Tibet Center

Minorities Studies and Tibet Research in the PRC

A Seminar on Minzuxue with Professor Liu Zhiyang

On January 28, Visiting Professor Liu Zhiyang led a seminar on minorities studies and Tibet research in the PRC. Hosted by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, the seminar provided UVa students and faculty a opportunity to learn about a research and scholarly field that has undergone a significant transition over the past generation.

A professor at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, Liu Zhiyang himself specializes in Tibetan studies and has conducted extensive field research, both in Lhasa and in the Tibetan-Yi corridor of Pingwu county and elsewhere on the Sino-Tibetan frontier. He has been resident at the University of Virginia through the Tibet Center over the past academic year.

In his seminar, Professor Liu discussed the meaning and direction of minzu xue in China. He also spoke on the direction that China’s Tibetan studies (zang xue) are heading. In particularly, he discussed the complexity of the term minzu. The concept has denoted different meanings at different times. Its translation into English has, correspondingly, led to some confusion. Today, according to Professor Liu, it is a politicized concept.

Liu Zhiyang contrasted the development of minorities studies with the discipline of anthropology (renleixue). Considered politically suspect, anthropology was eliminated as a field of study in China in favor of minorities studies. Today, the two fields have converged, with the one clear distinction that Chinese anthropology also includes within its purview the study of cultural difference among the “Han” nationality, while minorities studies does not.

Professor Liu recently returned to Guangzhou where he will continue teaching anthropology, minorities studies and Tibetan studies.

LOCATION: Abbott Auditorium, Darden School of Business

University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

The collecting of Cordyceps (Caterpillar Fungus) provides one of the few sources for cash income in rural Tibetan areas

DETAILS: 8:30am – 5:00pm
Open to the public and free of charge.

The University of Virginia Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, in partnership with Machik, is hosting the Tibetan Social Business and Sustainable Entrepreneurship Symposium on April 10 to bring together Tibetan entrepreneurs and global experts to discuss creative solutions to promoting business innovation on the Tibetan plateau in ways that benefit communities.

The Social Business Initiative is animated by the idea that markets have the power to transform social reality, and yet too often they leave the vast majority of the poor and disadvantaged behind. The concepts of social business and sustainable entrepreneurship offer new avenues for envisioning the role of markets in expanding the capacity of communities to become more self-reliant. By tying market mechanisms to social objectives, business principles can provide an opportunity to harness the power of markets to better meet collective social needs. But how might profit-maximizing enterprises be designed to also optimize social benefits–whether poverty alleviation, education, gender parity or environmental protection–in the Tibetan region?

The University of Virginia’s Tibet Sustainable Governance Program (TSGP) has convened the Tibetan Social Business Symposium in partnership with Machik, a nonprofit organization working to develop new opportunities for education and capacity-building on the Tibetan plateau.

Attendance is free and pre-registration is not required, EXCEPT for optional in-house lunch.

LUNCH OPTION: If you would like an on-site lunch as well as to help subsidize the event, the suggested donation will be $25 and pre-registration is required.

Darden School of Business, Abbott Auditorium

Symposium Schedule, April 10th, 2010

• 8:00 – 8:30am, Registration
• 8:30 – 9am, Opening Remarks
• 9 – 9:30am, Keynote
• 9:30 – 10:45am, Concepts and Frames: Sustainability, Innovation, Entrepreneurship
• 10:45 – 11:15am, Break
• 11:15 – 12:30am, Social Investment, Self-Reliance and Sustainable Communities
• 12:30 – 2pm, Lunch
• 2 – 3:15pm, Case Studies: Sustainable Practices and Social Enterprises
• 3:15 – 3:30pm, Break
• 3:30 – 4:45pm, New Horizons: Tibet, Social Enterprises and Global Connections
• 4:45 – 5pm, Closing Remarks

• location: Abbott Auditorium, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

Liu Zhiyang
Zhongshan University

Tashi Rabgey
University of Virginia

On January 28, Visiting Professor Liu Zhiyang led a seminar on minorities studies and Tibet research in the PRC. Hosted by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, the seminar provided UVa students and faculty a opportunity to learn about a research and scholarly field that has undergone a significant transition over the past generation.

