context of Beijing’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy in which Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China is an important factor. It is in this background that this chapter sets out to analyse China’s relations with Mongolia in the past decade in the light of Beijing’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy besides reconnoitring the Inner Mongolia factor in Sino-Mongolian relations by addressing two major themes: (i) how Inner Mongolia is placed within the PRC so far as China’s state-building agenda is concerned; and (ii) what role Inner Mongolia plays in implementing Chinese diplomacy and foreign policy agenda towards Mongolia, i.e., to explore the importance of Inner Mongolia in influencing the ethnic Mongols on the other side of the border for cementing Sino-Mongol ties in the China ‘rise’ scenario.

Beijing’s ‘Periphery’ Diplomacy In the post-Cold War period, one of the key developments in China’s foreign policy and national security interests has been Beijing’s

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prioritization of maintaining cordial relations with neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific region.8 It is perhaps due to the belief that overemphasis on one’s own security and neglecting others’ will only contribute to escalation of military development in the world.9 China’s leadership acknowledges that ‘the passive response to the security threat was itself a threat’,10 and hence, actively managing relations and building a favourable international environment became the focal point of Chinese foreign policy, and more precisely its diplomacy towards its periphery or neighbouring countries. The nature of this diplomacy can be described both as a ‘non-confrontational’ relationship as well as a ‘cooperative’ relationship. That is how China initiated its peripheral diplomacy with a clear understanding that rising powers have a critical need for a friendly periphery, which Li Yonghui, Director of the School of International Relations, Beijing Foreign Studies University, has recently described as a ‘strategic periphery belt’.11 Apparently, as part of its coherent foreign policy, Beijing developed an integrated regional policy, known as ‘zhoubian zhengce’ (periphery policy) or ‘mulin zhengce’ (good-neighbouring policy) to deal with the negative situation, if any, with regard to China’s relations with neighbouring countries.12 The idea of devising such a policy was intended to explore ‘the common ground with Asian countries in both economic and security arenas by conveying the image of a responsible power willing to contribute to stability and cooperation in the region’.13 Economic motivation, thus, can be regarded as one of the main guiding principles in China’s periphery policy,14 which also called for settling the remaining border disputes peacefully and preventing alliances of neighbours with what Beijing believed as ‘hostile’ foreign powers, such as Russia, Japan and the US. In other words, establishing good relationships with neighbours was intended to provide ‘China with a more secure environment in its periphery as a leverage to increase its influence in world affairs’.15 China’s security environment in its periphery witnessed an enormous improvement after it began implementing the goodneighbouring policy, which indeed resulted in an increased mutual trust between China and its neighbours. In many respects the ‘good

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neighbour’ policy was an early example of China’s new security concept which was described in few succinct words and produced for the first time in a working paper in 1999: mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and cooperation.16 However, this improvement also owes much to the late-Cold War period of the 1980s when two significant policy shifts took place. While the first was to abandon ideology as the guidance and develop friendly relations with neighbours regardless of their ideologies and political systems,17 the second policy shift was to change the practice of defining China’s relations with its neighbours on the basis of the state of their relations either with the former Soviet Union or the United States. One excellent example of the second policy shift was the normalization of relations with Mongolia. A major influence on Chinese thinking about its relations in the neighbouring region was the souring of Beijing’s economic relations with Western countries after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. Due to sanctions, China was forced to turn its attention to develop political and economic relations with its neighbours, particularly those sharing common borders. In 1990, Deng Xiaoping propounded two main post-Cold War foreign policy trajectories for China, i.e., pursuing ‘anti-hegemonism’ and establishing a new multipolar international order of politics and economics.18 Such an approach, with some modifications, is still relevant to understanding China’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy today. It, therefore, appears that the post-Cold War developments in China’s periphery policy resulted, firstly, in the establishment of bilateral relations based on the principles of non-interference in each other’s affairs, a much needed relief from the potential fear for a small state like Mongolia, and secondly, both China and its former communist neighbours had reason to cooperate politically to resolve problems, such as border issues that had poisoned relations in the past. In this context, Jiang Zemin’s report to the 16th National Congress of the CPC that took place in November 2002 holds relevance. He declared: We will continue to cement our friendly ties with our neighbours and persist in building a good-neighbourly

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relationship and partnership with them. We will step up regional cooperation and bring our exchanges and cooperation with our surrounding countries to a new height.19 This was the first time that ‘regional cooperation’ was mentioned in the report of the National Congress of the CPC and its subsequently became the main direction of China’s periphery diplomacy. Further, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech entitled ‘China’s Development and Asia’s Rejuvenation’ delivered at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit on 7 October 2003 was also noteworthy. While elaborating on China’s good-neighbour policy he stated that Beijing ‘pursues a policy of bringing harmony, security and prosperity to neighbours’, and that ‘bringing prosperity to neighbours is to step up mutually beneficial cooperation with the neighbouring countries, deepen regional and sub-regional cooperation, and vigorously facilitate economic integration in the region, thus achieving common development with other Asian countries’.20 Under Hu Jintao leadership realizing a ‘Harmonious World’ became a catchphrase of China’s foreign policy, which he first pronounced at the Afro-Asian Summit in Jakarta in 2005.21 In order to realize a ‘Harmonious World’ China was well aware of the fact that a peaceful and secure environment in its periphery is vital and hence relations with neighbouring countries must continue to be developed or improved. In the past decade, fundamental changes that have been noticed in China’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy points to the fact that the ‘periphery’ has become a primary concern for Beijing and that China’s goodneighbour approach has been ‘to reassure its regional neighbourhood that its rise was an opportunity not a threat’.22 China’s rise, particularly in terms of its economic development, not only helped it boost the country’s national strength, but also opened market and business opportunities for neighbouring countries. Since China’s interests vis-a`-vis its neighbours are primarily motivated by economic and security concerns, the expanding relationships between the two sides have found their expressions in the following:23 (i) trade flows in which China has become the largest trading partner of most of the neighbouring countries; (ii) energy cooperation where China is

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not only a top customer but also a great supplier; (iii) military cooperation; (iv) growing ties in infrastructure development, including road and dam construction; and (v) a new currency exchange system in which transactions are performed directly without involving the US dollar in otherwise internationally non-convertible Chinese currency (the yuan). While these developments in China’s rise scenario have contributed immensely to magnify China’s diplomatic clout in its frontier regions, in the recent past there have been noticeable changes in Beijing’s periphery diplomacy that pose challenges to China’s dealings with its neighbours. At its core, this has been driven by the fact that what China considers as its ‘peaceful rise’ has at times not appeared so to many of its Asian neighbours. There have been accusations that China’s foreign policies have become more rigid under the Xi Jinping administration when compared with the same policies under the Hu Jintao administration.24 This rigidity is closely connected to the fact that China is now more aggressively engaging itself in its periphery diplomacy, which is ‘characterised by rising confidence and assertiveness in projecting and protecting Chinese national interests’.25 On 24– 5 October 2013, for the first time ever, China organized a high-level meeting to discuss its periphery diplomacy and set guidelines to pursue its relations with neighbouring countries. It was the first major meeting on foreign policy since 2006, though it focused only on China’s frontier regions rather than its overall foreign policy. Although the meeting placed emphasis on changing the way China had been approaching its neighbours, it also reaffirmed that maintaining a peaceful and stable periphery would remain a core priority of Chinese diplomacy. Xi Jinping’s keynote address to the meeting highlighted the principles of Chinese diplomacy into four basic concepts: amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness.26 His message was clear and straightforward, as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai describes, ‘China remains committed to peace and stability in the region, to good neighbourliness with others, to common prosperity and a stronger community, and to peaceful dialogue and negotiations on disputes.’27 Commenting on Beijing’s periphery diplomacy Qu Xing, Director at the China

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Institute of International Studies, remains expectant when he points out that China’s relations with its neighbours has now moved into a period of ‘upgrade, acceleration, and added power’.28 The political elite in China may agree on this but it is less than clear that a number of its neighbours would be so sanguine about China’s intentions and strategic behaviour. Analyzing the deliberations of the October 2013 meeting, Glaser and Pal doubt in this respect that ‘a mere internal meeting will transform things on the ground’.29 This is more so because ‘the nature of China’s problems with its neighbours is such that despite considerable advancements in trade and economic relations, matters turn murky the moment questions of territory, jurisdiction and sovereignty come in’.30 And there is no doubt that this factor is recognized by the Chinese leadership with Presdient Xi noting twice in his keynote address the need for China to ‘safeguard’ China’s sovereignty as part of its diplomacy toward periphery countries. What, then, is the state of relations between China and its northern neighbour Mongolia which often remains sceptical despite Beijing’s reassurance of a good-neighbourly policy towards this thinly populated country?

Implications for Sino-Mongolian Relations In the past decade, the most significant achievement of China’s periphery diplomacy towards Mongolia has been the elevation of a Sino-Mongolian bilateral relationship into a ‘strategic partnership’. The strategic partnership, which was signed in 2011, is not only a road map for future cooperation between the two sides but also an expression of China’s assurances of a good-neighbourly policy towards Mongolia. This is indicative of the fact that while China is advancing its policy of institutionalizing relations with smaller neighbours in its periphery, Mongolia is securing assurances of its sovereignty, economic remunerations and security guarantees albeit with ongoing fears of Chinese dominance at least in the economic and trade fields. Since reassuring equal partnership and non-intervention in the internal affairs of neighbouring states is what China considers as the main objective of its periphery diplomacy, such Chinese

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endorsement is the most valued for Mongolia’s sovereignty.31 Unlike the Cold War period, China now respects Mongolia’s independence and sovereignty and that ‘Mongolia’s security is not to be viewed in terms of Chinese threat’.32 China, in return, secures guarantees from the neighbouring states including Mongolia on its own foreign policy objectives with regard to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang,33 which are related to its ‘One China’ policy. Moreover, the ethnic connection of Mongolia with Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang also concerns China so much so that these frontier regions play significant roles in cementing Sino-Mongolian ties. However, the Sino-Mongolian strategic partnership came to the fore as a result of both the theoretical approach in thinking as well as the practical approach in reality between the two sides over the past decade or so. The beginning of the new millennium saw the leadership of the two countries playing proactive roles in further strengthening of their post-Cold War ties. The two countries continued maintaining a good momentum of high-level exchanges. In June 2003, as part of a tour to expand Beijing’s ties with its northern neighbours, the new Chinese president Hu Jintao visited Mongolia. The fact that Mongolia was included in the itinerary of Hu’s first presidential overseas trip only shows that the new leadership in China too had adopted a more active attitude towards developing all around cooperation with Mongolia. His visit saw the two sides establishing a good-neighbourly partnership of mutual trust. Significantly, in July 2004 Mongolian president N. Bagabandi visited China which was followed by yet another high level visit in November 2005 by the newly elected president of Mongolia, N. Enkhbayar, who witnessed the signing of ten cooperation agreements in the fields of mining, transportation, energy, infrastructure projects etc., apart from Mongolian acquisition of Chinese preferential export credit worth US$ 300 million.34 Simultaneously a series of border-related SinoMongolian agreements were also signed, giving Mongolia for the first time in its modern history a fully defined national boundary. It is to be noted that after almost four years of hard work on the border demarcation issue, the entire 4,677 kilometres of the SinoMongolian border was digitally mapped and 1,513 border

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demarcation posts were installed.35 Further, in November 2006, Mongolian Prime Minister Miegombyn Enkhbold paid an official visit to China and witnessed the signing of several MoUs, including a gift of 2000 tonnes of wheat from China to Mongolia, cooperation between the foreign ministries of the two countries as well as cooperation on exploration of oil and coal.36 From the other side, the visit of the then Chinese vice president Xi Jinping to Mongolia in June 2008 was considered as yet another fruitful high-level visit for boosting bilateral cooperation as the two sides signed the ‘medium-term programme for cooperation of trade and economy.’ In April 2009, the visit of the then Mongolian Prime Minister Sanj Bayar to China provided an opportunity for the two sides to carry on further talks and exchange their views on a wide range of bilateral issues concerning political, economic, trade and cultural cooperation.37 The very next year in April/May 2010, Mongolian president Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj paid a state visit to China and attended the Shanghai World Expo. His visit was reciprocated by the then Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to Mongolia in June 2010. It was in June 2011 that the official visit of the then Mongolian Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold to China witnessed the two sides agreeing to upgrade their bilateral ties from a good-neighbourly partnership of mutual trust to a strategic partnership. In June 2012, Mongolian president Tsakhia Elbegdorj paid another visit to China and met with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao and Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang on the sidelines of the 12th Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This visit provided a much-needed boost to strengthening their strategic partnership and the overall relationship, which was described by the Chinese ambassador to Mongolia Wang Xiaolong during an interview with Xinhua as ‘its best in history’.38 Furthermore, in 2013, both China and Mongolia agreed to implement a detailed action plan to deepen their strategic partnership in five specific areas of politics, security, economy, culture and multilateral diplomacy.39 Yet another milestone in Sino-Mongolian relations was achieved in August 2014 when the Chinese president Xi Jinping visited Ulaanbaatar, 11 years after a

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Chinese head of state last did so. It was also only President Xi’s second solo overseas trip since he took office in March 2013. This visit is considered to be more significant because on 21 August 2014, Xi and his Mongolian counterpart, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, signed a joint declaration to upgrade their bilateral ties into a ‘comprehensive’ strategic partnership.40 As the two sides noted, such an upgrading in relations is based on mutual trust, mutual benefit, and a shared desire to stay forever as good neighbours, good partners and good friends. Xi put forward a four-point proposal for the future development of bilateral relations through: (i) enhancing political and security cooperation; (ii) comprehensively expanding practical cooperation in economic and trade fields; (iii) developing people-to-people exchanges; and (iv) promoting cooperation on international affairs under multilateral mechanisms.41 As such, the frequent exchanges of visits by high-level delegations and information sharing between the two countries have been contributing much to the development of not only their political, diplomatic and security ties but also economic and trade cooperation under the framework of strategic partnership. Notwithstanding the constructive efforts being made by both China and Mongolia in strengthening their strategic partnership, it is basically the economic and trade cooperation that dominates Beijing’s periphery diplomacy towards Mongolia. This is evident from the fact that since 2000 China has been Mongolia’s largest trading partner and investor with no significant challenge whatsoever from any other countries. The two countries have seen rapid growth in their bilateral trade volume, especially in the past decade, reaching from US$ 324 million in 2002 to over US$ 6 billion in 2013, accounting for more than half of Mongolia’s total foreign trade.42 Now the two countries have set the target of lifting their bilateral trade to US$ 10 billion by 2020. So far China has also been Mongolia’s biggest export destination. In 2013, China received 90 per cent of Mongolia’s total global exports and provided 37.8 per cent of its imports, thus overtaking Russia which accounted for just 27.6 per cent in terms of its share in Mongolia’s total imports. It may be noted that in previous years Russia’s share was more than

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China’s in Mongolia’s total global imports. China is also the largest provider of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Mongolia, providing 51 per cent of total FDI. Chinese foreign businesses also dominate Mongolia’s domestic sector, officially accounting for 50 per cent of all foreign firms and unofficially accounting for a far larger percentage.43 Today, over 5,000 Chinese firms operate in Mongolia, with a combined investment of around US$ 2.5 billion, with US$ 1.4 billion invested by Petro China alone.44 Chinese workers, both illegitimate and legitimate, form the major cohort of foreign workers in Mongolia, whose official number in 2010 totalled 16,675, though their actual number is believed to be two or three times higher.45 Another point, which Reeves identifies, is that while Chinese overseas development aid (ODA) to Mongolia remains nominal compared to states like Japan, it is changing the way Mongolia views and uses aid. Chinese aid is ‘unconditional’ as it does not require accountability to the extent aid from USAID does and it is focused on infrastructure and mining, both of which are of high priorities for Mongolia. China’s aid has eroded Mongolia’s willingness to submit to the more strenuous oversight attached to USAID or World Bank aid, fundamentally transforming Mongolia’s relations with its traditional donors. Many of Mongolia’s high profile politicians are also prominent businessmen with direct and indirect links to China. Perhaps Reeves is right when he says that ‘this linkage provides China with indirect (and perhaps direct) influence over Mongolia’s political process’.46 Yet Mongolia has some considerable problems with China despite this clear acceleration in bilateral economic and trade relations. Mongolia’s complaints about Chinese control over the cashmere industry, about adulterated or defective Chinese imports, about the growing number of both overt and covert Chinese investments and joint ventures, about Chinese smuggling of currency, narcotics and animal products, and about unfair competition by Chinese entrepreneurs in certain industries have multiplied. In addition, as Backes notes, ‘hungry for Mongolia’s coal, metals, and other minerals, China has dominated the Mongolian economy, stoking fears in Ulaanbaatar of even greater Chinese control’.47 This has resulted in imposing strict new laws mandating government

