This unique edited volume combines a wide range of contributions from a research team of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Being the translation of an original Chinese publication, it gives us unprecedented insights into the way modern Chinese academia deals with complex and sensitive socio-economic issues. This in itself makes the work an interesting read.
Comprising eleven chapters besides the introduction, the book can be loosely structured into three sections. The first four contributions focus on Tibetan farmer and herder market participation and income generation. The second set addresses a wide range of issues from ecological resettlement, health and education to a unique chapter on the impact of TV broadcasting. The third set looks at aid, welfare (including an insightful study on elderly pensions) and disaster relief. Altogether, the volume touches on several topics that have never been examined in the Tibetan context.
All contributions are united by a focus on poverty dynamics and governmental poverty alleviation, based on fieldwork undertaken in 2006–07 in rural Tibetan regions. In the introduction, the editors highlight the multi-disciplinary and structural-institutional approach of their research – as opposed to what they perceive to be a primarily “anthropological” focus of Western research on Tibetans. Secondly, the volume seeks to transcend common theoretical and ideological limitations of Chinese academia in terms of simplistic, Sino-centric representations of minorities. For example, Yang Chunxue, who evaluates whether Tibetan farmers and herders can be said to engage in “rational” economic behaviour, contradicts received academic wisdom by arguing that their risk-averse behaviours are not caused by “backward thinking,” but rather by “their fragile economic circumstances” (p. 20). Other articles likewise feature innovative approaches by Chinese standards, such as Zhu Hengpeng's analysis of a temple-run company as a successful competitor of the otherwise dominant local migrant businesses.
Another characteristic is the authors' critical engagement with government policy. This is exemplified by Jin Chengwu's intriguing chapter on the socio-economic plight of resettled herders. Items such as by-products of herding that used to be available for free now cost them money. Significantly higher living expenses are combined with greatly reduced means of earning an income. Jin Chengwu's conclusion is bold by Chinese standards: he argues that resettlement is a poverty trap with little hope of escape.
Wei Zhong's chapter on education, however, shows how the authors of this volume tend to deal too superficially with complex issues. His central argument that attitudes towards compulsory education are shaped by employment opportunities raises a concern that warrants a much more in-depth engagement. In my book, “Tibetanness” Under Threat? (Global Oriental, 2013), I outline how the education–employment nexus is one of the key issues bedevilling the Tibetan community. However, Wei Zhong does not discuss the rich diversity of education and career strategies that came up in my fieldwork, including the mixing of Tibetan-medium and Chinese-medium education tracks. Neither does he clarify that Tibetan employment problems are by no means just limited to a lack of skills or education, but equally caused by endemic corruption and other exclusionary allocation dynamics. Additionally, many Tibetans are actually hesitant to engage in the low-skilled tourism job opportunities described by Wei Zhong as the supposed primary motivating factor for Tibetans in Diqing (Yunnan) to pursue education: these jobs are poorly remunerated, typically seasonal, and provide little or no fringe benefits. Overall, he provides insufficient evidence (ethnographic or statistical) for his key argument. Employment dynamics are given a slightly more comprehensive treatment in Jin Chengwu's chapter, but there also the breadth and depth of both fieldwork and analysis is less than adequate.
Overall, the book suffers from three shortcomings. First, it pursues a mid-level research approach, often giving generalizing summaries instead of ethnographic detail, and neither offering systematic and comprehensive macro-level analyses (e.g. of statistical yearbook data). Consequently, readers often neither obtain the sense of familiarity with local conditions that a “thick description” begets, nor are they systematically shown how structural trends correlate with socio-economic data. Second, the volume does not engage with a single Western academic study on Tibetans. Contrary to the impression given in the introduction, there are significant Western non-anthropological contributions: notably Fischer's State Growth and Social Exclusion in Tibet (NIAS, 2005), along with others. My own (anthropological) work involves significantly more socio-economic analysis than that of many of the CASS authors. This prevents the CASS research effort from building on the substantial body of Western material on these topics. Third, the book is of no significant theoretical import. It lacks any discussion of relevant theories, such as theories of poverty. The introduction simply replicates the official poverty definition of a fixed income level, ignoring a vast literature that has long moved beyond such rigid understandings. Sorely missing here is a concluding chapter that would tie together the various strands and mesh them with relevant theoretical debates. As it stands, readers are left with scattered impressions rather than a big picture.
Even so, Breaking out of the Poverty Trap makes a significant and worthwhile contribution to the analysis of socio-economic issues on the Tibetan plateau. It continually provides the reader with insights that are unlikely to be gleaned elsewhere, while offering a first-hand perspective on a generation of Chinese academics who are willing to break with the traditional limitations of their discipline as they critically engage with a politically sensitive region.
