Hyperbuilding the civilized city: ethnicity and marginalization in Eastern Tibet

ABSTRACT

Western China and the states of Central Asia are increasingly urbanized, and governments are investing large sums in founding and expanding cities. Rapid and spectacular hyperbuilding has led to the creation of unevenly developed urban districts and new tensions between unequally positioned residents. Xining City, the capital of China’s Qinghai Province in western China, has drawn large numbers of Tibetan migrants since the “Open up the West” Campaign accelerated urban development there in the 21st century. Tibetan migrants dwelling and working in Xining must find their place within the city as municipal authorities and developers continuously remake the urban landscape both materially and discursively. The current Chinese national project that promotes the “civilized city” is closely linked to this development; it is revaluing what counts as high-quality urban places and ideal urban behavior and contributing to the creation of new centers of monetary and cultural value as “civilization” is reimagined through spectacular new urban centers. Hyperbuilding is reshaping aspiring middle-class Tibetans’ understandings of their place in Xining relative to other ethnic groups. This paper argues that urban hyperbuilding produces not only new spaces for state and market power but also puts economic and social pressure on already marginalized ethnic minorities.

KEYWORDS:

• Urbanization
• ethnicity
• China
• Tibet
• space

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Emily Yeh, Charlene Makley, Lhamo Tsering, Robert Shepherd, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Andrew Grant is a human geographer interested in majority/minority relations in global borderlands. His research has focused on the ethno-politics of Chinese urbanization in eastern Tibet, trans-border migration between China and Central Asia, and the geopolitics of cartographic imaginaries in the age of the Belts and Roads Initiative.

Notes

1 Chinese Civilization Network 2017.

2 Ong 2011, 209.

3 Koch 2015; 2018.

4 Billé 2014.

5 Zhang 2010, 5–8.

6 Pow 2007; Tomba 2014.

7 Gaubatz 1996. Tomba 2014 and Zhang 2010 have explored gentrification and post-socialist primitive accumulation, respectively, in China.

8 State work remains desirable in western China as a secure source of income, regardless of attitudes towards local governments or the national government. See Zenz 2014; Cliff 2016.

9 Cartier 2013; Oakes 2017.

10 Bosker 2013.

11 Roy and Ong 2011; Tomba 2014.

12 Chan 2014.

13 “Biopolitics” describes the diffuse and distributed mode of power in which governmental apparatuses and subject populations pursue security and the cultivation of beneficial bodily habits and knowledges. Regulatory mechanisms and the self-governing populations enmeshed within them are the basis of the biopolitical technology of power whose ultimate goal is to “optimize a state of life.” Foucault 2003, 246.

14 Tomba 2009, 593.

15 Tomba 2014.

16 Anagnost 2008; Tomba 2014. Stratification is distinct from potentially antagonist term for class (jieji). Note that most English language scholars resort to translating zhongchan jieceng as “middle-class” rather than “middle stratum” to capture the fact that classed financial and social differences are emerging, as well as because the latter term is awkward.

17 Anagnost 1997.

18 Barabantseva 2009.

19 Bulag 2002.

20 See Charlene Makley 2014, 2018 for analyses of the roles of spectacular development and spectacle time in promoting state sovereignty on the Tibetan Plateau.

21 Yeh 2013.

22 Cartier 2015.

23 Yeh and Henderson 2008.

24 Xining Yearbook Compiling Committee 2015, n.p. . The Shanghai Tongji University Urban Planning and Design Research Institute published these maps in August 2013.

25 Rohlf 2013, 2016. Greg Rohlf explains that during the 1950s and 1960s, eastern Qinghai hosted Han Chinese pioneers that sought to reform its agricultural landscape. This was an ambitious agricultural expansion project that ultimately ended in disaster.

26 Gaubatz 2008.

27 Gaubatz 2008, 194.

28 Rebuilding has also disrupted the city’s historical layout. Walls once separated the Han administrative settlement from the Muslim portions of the city, which was located in what is today called the East District. See Gaubatz 1996, 58–59.

29 Xining Yearbook Compiling Committee 2015, n.p. The Xining Yearbook is bookended with glossy color folios that advertise the recent accomplishments of public enterprises and government offices. These achievements are connected to the 12th (2010–2015) Five Year Plan.

30 The Wanda Group is controlled by Wang Jianlin, one of China’s richest citizens, with an estimate net worth of US$ thirty billion.

31 Zhang 2010.

32 Cartier 2013, 279.

33 Qinghai Xining Civilized City Office 2010.

34 This notice, produced by the Leading Work Office for Create a National Civilized Xining City 2017, can be found on several government-related websites and media organs. I also saw it posted on the walls of several restaurants near the Great Crossing intersection in downtown Xining.

35 Foucault 1977.

36 See Horlemann 2012 for a description of Hui and Tibetan relationships and geographical connection in markets across eastern Tibet.

37 Naughton 1988.

38 The expansive discourse of “ecological civilization” implies a scientific approach to protecting environments large and small through the deployment of screens, belts, and other human-designated spaces. See Su 2015.

39 Zhang 2010.

40 Tibetans also complained of discrimination in the city by police after national media reports of violence involving ethnic minority groups. This phenomenon reminded Tibetans that they didn’t quite fit into the ostensibly de-ethnicized city (Grant 2017).

41 See Powers 2004.

42 (Kabzung) 2015.

43 Vasantkumar 2012.