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oversight of foreign investment, especially from foreign sources. Ulaanbaatar has created a two-tiered system of ‘China-phobic’ resource nationalism that could alter the future trajectory of the mining industry in particular. Since China has gained considerable leverage over the Mongolian economy, Mongolia finds itself vulnerable so much so that ‘fears abound in Ulaanbaatar about the prospects of becoming Beijing’s newest natural resource appendage’.48 Despite such tensions, Mongolia is becoming increasingly dependent on China for consumer goods and as a market for its raw materials – a development that was predicted by Rossabi in 2005 when he argued that ‘an exclusive emphasis on privatization and a market economy will simply make Mongolia even more vulnerable to Chinese economic domination’.49 Despite Mongolia’s 2011 revised foreign policy concept discreetly identifying China as the country’s largest security concern, it is clear that it would be extremely difficult for Ulaanbaatar to dissuade China from making its presence felt in Mongolia. Already in 2010, Chinese FDI in Mongolia dwarfed Russian FDI by a factor of close to 75. Thus, according to Backes, ‘even if Russian investment in Mongolia were to increase, it would have to grow at an unrealistic rate to genuinely challenge China’s stranglehold on Mongolia’s economy’ and that ‘China’s existing dominance and the improbability of a massive influx of Russian investment into Mongolia’s natural resources sector make it very unlikely that in the near-to midterm Russia will provide a viable alternative for Ulaanbaatar for either exports or foreign investment’.50 Also given the fact that the Russian shareholders have rejected US investment in the current railway system in Mongolia which is owned by Ulaanbaatar Railway, the joint Mongol-Russian enterprise, ‘they did nothing for reconstruction of the railway until Chinese have raised a railroad project for Mongolia in 2010 to transport mining products’.51 Although Mongolia gave its preference to Russians again to increase its investment vis-a`-vis China, Russian promise of investment in the railroad system is still pending. Moreover, intermittent supply of Russian petroleum products that are also expensive has often failed to meet increasing consumer and industrial demand in Mongolia.

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In such a situation, Mongolia is willing to let China become a significantly larger supplier of oil products, at least in the short term, to do away with its dependency on more expensive Russian petroleum products.52 Indeed, China has benefited enormously from Mongolia’s greater economic openness and from its willingness to reduce its dependence on Russia.53 As the year 2014 marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Mongolia, and also the ‘year of friendship with Mongolia’ in China, coal continued to dominate bilateral trade relations in spite of a sharp decline in coal prices on the world market. Between April 2013 and March 2014 Mongolian coal exports to China increased 8.4 per cent by volume which followed an agreement concluded on 17 April 2014 between Mongolia and China’s Shenhua Bayannaoer Energy Co. to export another 450,000 tonnes of Mongolian coal to China.54 But, the greatest potential growth for Sino-Mongolian trade is being visualized in copper as Mongolia makes a transition into a ‘copper economy’. During 2013 – 14 exports of Mongolian copper concentrate increased 53 per cent, which accounted for 35 per cent of total mineral export earnings with sales worth US$ 349 million, an increase of 67 per cent.55 In March 2014, Mongolia’s copper concentrate export reached a record high as the monthly figure of US$ 162 million topped the mineral export list. Possibly, Chinese president Xi’s August 2014 visit to Mongolia may have been influenced by the latter’s new economic identity. For its part Mongolia not only appreciates the accessibility offered by China in transit transport but also displays its eagerness to jointly advance Asia-Europe cross-border railway transportation and taking part in the building of China’s proposed Silk Road Economic Belt (sichou zhi lu jingji dai), which Presidnet Xi first spoke of in a speech in September 2013 at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. In another speech on 24 October 2013, Xi spoke of the importance of economic policy in China’s periphery diplomacy,56 and into which Mongolia fits neatly. For Beijing, Mongolia now appears more than ever to be a ‘perfect’ neighbour, even if it remains a little too independent for China’s complete comfort.

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The Inner Mongolia Factor The Inner Mongolia factor in Sino-Mongolian relations can be examined in the context of China’s state building and foreign policy agenda which, in the past decade or so, has continued to focus on building an ‘effective’ state in terms of economic development and security of its borders. What Dali Yang has described as ‘remaking the Chinese Leviathan’,57 too points to building an ‘effective’ state which has unambiguously dominated the nation-building discourse, placing one new policy after another onto the political agenda.58 The centrally set policy objectives are then used to direct decision making at the local level both in the border provinces as well as autonomous regions that also include the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR). From the local perspective, the cross-border movements of Mongol ethnic groups of Inner Mongolia that share not only historical and cultural ties but also borders with Mongolia provide a vantage point in vying for access to resources and markets in China’s northern periphery.59 Therefore, one may not fail to understand the importance that Inner Mongolia holds both in China’s state-building agenda as well as the foreign policy agenda, particularly towards its neighbours. Moreover, Inner Mongolia certainly plays an active role in providing a local dimension of China’s rise as a major Asian and global power. Inner Mongolia’s Place within the PRC The core of building an ‘effective’ state lies in the fact that China has pursued a ‘soft’ tactic to manage its border regions through statefunded financial incentives for economic development. In sharp contrast to the pre-2000 government policies, such as those of stateguided aggressive resettlement of Han Chinese in minority populated areas, this ‘soft’ tactic has been applied with the primary aim of winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the peoples of the border or frontier regions who otherwise felt neglected and intertwining them with the rest of China in order to strengthen the state. To begin with, in 1999, the Chinese Government launched its ‘Go West’ plan or the ‘Great Western Development Programme’ (Xibu dakaifa) to develop

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and modernize the country’s ten western provinces from the Tibetan plateau to the deserts of Xinjiang and beyond that also includes the autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia and Guangxi that are homes to large ethnic minorities.60 In January 2000, the State Council of the PRC deputed the then-premier Zhu Rongji to lead a ‘Leadership Group for Western China Development’. Since then the Western Development Programme has been the most ambitious of such programmes that was, in fact, ‘a response in part to a perception that the widening economic gap between its coast and hinterland represented a potential threat to national unity’.61 In the same year the Central Committee of the CCP approved a project which was linked to the Western Development Programme known as the ‘Programme to Develop Border Areas and Enrich the Lives of the People Living There’, or more precisely dubbed as the ‘Prosperous Borders, Wealthy Minorities’ programme. Although the focus of the project has been on local infrastructure development, the goals go beyond that to strengthen ‘national unity’ and maintain ‘stability in border areas’, directed to achieve ‘wealthy people, happy borders, a strong country, and harmonious and friendly neighbours’. In the words of Freeman and Thompson, ‘these policies are seen as promoting stability (and development) not only on Chinese territory, but across the border as well, where it is expected that these new opportunities will garner China (and China’s local government) good will and influence in communities on the opposite side’.62 Over the past decade, China has stepped up its effort to develop its border regions further in order to boost border trade and investment in which local governments have played significant roles by implementing various policies approved by the central government. One of the latest additions to centrally approved policies is the ongoing 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–15) that set seven major development goals for further development of China’s western regions with the aim of increasing economic growth; expanding infrastructure construction; improving the ecological environment; providing better public services; developing and strengthening local industries; elevating people’s living standards; and reforming and opening up the region.63 It is in the context of this ongoing ‘reform and opening up’ of the western

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regions that Inner Mongolia has been able to ensure a steady and rapid economic growth, although it can be argued that ethnic Mongols continue to be economically less comfortable than their Han Chinese peers in the IMAR. Nevertheless, while looking at Inner Mongolia one may notice that it has come a long way since becoming an autonomous region of the PRC in 1947 and now enjoys significant status in the Chinese Government policy towards the development of the region on the socio-economic front, especially after the launch of the ‘Western Development Programme’ as well as the ‘Prosperous Borders, Wealthy Minorities’ programme. In recent years, due to improvement in Sino-Russian as well as Sino-Mongolian relations, Inner Mongolia has been witnessing even greater progress with flourishing border trade, a reality that also signifies the importance of IMAR as a political-geographical unit within the PRC. In this regard, two striking points need to be highlighted here: (i) Inner Mongolia has geopolitical importance due to contiguity with Mongolia, i.e., being the Chinese border region adjoining Mongolia, and; (ii) Inner Mongolia has a similar ethno-cultural background as that of Mongolia.64 Such advantageous points lead to optimistic views on the role of Inner Mongolia in strengthening China’s state-building agenda as well as in implementing Chinese diplomacy and foreign policy agenda, particularly China’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy towards Mongolia. Situated in a deep hinterland region, Inner Mongolia has a geopolitical importance due to its strategic location along China’s northern boundary, where it is bordered by Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces in the east, Hebei, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the south and southwest, Gansu province in the west and Mongolia as well as Russia in the north and northeast respectively. It is, therefore, a landlocked province with the distinction of being the first national minority Autonomous Region of China; the other four include the Guanxi Zhuang, the Xinjiang Uyghur, the Ningxia Hui and the Tibet Autonomous Regions. With a total land area of 1,183,000 square kilometres, accounting for 12.3 per cent of China’s total land

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area, Inner Mongolia is the third largest among the provinces and autonomous regions of China, exceeded only by the Xinjiang Uyghur and the Tibet Autonomous Regions. Additionally Inner Mongolia occupies 3,193 kilometres, i.e., 70 per cent of the borderland area of the Sino-Mongolian border. Also the Gobi Desert, which is the largest desert in Asia and the fourth largest desert in the world, stretches across the IMAR and crosses over the border with Mongolia. Moreover, with its 15 banners (hoshuns) sharing common borders with Mongolia and having five trading ports of first and second-class categories, Inner Mongolia acts as a ‘land bridge’ between China and Mongolia.65 Inner Mongolia’s place within the PRC also holds importance given that it has comparative advantages over other regions due to its being a considerable natural resource base, with the potential to serve as the basis for China’s future economic development. A study conducted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has discovered that Inner Mongolia has deposits of 134 types of mineral resources.66 Six of these mineral resources, including rare earth elements and columbium, rank number one among China’s provinces; 11 resources, including coal and chromium, rank second among provinces; and 63 rank in the top ten. According to the findings of the ADB study, Inner Mongolia is rich in energy resources as well, which is evident from the fact that proven coal reserves are estimated as 223 billion tonnes, while prospective coal reserves stand at 1200 billion tonnes. Similarly, the proven and estimated oil reserves constitute 700 million tonnes and 4 billion tonnes respectively. Whereas the proven gas reserves are 1 trillion cubic metres, the potential reserves are 4.2 trillion cubic metres. Significantly, Shan’xi-Gansu-Ningxia Oil and Gas Field, a recognized world-class oil-gas field, is located mostly in Inner Mongolia’s Erdos Basin. Rapid economic growth over the decade has, indeed, pushed Inner Mongolia up in the GDP ranking so much so (14.3 per cent in 2011) that ‘it now has the second-largest economy in Western China’.67 Demographically, having a total of 24.71 million people (2010 Census), Inner Mongolia’s population is much bigger than the independent state of Mongolia that has a population of

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approximately 2.9 million. Even the population of ethnic Mongols alone in Inner Mongolia today stands at 4.2 million which is larger than the total population of Mongols in Mongolia. Although the Mongols in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia are living in two different countries, ethnically they belong to one group and share the same language (at least spoken), culture and lifestyle.68 Although scholars such as Enze Han have argued that ‘fast-paced economic development and marketization within China have been particularly detrimental to the Mongolian culture and language’, it is possible to suggest that the Mongols of Inner Mongolia have been able to maintain a separate ethnic identity in a ‘sinicized’ world.69 Yet, unlike Tibetans in Tibet and Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the Mongols in Inner Mongolia have neither acted much to challenge the PRC’s policies (with the exception of protests against government banning of grazing practices central to their pastoral tradition) nor have they displayed any significant political movements for ‘greater autonomy’ in recent times. Perhaps an explanation for this seeming passivity lies in Uradyn Bulag’s observation that, ‘Mongols apparently exhibit no such independent spirit [. . .] the Mongols aspire not only to maintain an ethnic political entity but also to live as normal citizens of the Chinese state.’70 Government policies banning grazing in many parts of Inner Mongolia in 2000 onwards ‘caused great financial losses for ordinary Mongol herding families’ and increased ‘pressure to move to urban areas and abandon their traditional pastoral way of life’ potentially threatening ‘the survival of their culture’.71 Even as more focus was put on economic development in the past decade, there has been ‘a relative neglect of minority cultures and languages in many areas’.72 Inner Mongolia too has been a case of such neglect, though the central government has definitely used Mongol culture and language to foster local cooperation across the border for reinforcing SinoMongolian ties. Inner Mongolia’s Role in Sino-Mongolian Relations Possessing natural resources in abundance and having a unique geoeconomic and geostrategic advantage, Inner Mongolia has the potential to connect the East with the West. Having a 4,221 kilometre long

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border with Russia and Mongolia, the IMAR thus could serve as an important transportation channel between China, Russia and Mongolia. Indeed, it is an intersection point for the Trans-Asia rail, the railway linking Inner Mongolia’s capital Hohhot to Frankfurt, which has contributed to the development of bilateral trade between China, Mongolia, Russia and the European countries. However, so far as Inner Mongolia’s role in the Sino-Mongolian relations is concerned, it mainly points to fulfilling the following Chinese concerns: (i) Since China shares its longest land border with Mongolia, maintaining cordial relationship with Ulaanbaatar is of paramount importance for the security and stability of northern China, including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and the northeastern provinces; and (ii) Given that Inner Mongolia acts as a sort of bridge between China and Mongolia, its role becomes crucial for cementing the Sino-Mongolian ties, not only in economic and trade spheres but also in political, cultural and strategic realms. No wonder then that Inner Mongolia’s role is multidimensional in nature. Former Chinese Ambassador to Mongolia, Huang Kui, for example, has described Inner Mongolia as a ‘rainbow’ for its multidimensional role bridging Sino-Mongolian relations through trade, trans-border and cultural ties.73 There is some truth in this view. Inner Mongolia is not only the channel through which much of China’s trade with Mongolia is being carried out but also its local traders and investors are facilitating Beijing’s interests in solidifying both its diplomatic relations and economic relations with Mongolia. The ever growing importance of Inner Mongolia in Beijing’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy took a firm footing in November 2005 following a concluding agreement on the exact demarcation of the Sino-Mongolian border that took place during the then Mongolian president Nambaryn Enkhbayar’s visit to China.74 This provided opportunities for the two countries to sign a series of border-related agreements, including the cross border trade. Among the ten pairs of border posts Inner Mongolian city of Erenhot or Erlian/Erlianhot (as called by the Chinese) and Zamyn Uud of Mongolia now remain open throughout the year, the rest of the nine pairs being seasonal. Today, with a capacity of handling cargo of more than 10 million tonnes per

