Chinese Nationalism and the Fate of Tibet: Implications for India and Future Scenarios
Abstract Chinese nationalism primarily represents Han nationalism and ignores ethnic minority sub-nationalisms and identities in the larger cause of the state's unity and integrity. The Chinese state calls for submerging of all minority identities within the predominant Han identity, for promoting national cohesion and nationalism, effectively precluding the possibility of the assertion of Tibetan nationalism and autonomy. Because of the suppression of Tibetans in China, a large number of them have fled and settled in India and elsewhere. The Tibetan movement for safeguarding their identity, culture and political space has grievously suffered as a result of Chinese nationalism and China's Tibet policy. The fate of Tibetan nationalism is, to a large extent, tied to the dynamics of the Sino-Indian relations and the course of the internal Tibetan politics and that of its relationship with the community in exile in the post-Dalai Lama era.
Preparing for the Future: Reassessing the Possibility of Violence Emanating From Tibetan Exile Communities in India
In his 1997 analysis of the history of Tibetan and Chinese relations (The Snow Lion and the Dragon), Melvyn Goldstein advised in his concluding chapter that Tibetans were unlikely to indefinitely put up with the Chinese occupation of Tibet without resorting to violence. However, despite continuing speculation, more widespread or sustained campaigns of violence have largely failed to materialize. The principle objectives of this study are to establish why the scale of violence that Goldstein warned about has so far failed to emerge; and to assess whether existing evidence supports or undermines claims that violence may in the future emanate from Tibetan exile communities in India. It will be argued that previous analyses have been premised on a relatively narrow assessment of the situation and context, and that a more informed and nuanced evaluation of the potential for future violence requires comprehensive analysis of a much wider range of factors.
The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan
The first decades of the 20th century witnessed an explosion of nationalist sentiment in East Asia, as in Europe. This comprehensive work explores how radical Chinese and Japanese thinkers committed to social change in this turbulent era addressed issues concerning national identity, social revolution and the role of the national state in achieving socio-economic development. Focusing on the adaptation of anarchism and then Marxism-Leninism to non-European contexts, Germaine Hoston shows how Chinese and Japanese theorists attempted to reconcile a relatively new appreciation for the nation-state with their allegiance to a vision of internationalist socialist revolution culminating in stateless socialism. Given the influence of Western experience on Marxism, Chinese and Japanese theorists found the Marxian national question to be not merely one of whether the "working man has no country", but rather the much more fundamental issue of the relative value of Eastern and Western cultures. Marxism, argues Hoston, thus placed native Marxists in tension with their own heritage and national identity. The author traces efforts to resolve this tension throughout the first half of the 20th century, and concludes by examining how the tension persists, as Chinese and Japanese dissidents seek identity-affirming modernity in accordance with the Western democratic model.