The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier: Rebellion, Repression, and Remembrance on a Tibetan Borderland of Early-Maoist China
CAS Event presented on Wednesday, October 7 at 5pm MDT
When in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party āliberatedā the ethnocultural frontier region known to Tibetans as Amdo, itsĀ goal wasĀ not just to build a state, but to create a nation.Ā RatherĀ than immediately implement socialist reforms, it pursued relatively moderate āUnited Frontā policies meant to āgraduallyāĀ persuade Tibetans and Amdoās other non-Han inhabitants of their membership in the new Chinese nation.Ā At the outset of 1958ās Great Leap Forward, however, United Front gradualism was jettisoned in favor of rapid collectivization. This led to large-scale rebellion, overwhelming state repression, and widespread famine. Rather than a āvoluntaryā and āorganicā transformation, Amdo was incorporated through the widespread and often indiscriminate deployment of state violence. In this talk, Dr. Weiner discusses 1958ās Amdo Rebellion and explores ways in which the violence of 1958 and its aftermath continues to cloud the stateās efforts to integrate Tibetans into the modern Chinese nation-state.
Benno WeinerĀ is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. He is author of theĀ Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan FrontierĀ (Cornell UP) and co-editor ofĀ Contested Memories: Tibetan History under Mao RetoldĀ (Brill)