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year Erenhot has not only become a main point of goods clearance, processing and manufacturing, trading and logistics but also a platform for exchange of communications between Chinese and foreign enterprises including the Mongolian ones. More precisely, in 2013, the cargo handling through Erenhot’s railway and highway ports reached as high as 13 million tonnes with a trade volume of US$ 3.6 billion, and hence it has come under the latest Chinese list of a new experimental area for further development.75 Since China became the largest trading partner of Mongolia in 2000, there has been tremendous growth in the cross-border trade, particularly with Inner Mongolia that continues to be the largest trading partner of Mongolia among the Chinese provinces and regions. The total volume of imports and exports of Inner Mongolia has grown from US$ 1.1 billion in 1997 to US$ 14.8 billion in 2011, representing a 13.8 times growth over a period of 15 years.76 Considering the figures for Inner Mongolia’s trade with Mongolia, it is noticeable that Inner Mongolia’s exports to Mongolia, which was merely US$ 84.87 million in 2000, increased significantly to reach at US$ 184.21 million in 2007, while imports from Mongolia increased from US$ 172.49 million in 2003 to US$ 272.79 in 2005.77 Furthermore, in November 2007, Inner Mongolia and Mongolia expressed their commitment to boost cooperation in such fields as mining, ports and transportation.78 This resulted in the sharp growth of Mongolia’s imports of steel from Inner Mongolia in March 2009. The Erenhot port recorded exports of 75.2 tonnes of steel on 18 March itself, with a single day steel export tax amounting to US$ 17,00, more than 3.9 times of the figure for the first two months.79 Early in 2013 another significant development took place when Mongolian Petroleum Authority concluded an agreement with PetroChina, a subsidiary of China National Offshore Oil Corporation, to exchange crude oil drilled in Mongolia with end-products processed in Inner Mongolia.80 In comparison to oil imported from Russia, the imported Inner Mongolian oil seems to be of a higher quality being equivalent to Euro-3 standard. This Inner Mongolian refined oil (gasoline) entered the Mongolian market in May 2013 under the new brand name MONGOL-93.81

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The increasing role being played by Inner Mongolia in SinoMongolian ties becomes evident from the fact that the Municipal Government of Erenhot and Mineral Resources Association of Mongolia jointly held the China-Mongolia Enterprise Investment Negotiation Conference in Erenhot on 15 – 16 November 2005. This conference provided a better opportunity for both Chinese and Mongolian enterprises to explore the mineral resources in Mongolia and contribute positively to local economy on the one hand and Chinese economy on the other. Having geographical contiguity with the southern part of Mongolia, which is home to one of the world’s largest untapped coking-coal deposits (Tavan Tolgoi), Inner Mongolia has been placed in a prime position to import minerals from its northern neighbour for processing. Moreover, Inner Mongolia is China’s largest supplier of coal, while neighbouring Mongolia is China’s largest source of coking coal imports (mainly for iron and steel production). Cross-border trade has, therefore, grown sharply with trade at Erenhot County City (Xilingol League) rocketing by 86 per cent year on year in the first half of 2011.82 Production of nonferrous metals like aluminium, copper, lead and zinc are also becoming increasingly important in Inner Mongolia, which is expected to rise further in importance with the expansion of Mongolia’s huge Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold deposits near its border with Inner Mongolia. Significantly, electricity supply to Oyu Tolgoi comes from coal-fired power plants in Inner Mongolia.83 Inner Mongolia’s involvement in Sino-Mongolian relations also resulted in taking a number of initiatives towards integration of infrastructure networks (i.e. road, railway and air). The region is now set to shine even brighter during China’s campaign to boost the Silk Road Economic Belt as the capital city Hohhot is a key hub along this Economic Belt aimed at strengthening economic cooperation between China and its neighbours. This may help Mongolia’s ‘Prairie Road’ programme as well as Russia’s ‘Transcontinental Rail’ plan for the economic integration of all the three countries – China, Mongolia and Russia, provided the Silk Road Economic Belt gets the required cooperation in infrastructure of countries along it

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including Mongolia and Russia.84 On 11 September 2014 in Dushanbe, while meeting with the Russian president Vladimir Putin and Mongolian president Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj on the sidelines of the 14th SCO Summit, the Chinese president Xi Jinping pointed out that the three countries could jointly build a China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor. Such an economic corridor is a necessity for the three sides, as Xi added ‘to strengthen traffic interconnectivity, facilitate cargo clearance and transportation, and study the feasibility of building a transnational power grid.85

Conclusion In the twenty-first century, the rise of China is one of the most significant contemporary events. With amazing economic growth coupled with rising diplomatic and political power, China is already playing an important role in transforming the global geopolitical and geo-economic landscape and the coming decades may likely see an even greater growth in Chinese power and influence. Moreover, China’s rise has significant strategic and security implications for its neighbours or what it describes as its ‘periphery’ countries. The past decade’s experiences show that China has become more aggressive in engaging itself in the ‘periphery’ diplomacy largely due to its strategic intentions towards its Asian neighbours. In this regard, the role played by the Chinese frontier provinces is of paramount importance. As discussed in the aforementioned paragraphs, after a long period of mistrust and hostilities the growing Sino-Mongolian relations too can be seen in the context of Beijing’s ‘periphery’ diplomacy in which the Chinese frontier region of Inner Mongolia factors prominently. With the changes in the whole dynamics of Sino-Mongolian relations, especially during the past decade, the Chinese leadership appears to be satisfied with Beijing’s diplomatic clout in Mongolia. For, it has been both economically as well as strategically advantageous for strengthening China’s growing role in Mongolia in comparison to the Cold War foe Russia. On the other hand, having a mineral wealth of US$ 1.3 trillion Mongolian economy has now become one of the

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world’s fastest growing with a double-digit growth rate since 2011.86 The significant quantities of coal, copper and uranium Mongolia has, motivated China to activate the strategic partnership with Mongolia, just as it did with other peripheral countries, for natural resources, trade routes, commercial interests and, more importantly, for integrating China’s own frontier provinces including Inner Mongolia into economic prosperity with these countries. Since the main pillars of Sino-Mongolian strategic partnership are trade and economic cooperation, business entities of both countries are actively collaborating in mining, construction, road, transportation, agriculture, bank and financial sectors. China has also reiterated that it respects Mongolia’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and that the Mongolia-China border has now been completely specified. Many would agree that it has now become a ‘peaceful’ border. Evidently, implementation of Chinese diplomatic and foreign policy agenda towards its northern neighbour Mongolia and subsequent emergence of new equation in the Sino-Mongolian relations owe much to the role being played by Inner Mongolia. For, China still considers Mongolia as a country of ‘crucial geopolitical interest’ despite the fact that the ongoing Sino-Russian relations have substantially lessened Mongolia’s buffer role in the security policy of its two geographic neighbours. That is where China’s Inner Mongols (Nei Meˆng-Ku) provide Beijing with a ready supply of Mongolian-speaking market personnel to help maintain the stability in Sino-Mongolian ties. The issue of ‘Pan-Mongolism’ or Mongolian nationalism, however, is still a matter of concern between the two sides. China is increasing its economic leverage in Mongolia to ensure the non-involvement of Mongolia in any kind of ethnic resurgence of Inner Mongols for the so called ‘Pan-Mongolist’ cause. Besides, mismanagement at the border posts gives way to illegal acts, such as tax evasion and smuggling that appear to be affecting not only the bilateral trade but also the global trade. Even Mongolia accuses the Chinese customs authorities of levying unfairly high taxes and other duties on Mongolian traders and their vehicles. This factor points to the one-sided nature of border trade that favours Chinese traders, though both sides are engaged in high-level talks to promote

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cooperation on law enforcement and security with a focus on crossborder crimes. Despite all the hiccups geographical proximity and economic complementarities, as well as ethno-cultural linkages involving Inner Mongolia, make China and Mongolia natural partners for increased economic and trade ties. Over the years, Inner Mongolia has indeed served as a bridge between China and Mongolia in their bilateral ties and made positive contributions to the development of cross-border economic and trade cooperation. It now appears that looking back and comparing the past would give negative effects on the development of Sino-Mongolian relations. The right way to do the things is to keep moving forward, use every opportunity for development and prosperity and focus on creating secure environment for the growth of bilateral relations. In the democratic era, the most important factor in Mongolia’s foreign relationship is tied to economics not politics, and hence China would remain to be a key strategic partner of Mongolia and vice versa. In such a scenario, however, Mongolia will have to watch carefully to reassure that it will not acquire a status of a Chinese economic ‘satellite’ to avoid repeating the history of the Soviet era. Inner Mongolia, on the other hand, has no option but to continue playing an important role in implementing the central policies both for China’s state-building agenda as well as foreign policy agenda, no matter how best these policies are suited to local interests and concerns.

Notes 1. Chang, Y. T., The Economic Development and Prospects of Inner Mongolia (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1933), p. 57. 2. Clubb, O. E., China and Russia: The Great Game (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 466ff. 3. Soni, S. K., Mongolia-China Relations: Modern and Contemporary Times (New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2006), p. 183. 4. Soni, S. K., Mongolia-Russia Relations: Kiakhta to Vladivostok (Delhi: Shipra Publications, 2002), pp. 217–19. 5. Ibid., p. 193. 6. See Country Study for Japan’s Official Development Assistance to Mongolia: A Committee Report (Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Agency, March 1997), p. 40.

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7. Sanders, A., ‘Restructuring and Openness’ in Shirin Akiner (ed.), Mongolia Today (London: Kegan Paul International, 1991), p. 74. 8. Soni, S. K. ‘China’s Periphery Policy: Implications for Sino-Mongolian Relations’, India Quarterly, 65/3 (2009), p. 255. 9. Wang, Y., ‘Lun Zhongguo de xin anquanguan’ [‘On China’s new Concept of Security’], Shijie Jingji yu zhengzhi [World Economy and Politics], 1 (1999), p. 43. 10. Zhang, C., Historical Changes in Relations between China and Neighboring Countries (1949– 2012) (Sweden: Institute for Security and Development Policy, 2013), p. 17. 11. Godement, F., ‘China’s Neighbourhood Policy: A CICIR Roundtable’, China Analysis (February 2014), p. 4, available at: http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/China_ Analysis_China_s_Neighbourhood_Policy_February2014.pdf. 12. You, J. and Jia, Q., ‘China’s Re-emergence and Its Foreign Policy Strategy’ in Cheng, J. Y. S. (ed.), China Review, 1998 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1998), p. 128. 13. Zhao, S., ‘The Making of China’s Periphery Policy’ in Zhao, S. (ed.), Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), p. 258. 14. Economic diplomacy was clearly identified by Chinese scholars as a key element of Beijing’s ‘periphery diplomacy’, see Yang, F., Qin, Y. and Heng, X., Contemporary China and its Foreign Policy (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 2002), p. 195. 15. Zhao, ‘The Making of China’s Periphery Policy’, p. 259. 16. ‘China’s Position Paper on the New Security Concept’, China’s Working Paper submitted to the ARF Foreign Ministers Meeting, 31 July 1999, cited in Pan, Z., ‘China’s Security Agenda in 2004’, Foreign Affairs Journal (Beijing: Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, 71, March 2004), p. 18; and White Paper on China’s National Defence in 2004 (Beijing: Information Office of the State Council of the PRC, 2004), p. 7. 17. Tian, P. (ed.), Gaige Kaifang yilai de Zhongguo Waijiao [Chinese Diplomacy since the Reform and Opening Up] (Beijing: Shijie Zhishi Chuban She, 1993), pp. 6 – 7. 18. Chung, C., China’s Multilateral Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific: Institutionalizing Beijing’s ‘Good Neighbor Policy’ (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 14. 19. Chi, Historical Changes in Relations between China and Neighboring Countries, p. 18. 20. Cao, Y. and Xu, S., ‘China’s Policy of Good-Neighborliness and China-ASEAN Relations,’ Peace, 72 (September 2004), pp. 4 – 5. 21. Chung, China’s Multilateral Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific, p. 19. 22. Freeman, Carla and Thompson, Drew, China on the Edge: China’s Border Provinces and Chinese Security Policy (The Center for the National Interest and Johns Hopkins SAIS, April 2011), p. 10, available at: http://www.cftni.org/China_ on_the_Edge_April_2011.pdf. 23. Ibid., p. 2.

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24. Shin, K., ‘Line Between Cooperative Good Neighbor and Uncompromising Foreign Policy: China’s Diplomacy Under the Xi Jinping Administration’, Diplomacy, 22 (July 2014), available at: http://www.japanpolicyforum.jp/en/ archives/diplomacy/pt20140703152152.html. 25. Zhang, B., ‘Chinese Foreign Policy in Transition: Trends and Implications’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 39/2 (2010), p. 40. 26. See Remarks by Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai, ‘China’s Policy towards the Asia-Pacific’, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United States of America, 25 April 2014, available at: http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/sgxx/ ctk/rota/t1150642.htm (accessed 12 August 2014). 27. Ibid. 28. Glaser, Bonnie and Pal, Deep, ‘China’s Periphery Diplomacy Initiative: Implications for China Neighbors and the United States’, 7 November 2013, available at: http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/chinas-periphery-di plomacy-initiative-implications-for-china-neighbors-and-the-united-states/ (accessed 12 August 2014). 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Jargalsaikhan, M., ‘Caveats for the Mongolia-China Strategic Partnership’, Asia Pacific Bulletin (East-West Centre, Washington, 272, 22 July 2014), p. 1. 32. Soni, S. K., ‘Mongolia-China Relations: Post-Cold War Scenario’ in M. Singh (ed.), Asia Annual 2004 (Delhi, Shipra Publications, 2005), p. 234. 33. Jargalsaikhan, ‘Caveats for the Mongolia-China Strategic Partnership’. 34. Qin, J., ‘China, Mongolia Deepen Trust, Understanding’, China Daily, 2 December 2005, p. 12. 35. Remarks by H.E. Mr Nambaryn Enkhbayar, president of Mongolia at the meeting with Foreign Press, Embassy of Mongolia, Beijing, 30 November 2005. 36. ‘Mongolian Prime Minister begins visit to China’, 22 November 2006, available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-11/22/content_740343.htm. 37. For more details, see ‘PM: Mongolia-China Ties at Best Time,’ 14 April 2009, available at: http://www.china.org.cn/international/2009-04/14/content_ 17602662.htm. 38. Huang, L., ‘China-Mongolia Relationship at its Best in History: Ambassador’, 28 January 2013, available at: http://english.people.com.cn/90883/8110976. html. 39. Jargalsaikhan, ‘Caveats for the Mongolia-China Strategic Partnership’. 40. ‘China, Mongolia Upgrade Ties to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’, Xinhuanet, 22 August 2014, available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ china/2014-08/22/c_133574661.htm. 41. Ibid. 42. ‘China, Mongolia Eye 10-bln-USD Trade by 2020’, 22 August 2014, available at: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/cgny/eng/xw/t1184678.htm (accessed 23 September 2014).

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43. Reeves, J., ‘Response to PacNet No. 43-Ten Things We Get from Mongolia’, PacNet No. 43R (Honolulu: Pacific Forum CSIS, July 2012), available at: http:// csis.org/files/publication/Pac1243R.pdf. 44. Campi, A., ‘The New Great Game in Northeast Asia: Potential Impact of Energy Mineral Development In Mongolia on China, Russia, Japan, and Korea’, Asia-Pacific Policy Papers Series, 15 (Washington DC: Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, Johns Hopkins University – SAIS, 2013), p. 3. 45. Reeves, ‘Response to PacNet No. 43’. 46. Ibid. 47. Backes, O., ‘China at the Gates: China’s Impact on Mongolian Natural Resource and Investment Policy’, 6 May 2013, available at: http://csis.org/blog/chinagates-chinas-impact-mongolian-natural-resource-and-investment-policy/ (accessed 17 June 2014). 48. Ibid. 49. Rossabi, M., Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 245. 50. Backes, ‘China at the Gates’. 51. Otgonbayar, S. M., ‘Mongolia’s Immediate Security Challenges: Implication to Defense Sector and The Regional Cooperation,’ in Security Outlook of the Asia Pacific Countries and Its Implications for the Defense Sector (NIDS Joint Research Series No.7, 2012), p. 114, http://www.nids.go.jp/english/publication/joint_ research/series7/pdf/08.pdf. 52. Campi, A., ‘Sino-Mongolian Oil Deal Undercuts Russian Role’, Asia Times, 15 May 2013, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/CBIZ-01-150513. html. 53. Bondaz, A., ‘Mongolia: China’s Perfect Neighbour?’ China Analysis (February 2014), p. 8, http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/China_Analysis_China_s_Neighbourhood_ Policy_February2014.pdf. 54. Campi, A., ‘China Seeks to Strengthen Mongolian Trade Links during August Trilateral Summit,’ China Brief, 14/14 (2014), http://www.jamestown.org/ single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D¼42639&no_cache ¼ 1#.VC6AefmSzLs. 55. Ibid. 56. ‘Important Speech of Xi Jinping at Peripheral Diplomacy Work Conference’, China Council of International Cooperation on Environment and Development, 30 October 2013, http://www.cciced.net/encciced/newscenter/latestnews/201310/ t20131030_262608.html. 57. Yang, D. L., Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 58. Zhengxu. W., ‘Nation Building, State Building, and the Road to Democracy: Political Development in 60 Years of the People’s Republic’, China Policy Institute Briefing Series, 54 (Nottingham: China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, September 2009), p. 9, http://china.praguesummerschools.org/ files/china/7china2012.pdf.

