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Holding China’s West: Explaining CCP Strategies of Rule in Tibet and Xinjiang

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Abstract

Over the course of Communist Party rule in China, what explains the continuities and changes in the policies used to exert control and to combat secessionist threats in Tibet and Xinjiang? We begin with a standard conflict bargaining framework, which emphasizes three proximate decision-theoretic variables: status quo political, economic and cultural conditions in the minority regions; relative military power; and leadership preferences. Among these proximate factors, the most potent source of variation over time has been the preferences of Chinese leaders—particularly of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. We also discuss how China’s broader structural and institutional conditions have an effect through their influence on leadership preferences and decisions. Over time, these broader structural and institutional conditions have pushed toward greater uniformity of state policies in the minority regions—overriding the tendency of leadership and regional differences to produce variation in such policies.

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Notes

  1. For example, compare Fearon [13] and Powell [39] with Dunlop [12] and Senaratne [43].

  2. Compare Goldstein [16] and Millward [29] with Dreyer [10] and Mackerras [27].

  3. Thus, the Zhuang make up about 30 % of Guangxi’s population, and Mongols around 17 % of Inner Mongolia’s.

  4. Other variables often considered separately may be subsumed within the bargaining framework variables. For example, international pressure or the threat of international intervention influenced outcomes in Tibet and Xinjiang primarily via effects on relative power. See the discussion below.

  5. Note that a crisis and a mutually accepted bargain will not necessary take the form of an overt dispute or negotiation process. If there is little or no resistance to the changes demanded by one side, these changes may simply be imposed.

  6. The all-or-nothing outcome of war is only a simplifying assumption. The probability of complete victory can be thought of as summarizing an average of a range of possible outcomes.

  7. The discussion refers to a one-period model. The same logic applies in two- or infinite-period models. Proofs are available from the authors upon request.

  8. CCP policies toward the smaller Tibetan minorities in provinces surrounding Tibet are beyond the scope of this paper.

  9. In the Online Appendix, leadership preferences are documented at greater length with representative quotations taken from CCP literature.

  10. In foreign policy, apart from Mao’s long record of comments minimizing the costs of war—including the prospect of nuclear war—there is also the decision to fight the U.S. in the Korean War.

  11. Compare the bloody and indecisive border clashes with the USSR in 1969 with the crushing defeat of India in 1962. See below.

  12. In particular, Deng’s market reforms and restrictions on state terror involved significant risks of economic failure and political upheaval—as can be seen from events in both China and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. If Mao is viewed as analogous to Stalin, the least risky course in terms of personal political power would have been for Deng to follow the example of Leonid Brezhnev, but instead he far outpaced even the innovative Nikita Khrushchev.

  13. Since 1949, Xinjiang’s smaller, non-Uighur minorities have not contested Chinese state sovereignty.

  14. Compared to their Tibetan counterparts, Uighur émigré leaders lack the political cohesion of Tibetan émigrés; are less able to command a following among their ethnic kin in China; and have been less successful in raising awareness and sympathy for their cause internationally.

  15. For example, current debates about whether to develop a more overtly assimilationist, “second-generation” ethnic policy take for granted that a consistent approach should be taken across China’s different minority regions [23].

  16. The dividing line between the Deng and Jiang periods is blurry. While Jiang became General Secretary in 1989, Deng remained in control at that time. Deng’s last major initiative, in which he clearly asserted leadership primacy, was the 1992 Southern Tour in support of continued market reforms. Deng died in 1997, and does not appear to have been very active during the last three or four years of his life [58]. Therefore, we assume that Jiang became the top leader in 1994, although it could arguably be dated a year earlier.

  17. Mao emphasized cooperation between the CCP and the Uighurs [35], 10, arguing that, “It is impossible to completely solve the ethnic issue and isolate ethnic reactionaries without a large group of ethnic communist cadres” [35], 27.

  18. In the early 1950s, Mao was critical of “Han Chinese chauvinism.” Given that Mao did not view political and organizational conditions as ripe for more radical reforms, he emphasized the need for good relations and consultation with the Dalai Lama and the traditional Tibetan elites [35], 68, 100. Then, as Mao pointed out right after the crackdown, “the armed rebellion gave us a good reason to begin our reform in Tibet right now” [35], 228; also [45], 48.

  19. Echoing Mao, Deng stated that the “key issue in maintaining the stability of Xinjiang is the careful selection and appointment of cadres” [36], 253.

  20. According to Deng, “the key to preventing Tibetan secessionism is raising the level of the Tibetan people’s material and cultural life” [35], 399.

  21. At the Third Tibet Work Conference in 1994, Jiang stated that, “The cause of instability is the Dalai clique. The essence of the struggle between us and the Dalai clique is the struggle between the unification of the motherland and ethnic secessionism” [35], 459.

  22. In 2012, for example, the Xinjiang government announced 175 positions designated exclusively for Han Chinese as against 29 for Uighurs (data compiled by the authors from the Xinjiang Department of Human Resources and Social Security).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3210 N. Maryland Ave., Milwaukee, WI, 53211, USA

    Shale Horowitz & Peng Yu

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Correspondence to Shale Horowitz.

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Horowitz, S., Yu, P. Holding China’s West: Explaining CCP Strategies of Rule in Tibet and Xinjiang. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 20, 451–475 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-014-9323-1

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