Teaching Comparative

From Abu Dhabi

This morning, before I even had a chance to read my usual round of online news, I found a couple e-mails from Michael Harvey in Abu Dhabi, where he teaches comparative. This is a reminder that if you find good articles, please share them with the rest of us. You can send your recommendation to me or you can join this blog and post them yourself.

Michael read the Boston Globe onine and found this interesting explanation of how policy making is limited not only by other nations and economic considerations, but also by history. It's one of those instances when historical analysis is very appropriate for comparative analysis.


Lingering boundary dispute clouds Tibet's future

How to define borders slows deal with China

"...the Dalai Lama and China cannot reach a deal on Tibet.

"Since 2000, the two sides have held five quiet meetings to discuss the future of the former Himalayan kingdom. The negotiations have gone well and the Dalai Lama, 71, is so eager to return to Tibet from exile in India that he has forsaken previous demands of independence for an agreement to give the region genuine autonomy.

"But further progress has been stuck on the question of how to define Tibet's boundaries... during the 18th century, the Qing dynasty emperors annexed Tibet's Amdo Province and renamed it Qinghai. Later, Chinese forces encroached on the eastern part of another Tibetan province, Kham, dividing off sections to the surrounding Chinese provinces of Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan. British India also nibbled away at the weakened Himalayan kingdom. When Maoist China occupied Tibet in 1951, Tibet had only two provinces...

"'Historically, the whole Tibetan plateau was one unit,' Thubten Samphel, the information secretary of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Tibetan government-in-exile at Dharamsala...

"Although China's economic assistance to the autonomous region has substantially improved their lives, they resent the intrusions into their faith...

"Maoist policies led to the deaths of more than a million Tibetans and destroyed thousands of monasteries, the Tibetan government-in-exile says...

"About 6 million Han Chinese settlers... [have] turned Tibetans into a minority...

"To try to woo Chinese Tibetans and undermine their desire for reunification, Chinese authorities appear to be giving Tibetans who live outside the autonomous region more religious freedoms than it gives those inside..."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:04 AM