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59. Freeman and Thompson, ‘China on the Edge’, p. 12. 60. Lai, H. H., ‘China’s Western Development Program: Its Rationale, Implementation, and Prospects’, Modern China, 28/4 (2002), pp. 432–66. 61. Ibid., p. 15. 62. Ibid., p. 16. 63. Gu, J., ‘China Approves 12th Five-Year Plan for Western Regions’ China Briefing, 27 February 2012, available at: http://www.china-briefing.com/news/ 2012/02/27/china-approves-12th-five-year-plan-for-western-regions.html. 64. Soni, S. K., ‘Bridging the Gap in Sino-Mongolian Ties: Role of Inner Mongolia’ in K. Warikoo and S. K. Soni (eds), Mongolia in the 21st Century: Society, Culture and International Relations (New Delhi and London: Pentagon, 2010), p. 274. 65. Soni, ‘China’s Periphery Policy’, p. 261. 66. Peng, L., Technical Assistance to the People’s Republic of China for Energy Development Strategy for the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (Asian Development Bank, TAR: PRC 38511, 2004). 67. ‘Inner Mongolia’, The Economist Intelligence Unit (August 2012), p. 2, http:// www.izvoznookno.si/Dokumenti/innermongolia_ACProvinceReport.pdf. 68. Tumenceceg, ‘Mongol-xiatadin ediin zasag, xydaldaanii xapilcaand OMOZU-in guicantgaj bui uureg’ [‘Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s Role in Mongolia-China Trade and Economic Relations’], International Studies (Ulaanbaatar) (February 2002), p. 98. 69. Han, E., ‘From Domestic to International: the Politics of Ethnic Identity in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia’, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 39/6 (2011), p. 942. 70. Bulag, U. E., ‘Inner Mongolia: The Dialectics of Colonization and Ethnicity Building’ in M. Rossabi (ed.), Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), pp. 84– 5. 71. Han, ‘From Domestic to International’, p. 947. 72. Enwall, J., ‘Inter-Ethnic Relations in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia’, Asian Ethnicity, 11/2 (2010), p. 244. 73. ‘Mongolia: Embarked on a “Democratic Reform” Road – Interview with former Chinese Ambassador to Mongolia, Ambassador Huang Kui’, 2 March 2005, http://www.china.com.cn/book/zhuanti/qkjc/txt/2005-03/02/content_ 5799738.htm. 74. Soni, ‘Bridging the Gap in Sino-Mongolian Ties’, pp. 277 – 8. 75. ‘New development area approved in Inner Mongolia’, Xinhua, June 2014, http:// www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id¼ 20140611000016& cid ¼ 1201. 76. Starmass China Market Research Consultation, available at: http://www.chinamarketresearch.com/market-review/provincial-overview/inner-mongolia-importsexports.htm. 77. Nei Meng Gu Tong Ji Nian Jian [Inner Mongolia Statistical Yearbook], 2001 to 2008 (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Press, 2008).

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78. ‘Chinese Inner Mongolia to Enhance Cooperation with Mongolia’, People’s Daily, 15 November 2007, http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/ 6303523.html. 79. ‘Steel Exports through Inner Mongolia’s Erenhot Port Rebound in March’, China Real News, 31 March 2009, http://chinarealnews.typepad.com/chi narealnews/2009/03/steel-exports-through-inner-mongolias-erenhot-portrebound-in-march.html. 80. Campi, A., ‘Sino-Mongolian Oil Deal undercuts Russian Role’. 81. ‘Chinese Gasoline Imports Enter Mongolian Market’, Xinhua, 17 May 2013, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90778/8247881.html. 82. Access China August 2012, ‘Inner Mongolia’, p. 9. 83. Svensson, J., ‘Overcoming Geographies of Scarcity: the Water-Energy Nexus in Inner Mongolia and South Gobi, Mongolia’, Policy Paper Series, 7 (Sydney: China Studies Centre, University of Sydney, October 2013), p. 12, http://sydney.edu. au/china_studies_centre/images/content/ccpublications/policy_paper_series/ 2013/Svensson-waterandenergy-final.pdf. 84. Kwo, W., ‘An Investigation into Beijing’s Strategic Layout and the Challenges of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” from the Perspective of Xi Jinping’s Visit to Mongolia’, Prospects & Perspectives, 15 (September 2014), p. 3. 85. ‘Xi Proposes to Build China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor’, Xinhua, 12 September 2014, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/n/2014/0912/c908838781526.html. 86. Soni, S. K., ‘Post-Soviet Transition in Mongolia: Gauging the Success of Democratization’, Mongolica, 1/45 (2012), p. 163.

CHAPTER 6 `

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FROM BACKWATER' TO BRIDGEHEAD': CULTURE, MODERNITY AND THE REIMAGINING OF YUNNAN Gary Sigley

Introduction On 1 March 2014 a bloody attack by knife-wielding assailants at the Kunming Railway Station catapulted Yunnan, a usually quiet border province in Southwest China, into the 24 hour world news circuit. Some commentators heralded this event as ‘China’s 9/11’ and anticipated a 9/11-like response from the Chinese party-state. Whilst no doubt finding the ‘terrorist card’ very useful for domestic and international purposes, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seemingly, does not wish to further polarize public opinion and acerbate already volatile ethnic tensions between the Han and Uyghurs, the latter declared by Chinese state-owned media to be the ethnic origins of the perpetrators. Although public security has been visibly increased in Kunming, a 9/11-like response, insofar as the mainstream media promotes a ‘war on terror’, has not eventuated. Yunnan has since slipped back into partial obscurity, but the memory of the events of early March remind us that even the

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‘quietest’ of frontier locations may be fraught with underlying social and ethnic tensions. According to news media reports, it appears that Kunming as a choice for the attack was not part of an original plan, but something that evolved more spontaneously.1 The attackers had been attempting to leave China by crossing the border illegally to neighbouring Laos. From there they most likely intended to seek refuge in a third country. When they realized their flight from China was anticipated by the authorities they changed plans and launched the bloody attack on a soft target as an act of final violent desperation. At the time of writing many details still remain murky. However, for the purposes of this chapter, the details of which will be outlined shortly, there are two points worthy of further consideration. Firstly, the route chosen by the assailants to exit China through Yunnan reminds us that this region has long been an important thoroughfare between Central China and the regions to the southwest. The Southern Silk Road passes from Central China to Southeast Asia via Yunnan where it ultimately connects with the Maritime Silk Road along the Indian Ocean portion of Myanmar. The Southern Silk Road was an important thoroughfare when the more famous Northern Silk Road was inaccessible due to conflict or other calamities, the latter not an uncommon event. Yunnan is also home to the so-called2 Ancient Tea Horse Road (ATHR) (chama gudao 茶马古道) connecting the tea growing regions of Yunnan with tea consumption markets in Tibet, Southeast Asia, Nepal and India. As I will explain in this chapter, the imagery of these historical connections in now being reinvoked as Yunnan seeks to connect itself with both domestic and international markets and carve out a position for itself as a ‘southern gateway’. Secondly, beyond the violent nature of this attack, the fact that it happened in Yunnan is also significant. Yunnan is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in China with 26 officially recognized ethnic groups (out of a total of 56 nationwide). Although Yunnan has a bloody past, in recent decades it has been relatively free of major social strife and ethnic conflict. Indeed, Yunnan is often held as a model for ethnic harmony in contemporary China, a theme the authorities are

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obviously keen to promote.3 I will return to this point below as it features prominently in the deployment of official discourse of the ATHR as a pedagogic device to educate Chinese citizens about ethnic unity and fraternal cooperation. In this chapter I examine the transformation currently underway in Yunnan and consider its implications for China’s relations with its neighbours along the southwestern frontier. I argue that alongside the physical rise of China we also need to examine developments in terms of how a shifting geopolitical space works with both spatial and cultural reimaginings to create an idealized vision of Yunnan’s place at this particular historical juncture. Yunnan, in this instance, is an excellent case study of how a peripheral province engages with the political centre in repositioning itself from a ‘backwater’ to a ‘bridgehead’, the latter now being the official China foreign policy position on Yunnan. In what follows I first examine the significance of ‘culture’ in ‘China’s rise’. China could be said to be in the midst of another ‘cultural revolution’ – that is, a radical realignment and reimagining of Chinese culture in a century which will be marked by whatever path/s China takes. Nationalism and culture – especially in the obvious form of ‘cultural nationalism’ – have long been important bedfellows. Insofar as ‘culture’ is part of foreign policy and soft power strategies, the emphasis placed on certain forms of cultural discourse is not just of interest to the Chinese themselves but also to the rest of the world, and especially those nation states along China’s borders. This cultural discussion will then be followed by a detailed examination of Yunnan’s place in China: past, present and future. The major themes of this discussion centre on the key themes of connectivity and mobility. Into this mix we also examine the role of spatial and cultural reimagining as a way of promoting Yunnan as a province located at the juncture of important domestic and international connections. Discussion will focus on the physical transformation of Yunnan as transport infrastructure expands at a rapid rate. At this point I will then examine the cultural dimensions in more detail by taking the ATHR as a case study of how this plays out in terms of both domestic and foreign consumption.

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The conclusion is that if we are to seriously consider all dimensions of China’s rise, and what it means for the rest of the world, we need to consider the diverse interactions of different parts of China with both the Chinese political centre and neighbouring political entities. In this sense it is best to consider China not as a monolithic whole with a single foreign policy but rather to note that China, as a very large and diverse entity, consists of multiple regional forces all of which are jockeying for position in an almost constantly changing and evolving geopolitical environment. Whilst much attention is given to happenings in Beijing and along the eastern seaboard this chapter reminds us that due consideration must also be given to China’s ‘peripheries’ if we are to construct a fuller picture.

The Rise of China and the Cultural Dimension The rise of China is fundamentally changing the regional and global geopolitical landscape. This is well known and well researched.4 What is less understood is that China’s rise is also throwing into sharp relief the symbolic and material significance of ‘Chinese culture’, both within China and also abroad where the notion of ‘Chinese soft power’ is beginning to attract attention.5 That the rise of China as a global power and the question of ‘Chinese culture’ inhabit the same time and place is certainly no coincidence. Indeed the two are inextricably intertwined. ‘Culture’ is linked to the very core of Chinese national identity, both in terms of a unified ‘national culture’ – often manifest in the form of ‘cultural nationalism’ – and the myriad ‘cultures’ that form regional and ethnic identities (some of which may be in conflict with the former). At this critical historical moment where China looks certain to shaping the twenty-first century in profound ways, many people – both within China and abroad – are therefore rightly inquiring into the nature of Chinese culture and its relation to Chinese identities. This cultural dimension should be considered when examining China’s foreign policy along the frontier. At the same time it is acknowledged, and very obvious to even the most pedestrian of observers, that this period of rapid change is at

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once both culturally destructive and constructive. This almost dialectical process of ‘creative destruction’ is, of course, one of the hallmarks of modernity. As Karl Marx and Frederick Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto in tones that still strongly resonate in the present, capitalism is a form of wrecking ball reshaping the world not just in terms of the violence inflicted by capital as it seeks to make the world ‘flat’ and ‘in its own image’, but also through the ‘subjection of nature’s forces to man [sic], machinery, application of chemistry to agriculture and industry, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground’.6 Thus the transformation that has taken place, and is still unfolding, is one that involves both a large-scale physical human reshaping of the lived and natural environment, and a similarly ambitious in scale refashioning of human social and cultural relations. Or to put it crudely in terms more popular in the nineteenth century – but which resonate strongly in the Chinese context – a thorough ‘material’ (wuzhi 物质) and ‘spiritual’ ( jingshen 精神) metamorphosis. This process of ‘creative destruction’ and ‘destructive creation’ is now unfolding in China at a pace and scale that is almost difficult to grasp. China has, arguably, one of the most anthropomorphically transformed environments anywhere in the world. Over thousands of years the physical terrain, especially along the great river basins and deltas along the eastern seaboard, has been entirely transformed by the ongoing expansion of sedentary agriculture. Mark Elvin has outlined the features of this process in his pioneering work The Retreat of the Elephants.7 In the contemporary period, especially in the last 30 years, a new and more intense process of physical reshaping has begun as cities continue to expand and the transport network is modernized and extended. The CPC is holding true to its vision as a developmental party-state to literally ‘move mountains and shape rivers’. The irony here is that as this process of ‘creative destruction’ continues to literally ‘terraform’ the land/cityscape a simultaneous desire, or nostalgia, for a ‘purer’ and more ‘natural’ past also emerges (even more ironic in the sense that this process too is commodified under conditions of the socialist market economy as will be explained below).

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This process of ‘creative destruction/destructive creation’ is thus also intensely felt in the field of culture. On the one hand, the conditions have emerged in China that provide for the unprecedented creation and transmission of ‘culture’ throughout the social realm. The ever-expanding transport infrastructure and mobility of people and commodities, the communication and media revolutions, the dramatic growth in the consumer market and pursuit of lifestyle choices, and the growing presence and capacity of the nation state to shape ‘cultural policy’ alongside the expansion in grass-roots organizations and communities that take ‘culture’ as their raison d’eˆtre, to name but a few, have all contributed in various ways to the proliferation of ‘culture’ and to its commodification. On the other hand, a closely allied set of conditions is leading to cultural destruction on a grand scale as tangible and intangible culture disappear like footprints washed away by wave after wave of change. The rapid pace and scale of industrialization, urbanization and globalization, along with a myriad of other social, cultural and economic forces, are collectively leading to the already highlighted physical reshaping of the natural and built environments, and a subjective (in the philosophical and theoretical sense of ‘subjectivity’) transformation in how people think about and act out their identities and social relations. Chinese culture is literally being ‘reinvented’, ‘recreated’ and ‘redeployed’ by a host of actors – sometimes in collaboration and sometimes in conflict – that includes the nation state, commercial enterprises and grass-root communities. The CCP is without doubt the most significant ‘agent’ for change in China, a complex combination of initiating and responding to change. In contemporary China the CCP is investing physically (through the allocation of material resources into the cultural industry, education system, through the global network of Confucius Institutes, and so forth) and symbolically (through an emphasis on certain motifs and symbols that project a desired image of the Chinese nation) in ‘culture’. ‘Culture’ is articulated by the party-state in numerous ways, and there are indeed conflicting interpretations and interests within the party-state on this matter, but generally speaking ‘culture’ is seen as a means to unify what is a very ethnically

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diverse peoples, as a means to raise the overall ‘quality’ (suzhi 素质)8 of individuals, communities and the nation, as an artefact to promote economic development through tourism and related leisure and pedagogic activities, and, on another level, as an idealized projection to present to the outside world a benign and enlightened civilization, most recently articulated in the party-state’s notion of ‘the China dream’.9 The important role of culture as an artefact was reaffirmed on 18 October 2011 in the CCP Central Committee ‘Resolution Concerning Deepening Reform of the Cultural System and Developing a Flourishing Socialist Culture’. The resolution states that ‘Culture is increasingly becoming an important source of national creativity and unity, is increasingly a crucial element of overall national strength, and increasingly becoming a vital support for economic and social development’.10 The resolution brims with lofty declarations of socialist culture as ‘the blood of the nation and spiritual residence of the people’. Reading beyond the floral embellishments the resolution does present culture in terms familiar to the dominant narrative of the Chinese party-state as a unified multi-ethnic and multi-cultural entity: In China’s five thousand years of civilizational development each of the nationalities have tightly unified and continuously, in an unbroken line, collectively created an ever flowing profound and deep Chinese culture [zhonghua wenhua 中华文化] which in turn has provided enormous spiritual strength for the strong development of the Chinese people [zhonghua minzu 中华 民族] and provided great contributions for the civilizational advance of humanity that cannot be ignored.11 Despite having attacked and attempted to destroy ‘traditional culture’ during the Maoist period (1949– 76) the document hails the CCP as the ‘ever sincere inheritor and advocate of outstanding traditional culture’ and as an ‘active promoter and progenitor of advanced culture [xianjin wenhua 先进文化]’. It is thus very clear that the CCP sees ‘culture’ as an important object in its aspirations for

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national unity and sovereignty. By extension ‘culture’ plays a vital role in fostering good relations between China and its neighbours, both near and far.

