The Chinese State at the Borders

The essays in this volume look at these issues over a long span of time, questioning whether the process of expansion was a benevolent civilizing mission.

The essays in this volume look at China's relationships with border peoples over a long span of time, questioning whether the process of expansion was a benevolent civilizing mission.In this ground-breaking study, Hsiao Ting Lin demonstrates that the Chinese frontier was the subject neither of concerted aggression on the part of a centralized and indoctrinated Chinese government nor of an ideologically driven nationalist ethnopolitics. Instead, nationalist sovereignty over Tibet and other border regions was the result of rhetorical grandstanding by Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier makes a crucial contribution to the understanding of past and present China-Tibet relations. A counterpoint to erroneous historical assumptions, this book will change the way Tibetologists and modern Chinese historians frame future studies of the region.