Revolution, Rebellion & Empire on Early Maoist China's Tibetan Borderland

The Manchester China Institute (MCI)promotes excellence in China studies at the University of Manchester. MCI hosts in-person talks, workshops, and roundtables, and well as webinars with a global reach. Our public events are free and open to all. The University of Manchester is committed to academic independence and thefreedom of speech. The views speakers present are entirely their own, and do not represent those of the University of Manchester or the Manchester China Institute and its directors.

Manchester China Institute

Join Benno Weiner's in-person talk on "Revolution, Rebellion, and the Afterlives of Empire 
on a Tibetan Borderland of Early Maoist China".

The Portico Library

When in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party “liberated” the area of eastern Tibet known as Amdo, it declared that Amdo Tibetans at last had become “masters of their own homes.” Party leaders vowed that the exploitation and discrimination Tibetans had suffered under previous regimes would quickly be replaced by ethnic equality, political autonomy, and material prosperity. Rather than introducing socialist reforms, the CCP initially pursued relatively moderate “United Front” policies meant to “gradually,” persuade Tibetans of their membership in the new Chinese nation. This all changed at the outset of 1958’s Great Leap Forward, when United Front gradualism was jettisoned in favor of rapid collectivization, and pluralistic pledges gave way to ethnoreligious persecution. This led to large-scale rebellion, which was met by a brutal counterinsurgency, followed by devastating famine. Despite promises of a “voluntary” and “organic” transformation, Amdo was incorporated into the People’s Republic of China through the overwhelming and often indiscriminate deployment of state violence. In this talk, Benno Weiner discusses 1958’s Amdo Rebellion and explores ways in which the violence of 1958 and its aftermath continues to cloud the state’s efforts to integrate Tibetans into the modern Chinese nation-state.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER<a href="https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/history/people/faculty/weiner.html" title="https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/history/people/faculty/weiner.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Benno Weiner</a> is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. He is author of The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier and co-editor of Contested Memories: Tibetan History under Mao Retold. His most recent article, “‘This Absolutely is not a Hui Rebellion!’ The Ethnopolitics of Great Han Chauvinism in Early Maoist China,” was published in the October issue of the journal Twentieth Century China.

ABOUT THE ORGANISERS<a href="https://www.mci.manchester.ac.uk/" title="https://www.mci.manchester.ac.uk/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Manchester China Institute (MCI)</a> promotes multidisciplinary research, teaching and programming with impact beyond academia, seeking to remedy class, racial, gender, and other inequalities, and to improve mutual understanding in UK-China relations. The MCI is based at the University of Manchester. Venue accessibility: Please note that you must use the stairs to access the library. There are no lifts available at the moment.

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Revolution, Rebellion & Empire on Early Maoist China's Tibetan Borderland

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Revolution, Rebellion & Empire on Early Maoist China's Tibetan Borderland

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Leftover Men and Women: The Politics of Reproducing Patriarchal Norms

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