Regions with significant populations of Tibetans and Uyghurs have been rattled by strings of demonstrations, self-immolations, and sporadic attacks since the March 2008 riots in Lhasa and the July 2009 riots in Urumqi. In an attempt to move beyond simplistic treatments of the recent wave of violence, a group of up-and-coming and well-established scholars in the fields of Tibetan and Xinjiang/Uyghur studies assembled at a 2013 workshop co-sponsored by Australia National University and Columbia University. Ethnic Conflict and Protest in Tibet and Xinjiang contains revised versions of the papers delivered at that timely workshop.
The volume's nine empirically rich essays identify several, often interrelated, causes of conflict: the cadre system, propaganda, state-sponsored schooling, (uneven) economic development, and the exploitation of natural resources. Read individually, each chapter offers original research, provides thorough analysis, and advances our understanding of the problems nagging China's western peripheries. Although most chapters focus exclusively on either...