Space, Time and Modernity The cultural transformation that I am alluding to here is part and parcel of the unfolding of a Chinese modernity (understood in both singular and plural senses). In this chapter I take the position that alongside the general characteristics of ‘the modern’ – that is, in the great projects of social transformation that seek to create forms of uniformity, especially in terms of the urban landscape – we now find many elements of ‘the post-modern’ – that is, the unabashed eclecticism and diversity in terms of aesthetics, consumption and identity.12 In this scheme of things I argue that the Chinese partystate is still clearly ‘high modernist’ in many respects, but that at the same time it is no longer the ‘modernist’ entity it was under conditions of ‘high Maoism’. There has certainly been a major shift in conceptions of culture, space and time since the Maoist period. I argue here that in terms of China something particularly important happens in the 1990s – 1992 being a year of particular significance with the conceptual establishment of the ‘socialist market economy’. The most notable aspect of this transformation is not only the pace of change, especially of urbanization, but also the diversity and eclecticism in terms or all manner of things, such as architecture, popular culture, lifestyle choices, consumption and so on. Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of modernity in this context has to do with mobility and the effect modern forms of transport and communication have upon social relations. As we shall see below, this is particularly pertinent for a place like Yunnan, a very mountainous and relatively remote region from the ‘centre’. Indeed, it was Yunnan’s relative isolation that shaped the many cultures and social relations that make it unique. In the contemporary period, however, access to modern forms of transport, and in more recent years the experience of vicarious travel through television and other forms of digital media, have enabled the rapid flow of peoples and

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commodities (including ideas and cultural artefacts) to even the most remote mountaintop village. The flows also lead in the other direction with villagers leaving the countryside in search for better prospects in the cities. These dramatic changes in how rapidly and how far people and commodities can move in turn shapes how a society relates to both aspects of ‘space’ and ‘time’. David Harvey speaks of this as a form of ‘time-space compression’,13 while Anthony Giddens has proposed the concept of ‘time-space distanciation’.14 Both scholars seek to understand how modernity both reshapes the conceptual and physical landscape with regard to the reconfiguration of space and time. In ‘premodern’ societies for most people the vast majority of social interactions were face to face. Time and space were intimately connected. In the ‘modern era’ the use of universal measures of time and processes of production and social organization – such as the invention of the portable watch and the segmentation of time in a factory or school – separates space from time. I argue here that the ‘compression of space and time’ that is a hallmark of modernity is not only confined to the borders of Yunnan. The same physical and cultural processes that are connecting Yunnan to the Chinese centre and thereby radically changing its status as an ‘isolated backwater’, are also shaping the way in which Yunnan conceives of its relations with neighbouring regions and countries. In summary ‘culture’ has become an important part of the Chinese party-state’s domestic and foreign policy. ‘Culture’ also has itself become a commodity within the ‘cultural market’. ‘Culture’ is being deployed in diverse contexts to contribute towards changing notions of regional identity. This ‘cultural transformation’ is also matched by a physical transformation of the landscape in which mobility and connectivity are key features. The development of a physical transport infrastructure and of the vicarious travel and connections afforded by the ‘digital revolution’, are contributing to the compression of space and time with the indicative characteristics of a Chinese modernity. These in turn feed into changing visions of regional identity. In what remains of this chapter, I will now begin to explore these points in terms of the context of the spatial and cultural reimagining of Yunnan Province.

69

1978 451

1990 2011 11.57 479.52 237.94 211.42 3.39

12 307.71 137.93 60 1.65

2000

1222

1995

5.28

438.14

331.60

656.59

26.42

3462

2005

10.08

663.28

411.89

811.15

49.8

5692

2008

16.09

1300.29

610.49

1070.11

94.7

8893

2011

Key economic, transport and tourism statistics of Yunnan since 1978 (derived from Yunnan Statistical Yearbook

Gross Regional Product (in 100 million yuan) Exports (in US$ 100 million) Freight Traffic (in 100 million tonne-km) Passenger Traffic (in 100 million passengers-km) Total Tourism Revenue (in 100 million yuan) Foreign Exchange Earnings from International Tourism (in US$ 100 million)

Table 1 2012).

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Yunnan: Cultural Identity on the Frontier Yunnan is a province of approximately 46 million people situated in the southwest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Yunnan Statistical Year Book 2012).15 Like the rest of China, Yunnan has been undergoing a profound economic, social and cultural transformation. The pace of change has, until recently, been slower than can be found along the eastern seaboard. Being mountainous, landlocked and a border region (Yunnan shares international borders with Myanmar (Burma), Laos and Vietnam), it has taken time for the preconditions for rapid change in terms of basic infrastructure to be put in place. The process of infrastructure building, especially in terms of transport networks, is, however, now well underway and the pace of change is visibly accelerating. Table 1 provides, in statistical form, an overview of the major economic, transport and social changes that have taken place in Yunnan since 1978. The statistics provide a broad picture of the scope, nature and pace of change in Yunnan. I will refer back to Table 1 throughout the remainder of the chapter to reinforce the general sense of change that is taking place and to put it into some perspective. These statistics are supplemented by over a decade of fieldwork in Yunnan and reference, formally and informally, to authoritative English and Chinese studies on Yunnan. ‘Culture’, it should be acknowledged, is a lot more difficult to measure statistically. Nonetheless, we can confidently assume that the issues of cultural identity in a time of rapid change that apply to the whole of China are also found in Yunnan, with one crucial exception. That is, the issue of Yunnanese cultural identity is closely bound to its status and location in the southwest periphery. This means that the ‘problem’ of Yunnanese cultural identity is often referred back to the cultural standards of the ‘centre’. By ‘centre’ here I refer to the mainstream Han Chinese culture that is largely the product of the major centres of cultural production along the eastern seaboard. This study, therefore, adds to our understanding of cultural nationalism in contemporary China by examining the complex relations between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ and the ways in which that dynamic is shaping regional identity.

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This chapter is thus, in part, an exercise in what Tim Summers refers to as ‘linguistic cartography’, that is, an examination of the ways in which Yunnan has been variously imagined in the past and in the present, and of course how the ‘past’ is imagined ‘in the present’.16 In terms of ‘cartography’, the chapter examines the contemporary reimagining of Yunnan as a province on the periphery – a form of geographical ‘dead end’ – to a region that has become a centre in its own right as far as the possibilities for engagement with Southeast Asia and beyond throw Yunnan into a new strategic light in an era of rapid globalization. In this regard, as Summers further notes, by the mid-1990s a new dominant narrative about Yunnan’s place in China and the region as a ‘bridgehead’ (qiaotoubao 桥头堡) had emerged.17 The aforementioned ATHR is also an important part of this narrative of ‘nationalist historiography’, insofar as it is seen as a network that binds the diverse peoples of Yunnan with other regions in China, notably Tibet, and also with peoples across international borders in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. To quote Summers again: The forces at work in policy formation in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have stimulated historical imaginings which can be understood as the conjunctural coming to the fore of structural elements of Yunnan’s historical relations, allowing both assertion of national belonging and promotion of opening up to economic and commercial interactions with Asian neighbours in the pursuit of development.18 The rest of the chapter is divided into three sections. First, the chapter seeks to provide an overview of the geography of Yunnan. Every society is to a greater or lesser extent shaped by geography. Yunnan is no exception. Indeed the unique topography and climate of Yunnan could be said to have an overdetermined impact on social formation. This is not to suggest that geography is destiny, but rather that characteristics of Yunnan’s social transformation are dependent on a particular geography. It is thus important that the reader come to grips with Yunnan’s unique physical environment.

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Second, this geographical account is followed by a brief social history of Yunnan, with a primary focus on its status as a cultural zone on the frontier of both the dynastic Han Chinese empire and the contemporary Chinese party-state on the one hand, and the many non-Han kingdoms, principalities/statelets and peoples of past and present Southwest China, Tibet and Mainland Southeast Asia on the other. Space does not allow for a detailed examination of Yunnan’s fascinating history. Instead, the focus is on those aspects that relate to the core interests of this chapter. This brevity is necessary given Yunnan’s relative unknown status outside of China and the importance of key historical events and cultural trends that have shaped present-day Yunnan. Finally, the chapter concludes by outlining the remarkable economic, social and cultural transformation that is taking place in Yunnan at present; one that of course is mirrored throughout China, but, that in this case, has particular Yunnanese characteristics. This concluding section of the chapter seeks to understand how this transformation is understood within Yunnan, especially in terms of what it means for Yunnanese identity, in relation to the notion of the ATHR.

Yunnan: ‘A Mysterious Land beyond the Clouds’ In the contemporary mainstream Chinese imagination ‘Yunnan’ conjures up images of an exotic, mysterious and colourful land, a perception influenced at times by a form of ‘Chinese Orientalism’,19 and a point not lost on tourism developers. Yet in some ways Yunnan, in terms of geography and culture, for instance, does seem to readily lend itself to the label of ‘Other’ in ways that other regions of China do not (notable exceptions being of course Tibet and Xinjiang). In this section, a brief summary of the major topographical, ethnic and cultural features demonstrate how this conclusion can be reached. Firstly, Yunnan is a frontier border province in Southwest China sharing international borders with Myanmar (Burma), Laos and Vietnam. Domestically it shares borders with the provinces of Guizhou and Sichuan, and the ‘autonomous regions’ of Guangxi and

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Tibet. The notion of ‘frontier’ (bianjiang 边疆) is particularly important here, both in terms of imagining a geographical and cultural frontier (or more correctly in terms of the latter as a cultural meeting point of diverse peoples), and a core component of regional self-identification. As we shall see below, Yunnan has for all its long history been regarded by Han China as a ‘frontier’ region, ‘a mysterious land beyond the clouds’, and the farthest, southwestern extent of the dynastic Chinese empire. This ‘frontier’ status has in turn played an important role in shaping the regional identity of Yunnan in the past and will continue to do so in the future. As we shall also see, however, the way the ‘frontier’ has shaped this regional identity has also changed over time, most notably in the present under the influence of rapid socio-economic change and globalization. Secondly, as noted above, Yunnan has a large and diverse population.20 As to be expected with such cultural diversity, a myriad of languages are spoken with the major languages represented classified as Tai-Kadai, Mon-Khmer, Miao-Yao and Sino-Tibetan. Historically, the cultural and ethnic connections between the various border peoples of Yunnan, and those across both domestic and international borders, are very dynamic. Of course before the creation of the modern nation state and introduction of modern transport technology borders were a lot more porous (although this didn’t stop dynastic Chinese governments from attempting to regulate population flows). Yunnan thus has a relatively large and ethnically diverse population with active connections with its regional and provincial neighbours through long-standing religious, cultural, ethnic, kinship and trade ties. Thirdly, topographically Yunnan consists of high mountain ranges and deep river valleys, including the well-known rivers of the Yangtze (which in Yunnan is known as the Jinshajiang or ‘River of Golden Sands’), the Mekong (Meigonghe or Lancangjiang) and the Salween (Nujiang) (these make up the ‘three parallel rivers’ referred to below). Straddling the Tropic of Cancer and with varying altitudes (with an average of approximately 2,000 metres) the province has a diverse climate and biosphere, ranging from high alpine pastures to

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subtropical jungles. Yunnan is, therefore, without doubt one of the most topographically, biologically and culturally diverse regions in China, if not in the world.21 With such incredible diversity it is easy to see how fertile the concept of ‘Yunnan’ is for the exotic imagination, both Chinese and Western.

A Society and Culture Shaped by Geography As the above has alluded to, although by no means does it necessarily dictate destiny, Yunnanese society and culture has been significantly shaped by its geography. The geographical features of Yunnan and the people that inhabit those spaces feature strongly in the imagery of Yunnan. Most notably Yunnan is mountainous and landlocked. The mountainous topography of Yunnan is a result of the tectonic collision between the Indian subcontinent and the European/Asian landmass. This collision created the Himalayan ‘roof of the world’ in Tibet and it also pushed up the Hengduan Mountains forming the southeast section of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau that extends into northwest Yunnan where it becomes the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. The Hengduan Mountains run in many folds from north to south. The highest elevation is Kawagarbo Mountain (on the border with Tibet and known as Meili Snow Mountain in Mandarin) at 6,740 metres. Hekou, on the border with Vietnam, has the lowest elevation at 76 metres. Mountains make up approximately 84 per cent of the terrain, whilst plateaus and basins account for about 10 per cent. Although there are myriad rivers, including the ‘three parallel rivers’ named above, none of them are really suitable for navigation within Yunnan, with the exception of the Mekong, but then only near the border with Laos and Myanmar, and possibly the Salween just as it is about to enter Myanmar. Most of the rivers have formed deep gorges which become dangerous torrents during the monsoon. The only viable form of long distance mass transport in this mountainous terrain, until the arrival of modern transport technologies, was the horse and mule caravan. As we shall discuss below, this trading network was named the Ancient Tea Horse Road (ATHR) by Yunnanese scholars in the 1990s.22 Even today the

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mountainous terrain makes road building in Yunnan extremely difficult, dangerous and costly. The point to be made here is that whilst Yunnan was, and remains, mountainous and land-locked, it has nonetheless always been connected to the major cultural and trading centres north, south, east and west. In fact, whilst some pre-modern Western perceptions of China saw ‘Cathay’ as ‘closed’ and ‘isolated’, and even when dynastic governments promoted the policy of ‘closing the borders and locking the country’ (biguan suoguo 闭关锁国), the reality is that China has always been open to trade and the movement of peoples in some form or other. Nowadays we designate the major ancient trading corridors as the Silk Road, the Maritime Silk Road and Southwest Silk Road. The ATHR fits within the Southwest Silk Road, although not without controversy and disputation. The growing body of research in this area highlights the interconnectivity between regions both within what we now designated as ‘China’ and beyond. Thus, in this scheme of things Yunnan is not an isolated backwater, but an important trading and cultural corridor. These two perceptions of Yunnan as ‘closed’ and ‘open’ form the basic ground for contesting views of Yunnanese identity, as they both contain different views of the Yunnanese subjects agency as either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ in the face of a form of geographical determinism.

