Going Back to Tibet: Analytic Narrative

Abstract

This chapter sets out to investigate how China’s interprovincial economic (dis)integration has been determined in Tibet. Given the ethnic homogeneity within Tibet and the similar religious beliefs adopted by the Tibetans and Han Chinese (both of which belong to the Mongoloid group), the harmonious Han–Tibetan relations had once ever been achieved. It is found that Tibet’s spatial economic disparities are much smaller than Xinjiang’s, which could be responsible for its long-term economic progress and social stability. Finally, we also find that China’s development policies toward Tibet have been more successful than those toward Xinjiang. This may be witnessed not only by the Tibetan’s better social and economic performances than Xinjiang’s but also by the less tensed (at least compared to the Han–Uyghur relations in Xinjiang) Han–Tibetan relations in Tibet.

Annex

5.1.1 A.1 Regressions for Interprovincial Export and Import, 2000 and 2010

The following four tables report the estimated results using the data shown in Annex of Chap. 4 (Tables 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, 5.10).

Table 5.7 Regression for interprovincial export, 2000

Table 5.8 Regression for interprovincial import, 2000

Table 5.9 Regression for interprovincial export, 2010

Table 5.10 Regression for interprovincial import, 2010

5.1.2 A.2 Measuring Ethnic Diversity

There are several different methods for the measurement of ethnic diversity (Guo 2009, pp. 113–118). The simplest method is derived from the number of ethnic groups: thus, the ethnic diversity of a society is positively related to the number of ethnic groups involved. However, this method ignores the influence of population composition among all ethnic groups. For example, given two societies having the same number of ethnic groups, but that in which population is equally distributed among all ethnic groups might be more ethnically diverse than one in which population is unevenly distributed among an ethnic majority and much smaller ethnic minorities. To demonstrate this point, let us consider an extreme case in which the ethnic majority accounts for almost 100 % of the total population, while each of the minorities retains a tiny share. Such a society can only be defined as an ethnically homogeneous, no matter how many minority groups exist.

The second method defines ethnic diversity in relation to the population ratio of the largest ethnic group. In many cases, the lower the ratio of the largest ethnic group, the greater the ethnic diversity it implies. However, as it only takes account of one (that is, the largest) ethnic group, this method may miscalculate the ethnic diversity when two or more large ethnic groups exist simultaneously. Although the understanding of ethnic diversity may vary according to the perspective taken, the number of ethnic groups and their populations should be taken into account simultaneously.

In this research, we use the ethnic fractionalization index, which measures the probability that two individuals who meet at random will be from different ethnic groups (Mauro 1995; Easterly and Levine 1997; La Porta et al. 1999; Bluedorn 2001; Ottaviano and Peri 2004; Alesina and Ferrara 2005; and Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2005). Specifically, the ethno diversity measure is defined as follows:

$$ {\text{Diversity}} = 1 - \sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N} {S_{i}^{2} } $$

(6.1)

where s _i is the share of group i over the total of the population. This index represents the probability that two randomly drawn individuals from the population belong to different ethnic groups. This index reaches a theoretical maximum of 1 when every individual belongs to a different group. This measure implies that a country composed of, say, 100 equally sized groups is more fractionalized than a country with two equally sized groups.

Using Eq. (6.1) and data shown in Table 5.11, we may calculate the ethnic diversity scores for Xinjiang and Tibet, which are shown in Table 5.12 in which the diversity scores of other Chinese provinces are also given.

Table 5.11 Ethnic populations of Xinjiang and Tibet, 2000 and 2010

Table 5.12 Ethnic diversity scores by province (2000 and 2010)