Via CDT: Letters from China blogs about an article in the magazine China Review by Fudan University professor Ge Jianxiong. The CDT brief and the Letters from China post both feature the title “Tibet not always a part of China: Chinese Historian.”
Taken in context, Professor Ge’s comments are not quite so shocking. While he does mention Tibet as not being a part of the Tang Empire, the article itself I think is more interesting for the larger argument: When discussing what is and, perhaps more importantly, what is not China, it’s crucial to keep in mind both the context and that the term “China” is not as certain a historical term as we might assume. Professor Ge argues that if we are to gauge the limits of territorial control in China’s history, it’s also imporant to specify who is doing the controlling and what is it we mean by “control.”
Chinese textbooks do attempt to hammer home the idea that Tibet is a part of China–often using some rather specious historical arguments in the process–but most scholars in the PRC look back to the mid-Qing takeover of Tibet as the true beginning of “Chinese” sovereignty over the region and