Yunnan in Chinese History: The Changing Dynamics of the Southwestern Frontier Central China’s engagement with Yunnan can be traced back to at least the Han Dynasty (206 BCE –220 CE ). But it was not until the Mongol invasion of 1321 that Yunnan became effectively incorporated into the Chinese dynastic empire. The Ming (1368– 1644) and Qing (1644– 1911) dynasties in turn witnessed further incorporation.23 Even so for much of this period many parts of Yunnan were only tentatively under dynastic rule. For much of this period most of Yunnan, especially in areas where the Han Chinese were in a minority, were governed through the ‘Chieftain’ (tusi 土司) system. That is, rather than governing directly through centrally appointed magistrates, the ruling dynasty

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selected local ethnic rulers as its representatives. From about the 1820s onwards the Qing Government implemented a policy of ‘administrative regularisation’ (gaitu guiliu 改土归流) and most local rulers where replaced with appointed magistrates. Yunnan, always a challenge for government considering the terrain, cultural and ethnic diversity, and distance from the political centre in ‘China proper’, held an important strategic position as a mixed cultural zone and played a vital role in interactions between the Han Chinese and other peoples on the so-called ‘frontier’ (bianjiang 边疆). As C. P. Fitzgerald notes in this regard: Yunnan is a special case, a kind of test to which the whole process of Chinese cultural and political expansion can be subjected. It could be seen as the model which further expansion would follow, if or when it becomes politically feasible; or it can be seen as the furthest probable limit of Chinese incorporation of a region formerly non-Chinese.24 In Chinese history, or indeed in any cultural and social history for that matter, frontiers have always been places of cultural exchange and experiments in hybridity. Within Chinese dynastic history the frontiers were also places of ongoing vigilance and pacification, especially those frontiers bordering the expansive pastures of nomadic peoples. Soldiers, prisoners and scholar-officials who fell afoul of the ruling dynastic court, could find themselves expelled or exiled to the frontiers. Yunnan was no exception with many settlements tracing their origins back to Han penal settlement or the establishment of military outposts.25 Yunnan can also be regarded as part of what James C. Scott refers to as ‘Zomia’, that is, a mountainous zone incorporating much of Mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China.26 ‘Zomia’ is a fictitious name given to a large geographical region occupied by a diverse array of peoples who used the rugged terrain as a means of keeping out of the direct reach of powerful lowland states. In what follows, however, I take the establishment of the PRC in 1949 as the beginning of the end of ‘Zomia’. That is, with the

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effective establishment of a strong party-state determined to pacify and govern all corners of the nation the mountainous terrain is gradually subdued by modern forms of political rule and technology which overcome distance and spatial obstacles. This dovetails with the reimagining of Yunnan’s place in contemporary China, especially in the last 30 years. I divide post-1949 Yunnan into three distinct periods. The first period covers the Maoist period from 1949 to 1979. The second period encompasses the launch of ‘reform and openness’ from 1978 to 1992. The third period takes Yunnan from 1992 – the establishment in China of the ‘socialist market economy’ – to the present. I also argue below that a fourth period is commencing, characterized by a Yunnan which is ‘going out’ to the outside world, and especially to its neighbours in Southeast Asia. The trajectory from 1949 to the present is well captured in the notion of transition from a ‘backwater’ to a ‘bridgehead’.

Yunnan and the First Phase of the Party-State Period 1949 –79 The first half of the twentieth century was an important time in terms of nation state building under the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, especially after the Northern Expedition of 1927 brought much of Eastern China under direct central government control. The impact of a modernizing government was also felt in Yunnan, especially in the larger population centres such as Kunming. Yet this pales by comparison with the level of centralized rule that emerges post-1949. After the establishment of the PRC, China literally moves from being a ‘nation state’ to becoming a ‘party-state’. By the term ‘party-state’ I mean that under the CCP China adopts many of the features of Soviet-style government. This is characterized by the adoption of a centrally planned economy, the work-unit system in urban areas, an all-pervasive propaganda system, and the cult of the leader. We may also refer to this as the first phase of a ‘socialist modernity’. Unsurprisingly this first phase of the partystate is coterminous with the Maoist period (1949– 76).

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During this period China enters a period of virtual isolation, isolated from the global capitalist economy and, after the Sino-Soviet split of 1960, also isolated from the Soviet Bloc.27 Existing in a state of almost perpetual war preparation, the borders of the PRC were closed and tightly guarded. In this scheme of things, Yunnan’s historical position as an economic, cultural and migratory corridor to Mainland Southeast Asia ceases (except for certain instances of PRC support for communist insurgencies in Burma and Indochina). Yunnan’s primary function is to secure the borders of the ‘ancestral land’ (zuguo 祖国). At this point Yunnan becomes well and truly on the periphery, a backwater of ‘underdevelopment’ (luohou 落后), a status it is to retain up until the present day.28 Efforts are, however, made to modernize the Yunnanese economy, notably by the opening up of rainforest to rubber plantations.29 These were managed through the PLA ‘military colonies’ (bingtuan 兵 团) and, during the Cultural Revolution (1966– 76), were the destination for thousands of ‘sent down [or “rusticated”] youth’ (zhishi qingnian 知识青年), including large cohorts from urban Shanghai. The story of the hardship these youth faced in a place far removed from their home towns, with subtropical conditions and diseases, ‘strange’ and ‘savage’ minorities, and so on, was one that confirmed the negative stereotypes typical of Yunnan at the time.30 Socialist modernity in this phase instils a very strong sense of linear progress and social evolution in the broader society in ways not achieved by the previous Nationalist regime. In this regard many of the ethnic groups were seen by Chinese Marxist theory as ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’, as vestiges of earlier phases of human social evolution. Once again this reinforces the image of Yunnan as a place of backwardness, something that needs to be overcome if ‘progress’ is finally to prevail. Many Maoist inspired programmes to change social customs were indeed carried out in Yunnan, as they were all across China. The different religious and belief practices of Yunnan’s ethnic groups were an obvious target. Red Guards also penetrated deep into the valleys in their efforts to ‘destroy the four olds’ (dapo sijiu 打破四 旧). And yet Yunnan’s rugged terrain and isolation was still a major obstacle. Large parts of the province remained out of the reach of

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modern roads and electricity, for example, for most of this period. It was common for communities in the high mountainous regions to be completely cut off for months during winter. Quite often minority peoples in these remote locations absorbed the new socialist culture partly on their own terms by, for example, regarding Mao as someone with magical properties and powers, a deity in some respects. To this day when visiting more remote villages you can still find portraits of Mao and other Chinese communist leaders adorning the walls of village houses.

Yunnan and the Launch of ‘Reform and Openness’: 1978 –92 After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the re-emergence of Deng Xiaoping as the paramount leader not too long after, the CPC launched the policies of ‘reform and openness’ (gaige kaifang 改革开放) at the historic Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1978. The party-state entered a new period in which it attempted to keep many of the trappings of the Maoist regime – whilst ditching the extreme cult of personality and politicization of everyday life – and gradually reforming the economy and opening China to the outside world. The impact of these policies, first felt quite strongly in the countryside with decollectivization and then later in the urban centres, was most discernible in Eastern China. The reforms of the 1980s also made their way to Yunnan, but the overall impact was much less significant. Yunnan was still relatively isolated and had far fewer opportunities to attract foreign investment when compared to the ‘Special Economic Zone’ of Shenzhen, for example. During the 1980s Yunnan’s economic growth was much slower than its counterparts along the eastern seaboard. In terms of cultural and political life in China the 1980s were a heady time. After the virtual straitjacket of the Maoist period students, scholars and many people from all walks of life were stimulated by the sudden influx of new ideas, a phenomenon known at the time as the ‘cultural craze’ (wenhuare 文化热). The student demonstrations that swept China in 1989 and that had their focus in Beijing, also made

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their way to Kunming. Yet during the 1980s, outside the provincial capital, change was much slower and more piecemeal. With regards to mobility the first notable source of transient visitors took the form of foreign tourists. Many backpackers also began to head towards Yunnan forging an itinerary of Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang, and thus beginning to lay the foundations of the mega-tourist economy that Yunnan now possesses (see the relevant tourism growth statistics in Table 1). However, due to the lack of modern transport construction, Yunnan was still a very difficult and indeed, adventurous, place to travel during this period, as this author can personally testify to, first visiting Kunming and Dali in 1990. The journey from Kunming to Dali was a 17 hour bus ride on winding mountainous roads marked with numerous potholes. Now with the construction of an expressway it has been reduced to a journey of several hours. During the 1980s Yunnan’s borders still remained tightly closed. There were tense relations with Vietnam where the memory of recent conflict (1979) was still fresh. The domestic situation across the border in Myanmar will still very unstable. Yunnan was still a frontier, a borderland, a backward place in many respects, but a place on the cusp of profound change. All that was required were the right conditions internally and externally. Those conditions emerged early on in the next period.

Yunnan and the Socialist Market Economy: From 1992 to the Present The year 1992 is one of great significance, on par with the historic events of 1978. In 1992 at the 14th Party Congress the then Party Secretary General Jiang Zemin officially declared that the goal of the CPC was to henceforth construct a ‘socialist market economy’ (shehuizhuyi shichang jingji 社会主义市场经济). This was the first time that the phrase ‘market economy’ was officially embraced by the CPC leadership. It represents a significant ideological turning point and a signal that China was about to truly embrace, and later shape, global capitalism in the 1990s and 2000s. Jiang Zemin’s declaration came in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘southern tour’ to the ‘Special

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Economic Zones’ (SEZs) of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, and his visit to the then languishing metropolis of Shanghai. Both Deng and Jiang pointed to more openness, and a fuller acceptance of the global capitalist economy whilst simultaneously strengthening party-state authority, as the way forward for China. The implications of this dramatic shift were profound for all of China, Yunnan included. The operational principles of the SEZs now began to be rapidly expanded to the rest of China.31 In June 1992 the State Council, equivalent to China’s ‘Cabinet’, officially applies the ‘opening up’ policies to Yunnan. The Provincial Governor of the time, He Zhiqiang, issued a document titled, ‘Thoughts on speeding up Yunnan’s openness: Connecting to coastal provinces in the east, and southeast Asia in the west’.32 At the same time, the Asian Development Bank promoted the establishment of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), which includes Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Yunnan, of course, was to take an important part in this new regional forum, and the many others that have emerged since then. Thus, to sum up, during the first phase of the reform period Yunnan began to open more to the outside world, but not as fast as those regions along the eastern seaboard. During the 1990s, with the development of the ‘socialist market economy’, the decade of phenomenal economic expansion along the eastern seaboard, and the emphasis on developing ‘culture’ as an economic commodity, the pace of change in Yunnan also begins to quicken pace. And yet by the conclusion of the 1990s the central authorities deem that the speed of development in the western regions, including Yunnan, is not sufficient. During this first decade of the ‘socialist market economy’ the gap between China’s east and west actually grows wider. Hence in the late 1990s the CCP launches the massive and ambitious ‘Develop the West’ policy (xibu dakaifa 西部大开发). The policy, which we should also note is as much about extracting Western China’s mineral resources for use in the burgeoning economy along the eastern seaboard, includes massive investments in basic transport infrastructure. With the development of modern expressways, roads, airports and so on, Yunnan’s relative isolation begins to break down.

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As the figures in Table 1 demonstrate, Yunnan begins to experience the true intensity of the acceleration of compression of space and time in this era of rapid globalization. Most significantly for our purposes, amongst all this dramatic change, Yunnan’s status as a ‘backwater’ and ‘dead end’ changes. As China opens up and begins to seek out trading opportunities with its nearest neighbours, Yunnan’s position as a ‘backwater’ on the ‘frontier’ now gives way to a notion of ‘gateway’, or ‘bridgehead’ as the provincial government puts it nowadays. This represents a radical reconfiguring of Yunnanese identity vis-a`-vis ‘centre versus periphery’. In terms of trade, security and as a conduit for resources, Yunnan’s position has undergone a remarkable transformation. The China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement came into effect on 1 January 2010. The ‘bridgehead’ strategy is enshrined in the ‘border opening up’ section of the current 12th FiveYear Plan (2011–15). According to the Yunnan Transport Ministry by the end of 2010 Yunnan had 2,630 kilometres of expressway and 20,000 kilometres of highway, placing it second in terms of provinces and regions in Western China.33 The amount of funds invested in transport infrastructure during the ‘11th Five Year Plan’ (2006–10) far exceed that of the previous plan (202.67 billion yuan versus 79.8 billion yuan).34 As already noted, this is not just an ideological or conceptual shift, it is also a physical transformation of the very landscape as monumental expressways, railways and other infrastructure literally reshape Yunnan. The China National Ministry of Transport has plans to connect every county in China with a sealed road, no matter what the expense or engineering difficulty. But it doesn’t stop there. There are also plans to connect Yunnan via an international expressway network to the countries of Southeast Asia. The Kunming to Bangkok Expressway is already completed and was China’s first international expressway. The Kunming to Hanoi Expressway, terminating in the port city of Hai Phong, is currently under construction. A previous journey of several days will be compressed into nine hours. The Asian Development Bank has been a major investor in the trans-regional transport infrastructure projects (what it refers to as ‘economic corridors’).

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It was the dream of discovering a land route between India and Burma and Eastern China via Yunnan that spurred on British interest in the possibility of a railway link (the French built a railway route between Hanoi and Kunming, of a smaller gauge than the rest of China and hence not part of the present national network). The railway from Chengdu to Kunming was completed in 1970 and at the time represented a major engineering achievement. But it pales by comparison to the contemporary efforts and investment in railway construction. Since the 1990s investment in the railway network has increased dramatically, the network now extends from Kunming to Lijiang, with plans to extend to Shangrila and ultimately to Lhasa. From Dali the plan is to extend towards Baoshan and Ruili and then on to Myanmar, finally achieving the century-old dream of a railway link to the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean is regarded by strategic observers as crucial to China’s rise as it will provide a readily accessible connection to the ocean for China’s inland provinces and regions, especially Yunnan. Construction of a high-speed railway to Bangkok and Singapore, through Laos, has also been mooted and is expected to be complete within the next decade.35 Other notable developments in transport include the completion in 2012 of the Changshui International Airport Kunming, the fourth largest airport in China. Of further logistical importance is the building of two separate oil and gas pipelines from Myanmar to Yunnan.36 The gas pipeline was completed in 2013. The oil pipeline is expected to be completed in the coming year or so. These measures are expected to reduce China’s dependence on transport of key resources through the Straits of Malacca (through which more than 80 per cent of China’s oil currently passes). The Yunnan Provincial Government is keen to exploit the opportunities the pipelines present by providing petro-chemical processing facilities to add-on extra value. In an indication that such moves may have unforeseen consequences local residents of Kunming mobilized in 2013 to demonstrate against the building of a PX petrochemical plant in the suburbs resulting the largest public demonstrations in Yunnan since 1989.

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As already noted, the Yunnan Provincial Government describes its new role in China’s engagement with Mainland Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean as a ‘bridgehead’. The notion first emerges at the time of the opening of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) negotiations. The development of a modern transport infrastructure that connects Yunnan to the rest of China and to the nations on its borders is regarded as a key component of the ‘bridgehead’ strategy.37

Culture on the Frontier: Yunnanese Identity and the Ancient Tea Horse Road Thus in the course of the last two decades Yunnan, along with the rest of China, has entered a period of rapid change. In a province as large and diverse as Yunnan the pace and significance of change is not uniform. But even the most isolated hamlets in the mountains have not gone untouched by the forces of social transformation. The cultural transformation of Yunnan has also been significant. One of the outcomes of the transition to the socialist market economy has been the rapid commodification of all forms of culture. In the case of Yunnan international and domestic tourism – especially the latter – have actively worked together to promote a new image of Yunnan as an exotic and desirable location to visit.38 As already noted, the tourism statistics in Table 1 show the rapid growth of tourism in Yunnan since the 1990s. At this point we return to one of the central themes of the introduction to this chapter, that is, culture as an artefact that has as one of its many functions the crystallization and dissemination of hegemonic forms of regional identity. As China is rapidly transforming the question of cultural, and of course cultural national, identity has become paramount. The regions of China are each responding to the key themes and generating their own narratives concerning their place in the national landscape. In some cases, such as in Tibet and Xinjiang, these narratives may also include strong resistive counter-narratives to those of the hegemonic party-state. In the case of Yunnan the emergence of the notion of the ATHR in the early 1990s offers a number of insights into the role of ‘culture’ in

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reshaping Yunnanese identity in relation to its role as a ‘bridgehead’ between ‘centre, periphery, and beyond’. The ATHR refers to a network of trading routes criss-crossing Southwest China that link the tea producing areas with tea consumption markets. These markets can be found in Yunnan itself and also in neighbouring provinces and regions, including Tibet. The trading networks continue across international borders into Mainland Southeast Asia and India. Given the mountainous terrain the only feasible form of long distance transportation was the horse and mule caravan. Caravans ranged in size from several animals to several hundred. The muleteer was thus an important figure. A number of different ethnic groups operated commercial caravans. It was also common to find caravans with muleteers from numerous ethnic backgrounds.39 The ATHR as a concept was the initial product of a number of Yunnanese scholars who in the early 1990s were searching for a cultural icon that could cover the enormous topographical and ethnic diversity of Yunnan.40 The ATHR fitted the bill perfectly. However, the concept was also hijacked by the sudden shift towards a cultural commodity market and the rise of domestic Chinese tourism, for which the ATHR offered excellent branding opportunities (including of course for the tea market as well).41 Firstly, as far as putting Yunnan in the centre of the picture, the tea plant – Camellia Sinensis – is native to Yunnan and surrounding subtropical regions. It is most likely that tea was first cultivated and consumed by humans in and around Yunnan by the predecessors of Yunnan’s contemporary ethnic groups. Given that tea later went on to become a highly prized global commodity this acknowledgement of the origins of tea puts Yunnan firmly in the centre of world history. In turn the notion of the ATHR, and we should also add that of the Southern Silk Road, reminds the Yunnanese and the rest of China that Yunnan has always been an important connection to the world beyond the ‘middle kingdom’. Secondly, as noted above, the ATHR, conjures up images of mule and horse caravans made up of a mixture of ethnically different muleteers (Han, Hui, Tibetan, Bai, Yi and so on). In this sense the caravans’ cultural diversity is itself a microcosm of ethnic relations in

