The Origins of Disempowered Development in the TibetanBorderlands

Recent research demonstrates that, for over f ifty years, the People’s Republic of China has tended to pursue development policies that disempower non‐Han inhabitants of borderlands regions. Using Kham as a case study, this chapter demonstrates that the production of economic inequality, especially across ethnic lines, did not originate in the Communist period nor in actions of the state alone; instead, the sources of ethnic inequality were deeply entangled with trends in private corporate commercialization as well as with nascent statist approaches to modern economic and political development. To reevaluate the key elements of Chinese development, we must employ longer‐range historical frameworks, and we must consider borderlands regions such as Kham, where diverse, and sometimes unexpected, actors have produced long‐term impacts.