The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China: A Study in the Economics of Marginalization

467 Pages·2013·3.82 MB·English

by  Andrew Martin Fischer

The Disempowered
Development of
Tibet in China
Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture
Series Editor
Gray Tuttle, Columbia University
Advisory Board
Lauran Hartley, Columbia University (literature)
Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Université Laval (anthropology)
Kurtis Schaeffer, University of Virginia (religion)
Emily Yeh, University of Colorado at Boulder (human geography)
The Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture series focuses on Tibetan culture and
society from the early modern period of the seventeenth century to the
present. The first series on modern Tibetan studies by a scholarly press,
it explores how modernity manifests in a wide range of fields, not only
religion, but also literature, history, economy, anthropology, media, and
politics. It seeks to bring rarely heard and important Tibetan perspectives
to a wider audience by publishing fresh analyses of yet unexplored source
materials ranging from census and yearbook databases to auto/biographies
and ethnographic fieldwork, as well as original translations of poetry,
biography, and history.
Titles in Series
The Nine-Eyed Agate: Poems and Stories by Jangbu and translated by Heather
Stoddard
Labrang Monastery: A Tibetan Buddhist Community on the Inner Asian
Borderlands, 1709–1958 by Paul Kocot Nietupski
The Hidden Life of the Sixth Dalai Lama by Ngawang Lhundrup Dargyé and
translated by Simon Wickham-Smith
The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China: A Study in the Economics of
Marginalization by Andrew Martin Fischer
Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Columbia University
Selected Titles
(Complete list at: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/weatherhead-studies.html)
Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan, by Louise
Young. University of California Press, 2013.
Imperial Eclipse: Japan’s Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before August 1945,
by Yukiko Koshiro. Cornell University Press, 2013.
The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo, by Ian J.
Miller. University of California Press, 2013.
Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea since
1945, by John P. DiMoia. Stanford University Press, 2013.
Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992, by Charles Armstrong.
Cornell University Press, 2013
The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan, by Kirsten Cather. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012.
Asia for the Asians: China in the Lives of Five Meiji Japanese, by Paula Harrell.
MerwinAsia, 2012.
Lin Shu, Inc.: Translation and the Making of Modern Chinese Culture, by Michael
Gibbs Hill. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan, by Sarah Kovner.
Stanford University Press, 2012.
Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Postwar Japan, by Jonathan E. Abel. University
of California Press, 2012.
Empire of Dogs: Canines, Japan, and the Making of the Modern Imperial World, by
Aaron Herald Skabelund. Cornell University Press, 2011.
Planning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State, by Janis
Mimura. Cornell University Press, 2011.
Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing, by David Lurie. Harvard
University Asia Center, 2011.
Russo-Japanese Relations, 1905–17: From Enemies to Allies, by Peter Berton. Routledge, 2011.
Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing, by Fabio Lanza. Columbia University
Press, 2010.
Imperial Japan at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire’s 2,600th
Anniversary, by Kenneth J. Ruoff. Cornell University Press, 2010.
Passage to Manhood: Youth Migration, Heroin, and AIDS in Southwest China, by Shao-
hua Liu. Stanford University Press, 2010.
Postwar History Education in Japan and the Germanys: Guilty Lessons, by Julian
Dierkes. Routledge, 2010.
The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism, by Alan Tansman. University of California Press, 2009.
The Growth Idea: Purpose and Prosperity in Postwar Japan, by Scott O’Bryan. University
of Hawai‘i Press, 2009.
Leprosy in China: A History, by Angela Ki Che Leung. Columbia University Press, 2008.
National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in
Japan, France, and the United States, by Christopher Hill. Duke University Press, 2008.

The Disempowered
Development of
Tibet in China
A Study in the Economics
of Marginalization
Andrew Martin Fischer
Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute,
Columbia University
The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of
Columbia University were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a
wider public the results of significant new research on modern
and contemporary East Asia.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fischer, Andrew Martin, 1967-
The disempowered development of Tibet in China : a study in the economics of
marginalization / Andrew Martin Fischer.
pages cm. -- (Studies of the weatherhead East Asian institute) (Studies in modern
Tibetan culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-3437-5 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-3438-2 (pbk. :
alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-3439-9 (electronic) 1. Tibet Autonomous Region
(China)--Economic conditions. 2. Tibet Autonomous Region (China)--Social
conditions. 3. Economic development--China--Tibet Autonomous Region. 4.
Marginality, Social--China--Tibet Autonomous Region. I. Title.
HC428.T48F567 2013
338.951’5--dc23
2013032370
` ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To my teachers, both spiritual and secular
May I humbly transmit their lineages
To my mother, Phyllis
Mary, my muse
and Amiya and Éva, our delight and devotion

Table of Contents
List of Figures, Maps, and Tables xi
List of Abbreviations xv
Note on Tibetan Spelling xvii
Glossary (a Note on Terminology) xix
Acknowledgments: Reflections on Researching Development in Tibet xxv
Preface xxix
1 I ntroduction: The Disempowered Development of Tibet in China 1
2 The Inception of Modern Development in Tibet under PRC Rule 47
3 Population Foundations of Marginalization in Tibet 83
4 Instituting Economic Growth and Marginalization in Tibet 127
5 The Great Transformation of Tibet? Rapid Labor Transitions,
Polarization, and the Emerging Fault Lines of Stratification in
Urban Tibet 191
6 The Education-Employment Nexus of Exclusion in Tibet 247
7 Subsistence Capacity and the Material Foundations of Resistance 291
8 Boycotts and Religious Networks: Counter-Strategies of
Integration into the Heart of the New China 335
ix