‘Tibetanness’ Under Threat?: Neo-Integrationism, Minority Education and Career Strategies in Qinghai, P.R. China

In ‘Tibetanness’ Under Threat?, Adrian Zenz pioneers an analysis of significant recent developments in Qinghai’s Tibetan education system. Presently, Tibetan students can receive native language education from primary to tertiary levels, while university minority departments offer Tibetan-medium majors from computer science to secretarial studies.

However, positive developments are threatened by the dire career prospects of Tibetan-medium graduates. Tibetans view marketisation as the greatest threat to ethnocultural survival, with their young generation being lured into a Chinese education by superior employment prospects. But Zenz questions the easy equation of Tibetan education as ‘unselfish’ ethnic preservation versus the Chinese route as egocentric careerism, arguing that the creative educational strategies of Tibetans in the Chinese education system are important for exploring and expressing new forms of ‘Tibetanness’ in modern China.