A professor at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, Liu Zhiyang himself specializes in Tibetan studies and has conducted extensive field research, both in Lhasa and in the Tibetan-Yi corridor of Pingwu county and elsewhere on the Sino-Tibetan frontier. He has been resident at the University of Virginia through the Tibet Center over the past academic year.

In his seminar, Professor Liu discussed the meaning and direction of minzu xue in China. He also spoke on the direction that China’s Tibetan studies (zang xue) are heading. In particular, he discussed the complexity of the term minzu. The concept has denoted different meanings at different times. Its translation into English has, correspondingly, led to some confusion. Today, according to Professor Liu, it is a politicized concept.

Liu Zhiyang contrasted the development of minorities studies with the discipline of anthropology (renleixue). Considered politically suspect, anthropology was eliminated as a field of study in China in favor of minorities studies. Today, the two fields have converged, with the one clear distinction that Chinese anthropology also includes within its purview the study of cultural difference among the “Han” nationality, while minorities studies does not.

Professor Liu recently returned to Guangzhou where he will continue teaching anthropology, minorities studies and Tibetan studies.

Tibet’s Strategic Importance and Sino-Indian Relations

By Dr. Dibyesh Anand, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Westminster, UK

Dr. Dibyesh Anand

Charting the history and politics of introduction and implementation of ideas and practices of sovereignty, liberation, buffer state, and border, I will argue that Tibet’s strategic location has been constructed through an interaction between imperial histories, shifting geopolitics, and postcolonial state formation in China and India. What are the main strategic priorities for the two Asian countries in the Himalayan region? It is not the presence of many Tibetan exiles in India but the legacy of traditional Tibetan polity on boundary issue that is a source of tension in China-India relations. The lecture will offer a new perspective by ascribing the sensitivities over the border to a combination of Tibet’s strategic importance (military, economic, ecological) to China and India’s evolution into what I call ‘Postcolonial Informal Empires’.

Dr. Dibyesh Anand is a Reader (Associate Professor) in international relations at Westminster University in London. His publications are in the areas of Global Politics, Tibet, China, Hindu Nationalism, and Security. He is the author of Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear (Palgrave Macmillan, Forthcoming). He is currently working on a book China’s Tibet, a research project on Sino-Indian border regions, and majority-minority relations in India and China.

Sponsored by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program and the East Asia Center

• location: Minor Hall 125, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

February 22 – 27, 2009

As part of the Geotourism Initiative, the University of Virginia’s Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, in partnership with Machik, co-hosted a workshop on tourism policy in Tibet with policymakers from the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The workshop was held from February 22 to 27, 2009. The goal of the workshop was to explore alternative models of tourism that prioritize Tibetan communities, local economies and sustainable livelihoods. Supporting organizations and participants included the Center for Sustainable Destinations of the National Geographic Society and George Washington University Business School’s Tourism and Hospitality Management.Geo

If Not the Middle Way:
Alternatives for the Tibetan People

Tenzin Tethong, President of the Dalai Lama Foundation and Chair of the Committee of 100 for Tibet, is the former Chairman of the Kashag (the Tibetan Cabinet) and U.S. representative of the Dalai Lama. He has taught in both History and Continuing Studies at Stanford University.

Tenzin Tethong will talk about how and why the Tibetan struggle in exile has changed from Independence to accommodation, and what the real prospects are for the Tibetan people in gaining any concessions from the Chinese leadership, or for redefining their struggle for greater freedom.

Sponsored by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program and the East Asia Center

• location: Minor Hall 125, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.