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Yunnan. The ATHR is described as a trading route that provided the foundation for trade and cultural exchange amongst Southwest China’s ethnic groups. Over time a common sense of identity was purportedly developed at the same time as local ethnic groups maintained a strong sense of self-identity. There are two major points here. The first is that the ATHR projects an image of different ethnic groups with different religions and culture as coexisting and cooperating in harmony – a very important message for China today. The second is that this ‘unity in diversity’ (he er butong, 和而不同) has at its core the civilizational dominance of Han culture. As Li Xu, one of the original scholars who named the ATHR, argues, what the ATHR represents is a form of ‘civilization’ (wenming 文明) at work on the frontier (bianjiang 边疆): The role in opening and expansion of the Ancient Tea Horse Road and the numerous commercial and travel interactions between the various ethnic groups [minzu 民族] cannot be underestimated in the development of the Chinese frontier [zhongguo bianjiang 中国边疆], in the bright flowering transmission and taking root of ancient Chinese civilisation on the frontier, in the interactive amalgamation of many ethnic economies and cultures, and in the international interactions of economic trade cooperation and friendship. It can be said that the Ancient Tea Horse road is a microcosm of China’s southwest frontier’s rich and imposing cultural history which not only transmitted the various miraculous histories and spiritual essence of various peoples, but even more so it includes the transmission and accumulation of Han Chinese culture in the ethnic areas of the frontier, and in so doing amply displays the interaction and amalgamation of traditional Chinese culture [zhonghua minzu 中华民族] in the southwest.42 The sense of ‘civilization’ (wenming 文明) that is deployed here fits with already well-established notions of ‘Chinese civilization’ as the collective crystallization of the cultural achievements of the various

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peoples of China, past and present. Collectively they make up what is known as ‘huaxia wenming’ (华夏文明) or ‘Chinese civilization’. Thirdly, the ATHR also conjures up nostalgic images of times gone past, which, when compared to the present, seem more simple and pure. This is indicative of a form of nostalgia in China where the pursuit of the modern creates a market for representations and experiences of ‘the past’, which somehow seem to suggest continuity with the past and provide some sense of stability in the present (the latter being very significant in a time of rapid change). There is, it should also be added, a significant sense of irony insofar as the ATHR is rediscovered, celebrated and commodified just at the time when it is about to vanish. Finally, the ATHR when it moves beyond the borders of contemporary China becomes a vehicle for expressing friendly relations with neighbouring countries and emphasizing the historical bonds through trade. In this regard the ATHR’s emphasis on trade – for we might also note that the very same trading routes have also been used for the transportation of soldiers and for ensuing military conflict – finds resonance in current policy to expand trading links with Yunnan’s neighbours. A number of academic conferences and forums in Yunnan have recently focused on connecting the ATHR with the ‘bridgehead’ strategy. Even the Yunnanese officials have evoked the ATHR when referring to relations with neighbouring countries.

Conclusion The ATHR thus conceptually emerged in the early 1990s at a time when Yunnan itself was about to undergo a remarkable physical and cultural transformation. It has since then evolved with Yunnan’s ongoing development as it is transformed from a ‘backwater’ to a ‘bridgehead’. As this chapter has outlined, Yunnan has repositioned itself as a gateway to Mainland Southeast Asia and significantly realigned its geopolitical significance with regards to the Chinese centre. This in turn has occurred alongside the greater forms of cultural transformation which are also reshaping Yunnanese identity.

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This is in itself quite a complex phenomenon that involves the identities and sense of home/belonging of many different ethnic groups and communities, nowadays including the arrival in Yunnan of lifestyle migrants from Eastern China. Part of this has included both positive and negative consequences of the commodification of cultural forms, especially as they are forced to interact with the demands of the tourism market. As noted here the sense of a mixed-modernity has emerged in which we find complex interactions between notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘the modern’. Yunnan will continue to be shaped by these complex forces, both physically in terms of transport infrastructure, and culturally in terms of government policy, the forces of the market and of the grass-roots development of local identities. How these developments are going to be received by the nations and peoples of Mainland Southeast Asia has not been the focus of this chapter. Rather the objective has been to fill in some of the significant gaps in our knowledge of China’s rise and its regional implications from the perspective of Yunnan. This chapter has demonstrated that to purely focus on events in Beijing and the eastern seaboard is to overlook China’s long-standing historical links with its border regions – in this case that of Yunnan – and the profound changes that are now taking place that will make the act of ‘knowing’ China much more challenging and complicated. Just as Yunnan has repositioned itself in terms of the Chinese political centre, so too do regional studies of China themselves need to be seen in a new strategic light not as ‘peripheral’ to the main agenda, but significant and important parts of the ‘China story’ that deserve and require adequate scholarly attention.

Notes 1. ‘Kunming Killings Seen in a New Light’, The Australian, http://www.theaus tralian.com.au/news/world/kunming-killings-are-seen-in-a-new-light/storye6frg6so-1226855218108?nk¼8a0e87a523ef89bb27f7974f59394f73. 2. The use of ‘so-called’ in the case of the Ancient Tea Horse Road is a reminder that this route, whilst now accepted in government and scholarly circles in China as historical fact, has informally been criticized by some Chinese scholars

200

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4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

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(based on confidential interviews with key figures in Chinese tea and social history). However, in this chapter it is not my purpose to critique the historical accuracy of the ATHR but rather to understand how the ATHR is being variously deployed as a cultural artefact. See Ma Liping [马丽萍] ‘新中国60年来云南边疆民族和谐发展经验述要, 《新乡学院学 报》（社会科学版, 25/2 (2011), pp. 1 – 5; and Liu Rouqing, ‘云南民族团结和谐发展 的经验与启示’,《云南民族大学学报, 27/6 (2010), pp. 5 – 10. See Sutter, Robert G. (2006), China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); and Shambaugh, David, China Goes Global: The Partial Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). See for example, Kurlantzick, Joshua, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, ‘The Manifesto of the Communist Party’ (1848), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/. Elvin, Mark, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). This is also not to deny the transformative effects of nomadic herding cultures on the natural environment, or indeed of other societies seemingly uninterested in any form of agriculture or animal husbandry. See Gammage, Bill, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013). ‘Suzhi’ is a Chinese term referring to ‘quality’. In terms of human beings suzhi refers to the physical, intellectual, cultural and moral ‘quality’ of the person. Suzhi is often used in this context in China as a means of differentiating segments of the population into those with ‘high quality’ and those with ‘low quality’. It is an important element of contemporary Chinese governmentality. See Sigley, Gary, ‘Governing Chinese Bodies: The Significance of Studies in Governmentality for the Analysis of Birth Control in China’, Economy and Society, 25/4 (1996), pp. 457– 82; and Sigley, Gary, ‘Suzhi, the Body, and the Fortunes of Technoscientific Reasoning in Contemporary China’, Positions: East Asia Culture Critique, 17/3 (2009), pp. 538–66. See Callahan, William, A., China Dreams: Twenty Visions of the Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 中共中央关于深化文化体制改革推动社会主义文化大发展大繁荣若干重大问题的决定 , (‘Resolution Concerning Deepening Reform of the Cultural System and Developing a Flourishing Socialist Culture’), 25 October 2011, http://www. gov.cn/jrzg/2011-10/25/content_1978202.htm. Ibid. There have been just as many debates over the notions of ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’ as there have been over ‘culture’. Indeed ‘culture’ has featured as a key part of those debates (even though the notion of ‘culture’ in those debates often remains undefined). Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1990).

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14. Giddens, Anthony, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). 15. Yunnansheng, Tongjiju, Yunnan Statistical Year Book 2012 (Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 2012). 16. Summers, Tim, ‘(Re)positioning Yunnan: Region and Nation in Contemporary Provincial Narratives’, Journal of Contemporary China, 21/75 (2012), p. 445. 17. Ibid., p. 450. 18. Summers, Tim, ‘Yunnan and Southern Silk Roads: Provincial History in Contemporary Chinese Policy Formation’, Paper presented at Inter-Asian Connections III Conference, The University of Hong Kong, 6 – 8 June 2012, p. 23. 19. On the notion of ‘Chinese Orientalism’, or ‘Internal Colonialism’, see Gladney, Dru C., ‘Internal Colonialism and the Uyghur Nationality’, ISIM Newsletter, 1/1 (1998), p. 20; Schein, Louisa, ‘Gender and Internal Orientalism in China’, Modern China, 23/1 (1997), pp. 69–98; and Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, ‘Postcoloniality and religiosity in modern China: The disenchanments of sovereignty’, Theory, Culture and Society, 28/2 (2011), pp. 3–45. 20. The notion of ‘ethnicity’ in China, and in Yunnan especially, is particularly complex. Beyond the taxonomic confines of the officially recognized ethnic groups are many ‘sub’ groups and communities with distinct languages and traditions. In this sense Yunnan is even more ethnically diverse than the notion of ‘26 ethnic nationalities’ implies. On ethnic identity and classification in Yunnan. See Mullaney, Thomas, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press). 21. The biological diversity is recognized through UNESCO as the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site. The ancient town of Lijiang (Dayan) is also inscribed as a World Heritage site. 22. For more on the Ancient Tea Horse Road see Sigley, Gary, ‘Cultural Heritage Tourism and the Ancient Tea Horse Road of Southwest China’, International Journal of China Studies, 1/2 (2010), pp. 531– 44; and Sigley, Gary, ‘The Ancient Tea Horse Road and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Southwest China: Regional Identity in the Context of a Rising China’, in H. Silverman and T. Blumenfield (eds), Cultural Heritage Politics in China (New York: Springer, 2013). 23. For an extensive overview of Yunnanese history see Yang Bin, Between Winds and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan, Second Century BCE to Twentieth Century CE (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 24. Fitzgerald, C. P., The Southern Expansion of the Chinese People (New York and Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1972), p. 8. 25. To the dynastic Han imagination Yunnan was a mountainous land shrouded in cloud and hazardous vapours. The latter were known as ‘zhangqi’ (瘴气) and described a series of physical and mental afflictions. Some scholars have suggested that part of the zhangqi may be explained by malaria, and as was the case elsewhere in subtropical and tropical regions around the world, placed

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26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

37.

CHINA’S FRONTIER REGIONS limitations on state and imperial expansion. See for example, Giersch, C. Patterson, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006). Scott, James C., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). The PRC did engage in trade with some Western countries during this period, but it was extremely limited in terms of its overall impact on the domestic economy. Although the borders were tightly policed, this, it should be noted, didn’t stop many ethnic minority peoples inhabiting the border zone from going over the visit kinship and other communities across the border, especially in times of distress such as attacks against ‘landlords’ during the 1950s and during the Cultural Revolution. The author has heard numerous first-hand accounts during the course of fieldwork. Sturgeon, Janet C. and Menzies, Nicholas, ‘Ideological landscapes: Rubber in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, 1950 to 2007’, Asian Geographer, 25/1 (2006), pp. 21 – 37. For a firsthand biographical account of the experience of one ‘sent-down’ youth (sent to Sipsongbanna) see Deng Xian (1994), 《中国知青梦》, 北京：人民文 学出版社. Summers, ‘(Re)positioning Yunnan’, p. 447. Ibid. Quan Sheng Luwang Guihua (2012). (Chinese: 全省路网规划). Note that whilst the party-state officially condones the notion of the ‘market economy’ the use of the term ‘socialist’ reminds us that the state-owned sector still dominates and the government, although no longer planning in detail as it did under the auspices of the former ‘socialist planned economy’, regards ‘planning’ as an integral part of the act of government. On this front and the changing notions of ‘the plan’ (that is, the difference between ‘jihua’ (计划) and ‘guihua’ (规划) see Sigley, Gary and Elaine Jeffreys, ‘Governmentality and China’ in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Chinese Governmentalities: Governing Change, Changing Government (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 1 – 25. See Eimer, David, ‘China’s 120mph Railway Arriving in Laos’, The Telegraph, 14 January 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/laos/10572583/ Chinas-120mph-railway-arriving-in-Laos.html. Kong, Bo, ‘The Geopolitics of the Myanmar-China Oil and Gas Pipelines’ in Pipeline Politics in Asia: The Intersection of Demand, Energy Markets, and Supply Routes (The National Bureau of Asian Research, NBR Special Report No. 23, 2010). It is also important to add here that part of the impetus for a new approach to Southeast Asia also comes from the economic and political changes taking place in that region since the 1980s. The growing economic, and to a lesser extent, political integration amongst ASEAN members has already been noted as an important factor by Chinese scholars. Of strategic concern from the Chinese perspective is the possibility that Western powers will make stronger alliances with ASEAN nations. Vast opportunities have been predicted for Yunnan in

38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

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providing the infrastructure development required by ASEAN for greater internal integration which in turn bodes well for China itself. See http://ynjjrb. yunnan.cn/html/2011-07/06/content_1702799.htm and http://www.yn. xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2011-07/06/content_23172443.htm. Certain locations in Yunnan, notably Dali and Lijiang, have become attractive destinations for China’s current wave of lifestyle migration. See Notar, Beth, Displacing Desire: Travel and Popular Culture in China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006). For a recent news media report see Wong, Edward, ‘Urbanites Flee China’s Smog for Blue Skies’, New York Times, 22 November 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/world/asia/urbanites-flee-chinassmog-for-blue-skies.html?pagewanted¼all&_r ¼ 0. Wang, Mingda and Zhou, Xilu, Horse Caravan Culture (Kunming: Yunnan People’s Publishing House, 2008). (Chinese: (王明达与张锡禄). (2008). 马帮文 化，（昆明：云南人民出版社）. Mu, Jihong et al. (1992). 滇川藏大三角文化探秘，昆明：云南大学出版社。. See Sigley, ‘The Ancient Tea Horse Road and the Politics of Cultural Heritage in Southwest China’. Li, Xu (李旭), 茶马古道：横断山脉，喜马拉雅文化带民族走廊研究，北京：中国社会科 学出版社 (2012), p. 70.

INDEX

9/11 attacks, 57, 67, 68, 73 Afghanistan, 15, 44, 57, 67 and China, 69 – 72 and Islam, 63– 4, 65, 66 and security, 68 – 9, 80 Africa, 52n.16, 110 agriculture, 51, 89 – 90, 92, 159, 175 aid, 152 Aksu, 32, 42 Al Qaeda, 73 – 4 America see United States of America Amnesty International, 126 Ancient Tea Horse Road (ATHR), 18, 172, 182, 185– 6, 195– 8 ASEAN see Association of Southeast Asian Nations Asia, 115– 17; see also Central Asia; East Asia; Northeast Asia; South Asia; Southeast Asia Asian Development Bank (ADB), 127, 158, 192, 193 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 11, 16, 117, 202n.37; see also China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement ATHR see Ancient Tea Horse Road

Australia, 116 autonomous regions, 157– 8 Bagabandi, Natsagiin, 149 balancing, 111– 12, 115, 116, 117 bandwagoning, 112, 117, 127– 8 Bangladesh, 117 Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM), 11 Baren Incident, 63 – 4 Batbold, Sukhbaatar, 150 Bayar, Sanj, 150 Bhutan, 97, 117– 18 Bin Laden, Osama, 73 Birendra, King of Nepal, 125 borders, 7, 121– 2, 123– 4, 130–1 and Mongolia, 149– 50 and Yunnan, 183– 4, 202n.28 Buddhism, 96 – 7, 100– 1 Burma see Myanmar Bush, George W., 67 CAFTA see China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement Cambodia, 116– 17 capitalism, 30, 175 caravans, 196– 7

INDEX CCP see Chinese Communist Party Central Asia, 6, 9, 56 –7 and China, 14 – 15, 58 – 61, 77 – 9, 80 –1 and infrastructure, 63 and security, 67 – 8 and ‘Shanghai Five’, 64– 5 and USA, 68 – 9 and Xinjiang, 10, 11, 43 Central Tibetan Administration, 120, 124 Changji, 31, 32 Chen Bingde, 129, 131 Chen Quanguo, 128– 9 ‘Chieftain’ system, 186– 7 China, 1 – 7, 9 – 13 and Afghanistan, 63 – 4, 69 – 72 and Asia, 115– 17 and Central Asia, 14 – 15, 43 – 5, 58 –61, 78 –9 and culture, 174– 8, 197– 8 and development, 27– 9 and ethnic minorities, 13 – 14 and foreign policy, 62 –3 and geopolitics, 56 –7 and India, 118– 24 and Inner Mongolia, 160–2 and modernity, 178– 9 and Mongolia, 17 –18, 142–3, 148– 54, 162– 5 and Nepal, 127– 31 and ‘periphery’ diplomacy, 143–8 and reforms, 190– 1 and religion, 100– 1 and rise, 110– 11, 173– 4 and ‘Shanghai Five’, 64– 6 and South Asia, 16 –17 and Soviet Union, 141– 2 and terrorism, 72 – 8 and Tibet, 15 – 16, 87 – 93, 98 – 100, 104– 5 and wealth distribution, 7– 9 and western development, 155– 7

205

and Xinjiang, 23 – 4, 29 – 31, 32 –9, 40 – 3, 45 – 50, 79 – 80 and Yunnan, 186– 8, 188– 90, 199 China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), 193, 195 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 2, 8– 9, 50, 61, 188 and culture, 176–8 and Tibet, 92 Clinton, Hillary, 68 coal, 154, 158, 162, 164 Cold War, 17, 141, 142, 145 colonialism, 25 communism, 61 copper, 44, 70, 154, 162, 164 crime, 71 Cultural Revolution see Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution culture, 18, 26, 29, 39, 173 and China, 174– 8, 179 and Mongolia, 159 and Tibet, 88, 89, 96 and Yunnan, 181– 2, 183, 195– 9 currency exchange, 147 Dahal, Pushpa Kamal, 128 Dalai Lama, 89, 96– 7, 99, 100, 101 and India, 119, 120, 123, 124 Damolla, Abdulheq, 76 Deng Xiaoping, 7, 13, 61 – 2, 191–2 and development, 91, 190 and foreign policy, 145 ‘Develop the West’ campaign, 15, 16, 32– 7, 39, 88, 90 –1, 192 development see economic development diaspora, 94 – 9, 104, 105 displacement, 35, 36, 37, 42 – 3 drugs, 64, 69, 70 – 1, 80, 131 East Asia, 13, 28, 110 East China Sea, 116 ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement’ (ETIM), 73 – 4, 75, 80

206

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East– West Pipeline, 9 economic development, 4, 7, 8 – 9, 10 – 14, 24 – 9, 113 and Inner Mongolia, 157 and Mongolia, 151–3, 154 and Tibet, 15 – 16, 87 – 93, 102– 5 and Xinjiang, 23 – 4, 29 – 31, 33 –7 education, 26, 27, 38, 41 and Tibet, 97 – 8, 101, 105 Elbegdorj, Tsakhiagiin, 150, 151, 163 energy, 146– 7, 158; see also gas; oil Enkhbayar, Nambaryn, 149 Enkhbold, Miegombyn, 150 ethnic minorities, 13 – 14, 29, 50 – 1, 89 and Yunnan, 172– 3, 184, 189, 196– 7, 201n.20 see also Uyghurs ETIM see ‘East Turkestan Islamic Movement’ Eurasia, 10 –11 Five-Year Plans, 88, 92, 156, 193 foreign direct investment (FDI), 129, 152, 153 Gandhi, Rajiv, 119, 120 gas, 9, 31, 43, 63 and Afghanistan, 70, 71 and Inner Mongolia, 158 and Yunnan, 194 GDP see gross domestic product geopolitics, 6, 9 – 10, 18, 56 – 7, 141 and Inner Mongolia, 157–8, 159– 60, 164 globalization, 7, 26 – 7, 28, 175 Gobi Desert, 158 gold, 44, 162 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 17, 141– 2 Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (GPCR), 30, 189

‘Great Western Development Programme’, 8, 155– 7 ‘Greater Central Asian Partnership’ (GCAP), 67 – 8 Greater Mekong Subregion, 11, 192 gross domestic product (GDP), 8, 32, 33, 90 Guam, 12 Guangxi, 1, 8, 11, 156, 183– 4 Gyanendra, king of Nepal, 126 Han Chinese, 10, 187 and Xinjiang, 24, 31, 32, 34, 37, 42, 47, 48, 50 Han Dynasty, 186 ‘Harmonious Society’ campaigns, 9, 146 He Zhiqiang, 192 health care, 26, 27 hedging, 112– 13, 115, 116, 117– 19 Heilongjiang, 1, 11, 157 heroin, 70 – 1 HIV/AIDS, 71 housing, 42 – 3, 45 – 6 Hu Jintao, 9, 24, 40, 90, 122 and foreign policy, 146, 147 and Mongolia, 149, 150 Huang Kui, 160 human rights, 23, 36, 39, 49, 79 Human Rights Watch, 126 hydrocarbons, 6 hydroelectrics, 44 IMAR see Inner Mongolia IMU see Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan India, 9, 110– 11, 121– 2 and Nepal, 127, 129 and Tibet, 16, 17, 96, 97, 118– 21, 122– 4 Indian Ocean, 194 indigenous people, 26, 27; see also ethnic minorities industrialization, 28, 30, 48, 175

INDEX inequality, 7 – 8, 15 – 16, 28 – 9, 104– 5 infrastructure, 30–1, 34, 35, 41, 63, 147 and Tibet, 89, 90 – 1, 92 and Yunnan, 181, 193 Inner Mongolia, 1, 2, 11, 50 – 1, 140– 1, 155 and development, 162–3 and GDP, 8 and geopolitics, 157– 8, 159–60, 164– 5 and Mongolia, 143 and population, 158– 9 and state-building, 18 and trade, 160–2 institutionalism, 113– 14, 115, 117 intelligence, 130 international relations, 5, 56–7, 111–15 International Tibet Support Network, 95 Islam, 22, 23, 37 – 8, 49 and radicalism, 63 – 4, 65 – 6, 75 –7 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), 65, 75 Japan, 12, 28, 116 Jiang Zemin, 8, 145– 6, 191–2 jihad, 64, 74, 75 Jilin, 1, 157 Karakoram Highway, 64 Karamay, 31, 32 Kashgar, 32, 41, 44 and development, 35 – 6, 42 – 3, 45 – 6 Kazakhstan, 41, 43, 44, 57, 64 – 5, 77 Khorgus, 41, 43, 44, 45 Khotan, 32 Khrushchev, Nikita, 123 Korea see North Korea; South Korea Kunming, 11, 171–2 Kyrgyzstan, 41, 44, 57, 64 –5, 77 and Tulip Revolution, 67, 68

207

language, 29, 38, 50, 184 and Tibet, 89, 97 – 8, 101– 2, 105, 108n.38 Laos, 11, 116, 117, 172, 181 Latin America, 110 Li Keqiang, 88, 104, 150 Li Peng, 142 Liaoning, 1, 8, 157 Lobsang Jamcan, 90 Lobsang Sangay, 96, 118 Ma Yingjeou, 122 malaria, 201n.25 Maldives, the, 117 Manchus, 6, 140–1 manufacturing, 45 – 6, 48 Mao Zedong, 123, 190 Maoist period, 188– 9 Maoists, 125, 127 Maritime Silk Road (MSR), 3, 10, 11, 172 media, 178– 9 Meng Jianzhu, 131 Middle East, 12, 63 migrants, 16, 47, 93, 103, 199 military colonies, 189 military forces, 121, 122, 129, 147 Ming Dynasty, 140, 186 mining, 153 modernity, 178– 9 modernization theory, 25, 28 Modi, Narendra, 118 Mongolia, 6, 11, 17–18, 57, 140–1, 145 and China, 142– 3 and Soviet Union, 141– 2 and strategic partnership, 148– 54, 163– 4 and trade, 160– 1 see also Inner Mongolia Mongols, 159, 186 MPR see Mongolia MSR see Maritime Silk Road multilateralism, 62 Myanmar, 11, 172, 181, 191

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nationalism, 18, 153, 164, 173 NATO, 69, 70 natural resources, 6, 31, 43, 57 and Inner Mongolia, 158, 161– 2 and Mongolia, 153, 163– 4 see also gas; oil Nehru, Jawaharlal, 119 Nepal, 11, 97, 117, 127– 31 and Tibet, 17, 118, 124–7 ‘new security diplomacy’ (NSD), 62 ‘New Silk Road Initiative’, 68, 80 NGOs, 26, 27 non-Han people, 2, 3, 6, 12 North Korea, 117 Northeast Asia; see Japan; North Korea; South Korea oil, 31, 43, 57, 63 and Afghanistan, 70, 71 and Inner Mongolia, 158, 161 and Mongolia, 153–4 and Yunnan, 194 One Belt and One Road (OBOR) strategy, 10, 11 Outer Mongolia see Mongolia ‘Pairing Assistance Program’ (PAP), 41 – 3 Pakistan, 11, 44, 57, 117 Panchen Lama, 103 ‘People First’ campaign, 15 – 16 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 125 People’s Republic of China (PRC) see China Philippines, the, 116 poverty, 91, 92 ‘Prosperous Borders, Wealthy Minorities’ programme, 156, 157 Putin, Vladimir, 163 Qiangba Puncog, 91 Qing Dynasty, 6, 140, 186– 7 Qinghai– Tibet railway, 9, 91

railways, 31, 35, 44, 121 and Inner Mongolia, 160 and Mongolia, 153, 154 and Tibet, 9, 91 and Yunnan, 194 refugees, 124, 125 religion, 29, 37 – 8 and Tibet, 96 – 7, 100– 1, 102, 105 see also Islam rioting, 22 – 3, 24, 39 – 40 and Tibet, 89, 94, 95 rubber plantations, 189 Russia, 1, 9, 11, 57, 64 –6 and Central Asia, 10, 68, 79, 80 and Mongolia, 17, 151– 2, 153– 4, 162– 3 see also Soviet Union SCO see Shanghai Cooperation Organization security, 62, 65, 74, 144–5 and India, 121 and Mongolia, 148– 9, 151 and Nepal, 130– 1 SETAs see Special Economic Trading Areas SEZs see Special Economic Zones Shanghai, 42, 192 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 10, 15, 66, 67, 68, 80 and Afghanistan, 70 –1 and Mongolia, 150 ‘Shanghai Five’ (S-5), 64 – 6 Shenzhen, 45, 192 Shihezi, 31, 32 shipping, 6 Silk Road, 3 Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), 10, 11– 12, 63, 78– 9, 154 and Inner Mongolia, 162– 3 Singapore, 116 social security, 26, 90 socialist market economy, 178, 188, 191–2

INDEX socialization, 114 South Asia, 11, 16 – 17, 43, 44, 45 and China’s rise, 117– 18 see also India; Nepal South China Sea, 116, 117 South Korea, 28, 116 Southeast Asia, 11; see also Cambodia; Laos, Myanmar; Vietnam Southern Silk Road, 172 Soviet Union, 9, 43, 63 and Mongolia, 17, 141– 2 and Xinjiang, 30 – 1 Special Economic Trading Areas (SETAs), 41, 43, 45, 48 Special Economic Zones (SEZs), 24, 191– 2 SREB see Silk Road Economic Belt Sri Lanka, 117, 128 Starr, S. Frederick, 67 state-building, 8 – 9, 12 – 14, 18, 155– 6 Sun Yuxi, 71, 122 Tadjikistan, 44 Taiwan, 6, 128, 149 Tajikistan, 57, 64, 65 Taklamakan Desert Highway, 31 Taliban, the, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71 TAR see Tibet Tarim Basin, 34 taxation, 41, 92, 164 tea, 172, 196 terrorism, 15, 22 – 3, 46, 65 and Afghanistan, 70 – 1 and Central Asia, 77 – 8 and Xinjiang, 72 – 7 Thailand, 116 Tiananmen Square Massacre, 61, 145 Tibet, 1, 2, 8, 50 – 1, 149 and culture, 12 and development, 87– 93, 102– 4 and diaspora, 94 – 9 and economics, 15 – 16

209

and exiles, 17 and identity, 95 – 100 and India, 118– 21, 122– 4 and inequality, 104–5 and language, 101– 2 and Nepal, 11, 124– 31 and Qing dynasty, 6 and railway, 9 and religion, 100– 1 TIP see Turkestan Islamic Party tourism, 37, 125, 191, 195, 199 trade, 3, 7, 12, 186 and Inner Mongolia, 160– 2, 164– 5 and Mongolia, 146, 151– 2, 153 and Yunnan, 196– 7, 198 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 12 transport, 11, 31, 44, 178 and Yunnan, 185– 6, 193– 4 see also railways tribute system, 5 Tulip Revolution, 67, 68 Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), 75– 6, 80 Turkmenistan, 43 UNESCO, 36 United Nations, 26 –7 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 125, 126 United States of America (USA), 4, 12– 13, 16 – 17, 56 – 7, 62, 110 and aid, 152 and Central Asia, 15, 67, 68 – 9, 80 and China, 78, 116 and Tibet, 94 uranium, 44, 164 urbanization, 35 – 6, 47 – 8, 175, 178 Urumqi, 22, 24, 31, 32, 36 – 7 and violence, 39 – 40, 74, 76 Uyghurs, 10, 12, 14 and development, 29, 33, 34 – 5, 36 – 9, 42 – 3, 46 – 50, 51 and religion, 37 – 8

210

CHINA’S FRONTIER REGIONS

and terrorism, 15, 72 –7 and violence, 22 –4, 32, 39 –40, 63 –4, 171 Uzbekistan, 43, 44, 65, 67, 68 Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 120 Vietnam, 11, 116, 181, 191 violence, 29, 32, 39 – 40, 47, 49, 51, 57 – 8 and Islamism, 63 – 4 and Nepal, 126 and Yunnan, 171– 2 see also terrorism Wang Jinxiang, 90 – 1 Wang Lequan, 41 Wang Xiaolong, 150 Wang Yang, 11 Wang Yi, 118 water resources, 34, 90, 91, 121 wealth distribution, 7 – 8 Wen Jiabao, 90, 120, 122, 129, 131 and Mongolia, 150 and ‘periphery’ diplomacy, 146 Wickremanayake, Ratnasiri, 128 women, 38 – 9 World Bank, 26, 127, 152 Xi Jinping, 10, 44, 74 and Central Asia, 78 and Mongolia, 150–1, 154, 163 and Nepal, 128 and ‘periphery’ diplomacy, 143, 147, 148

and Tibet, 88 – 9, 104 Xinjiang, 1, 2–3, 8, 57–8, 149 and culture, 12 and development, 29 – 32, 32 – 9, 40 – 3, 44 – 50, 51 and drug trafficking, 71 and integration, 10, 11, 14, 62 – 3 and Qing dynasty, 6 and violence, 22 – 4, 39 – 40, 72 – 7, 79 – 80 Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), 34 Xizang see Tibet XUAR see Xinjiang Ye Xiaowen, 100 Yuan Dynasty, 140 Yunnan, 1, 6, 8, 11, 180 as backwater, 189– 91 and culture, 18, 181– 2, 183, 195– 9 and development, 192– 5 and ethnic minorities, 172– 3 and geography, 183– 6 and history, 186– 8 and modernity, 178– 9 and violence, 171– 2 Zeng Qinghong, 128 Zhang Chunxian, 40, 41, 74, 75 – 6 Zhou Yongkang, 129, 130 Zhu Rongji, 8, 91, 156 Zhuhai, 192 ‘Zomia’, 187