Life Among the People of Choni:
A Lost Tibetan Kingdom

Yongdrol K. Tsongkha

Choni is a beautiful place on the north-eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Still rarely known to the western world, it was a Tibetan Principality with over 500 years of history and a vital cultural centre on the Chinese-Tibetan Borderlands. Eighty years ago, Joseph Francis Rock (1884-1962), one of the last classic explorers, geographer, linguist and botanist, set foot on the Tibetan Plateau, embarking on his extensive expeditions in this area. His remarkable article in National Geographic in 1928, “Life Among the Lamas of Choni,” was the first written piece to vividly reveal to the world the mysteries of the religious festivals in Tibetan monasteries. His works and studies were testimony to a lost culture and tradition. His extraordinary visual materials of the Chinese-Tibetan borderlands and its people is unique and remains invaluable to the history of this region. Beyond this, the man is a fascinating character and his personal papers are rich in the texture and personality of their author.

Eighty years later, this carefully crafted documentary follows in the footsteps of this legendary explorer. By blending over 500 original photographs from Rock’s expeditions with modern images, and by weaving an extensively research chronology via narration and excerpts from his dairies, the film not only shows how eastern Tibet looked in the 1920s, but also portrays how the same places and people look now. It is a memorial meeting of the east and west, a long lasting dialogue between the past and the present.

Sponsored by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program

• Google Map: Minor Hall
• University Campus Map: Minor Hall

• location: Minor Hall 125, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

China’s “Tibet Issue” in a Changing Global Era:
A View From Beijing

Chu Shulong at the University of Virginia, April 8, 2009

Dr. Chu Shulong is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the School of Public Policy and Management and is the deputy director of the Institute of International Strategic and Development Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. From September 2006 until June 2007 he was a visiting fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He was previously director for the North American Studies Division of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations. He is also a Professor at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Party School and an advisor to China’s Central Television (CCTV) international reporting. Dr. Chu’s research covers political theory and Chinese politics, international relations, focusing on U.S. China policy and the Sino-U.S. relations, Asian security, and Chinese foreign and security policies. His most recent publications include The Sino-US Relations in the Post-Cold War Era; Basic Theories of International Relations; The World, the U.S., and China; Political Theories; and a forthcoming book, The Peaceful Rise and Development: China’s Foreign Strategy and Policy. Dr. Chu received a B.A. from Dalian Foreign Languages University, an M.A. in Law from the Beijing University of International Relations, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the George Washington University.

Sponsored by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program and the East Asia Center

• location: Front Parlor, Colonnade Club, University of Virginia

China’s Nationalities Law: Prospects for Reform and Autonomy

Katherine P. Kaup, Furman University

Peng Qian, Central University for Nationalities, Beijing

Tashi Rabgey, University of Virginia

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and Tibet Sustainable Governance Program

• location: New Cabell Hall 311, University of Virginia

Development Approach in Rural Tibet

By Dr. Geoff Childs, Associate Professor, Sociocultural Ph.D., Indiana University

The Tibet Center presents: Rural Tibet is in the throes of major changes. Recent research has revealed that a number of intersecting factors have prompted most farming households to employ a new economic paradigm—“going for income,” i.e., seeking non-farm income outside of the village. As a result, over the past decade the rural economy has been transformed from one heavily reliant on subsistence farming to one where 75 percent of the average household’s income derives from off-farm activities. Consequently, a new rural Tibet is emerging wherein farming households are making complex cost-benefit decisions about how to employ their human and non-human resources to participate in China’s new market economy. Along with this paradigm shift, the recent reorientation of the state’s development priorities in China’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2006-10) is also beginning to impact rural Tibet in ways that previous five-year plans have not. The current plan calls for a new “people-first” (ch. yiren weiben) approach to development in which the state commits large sums of money not only for large infra-structure programs, as in the past, but also for programs that reach directly to village households. The purposes of this paper are to analyze how the policy shift is being operationalized, and how it is impacting the lives of rural Tibetans.

Sponsored by the Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, the East Asia Center, Religious Studies, and the Department of Anthropology

• location: Minor Hall 125, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA