Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (review)

In Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China, Gray Tuttle approaches the issue of the relationship between China and Tibet from two innovative perspectives. First, relying on both Tibetan and Chinese sources, he focuses on the interaction between Chinese governments (from the Qing to the end of the republican period) and Tibet rather than on the theme of independence. By shifting the focus from oppression and resistance, he offers a view of Sino-Tibetan interactions that highlights goals pursued and strategies deployed by the two parties in negotiating terms of coexistence in the changing regional context of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Second, Tuttle widens the debate on the relationship between China and Tibet by inserting it into the broader framework of China’s modern nation building. Because of this approach, Tuttle is able to illustrate the process that brought the Chinese collective imagination to perceive Tibet—until the 1920s still largely unknown and irrelevant to most Chinese—as a vital part of the new modern nation. He is also able to throw light on the historical memories, political repertoires, and personal experiences that informed Tibetan elites’ attitudes toward the newly established Communist regime in the early 1950s. As Tuttle explains, opening the discussion of the Tibetan problem to wider historical themes should not be seen as an attempt to justify “in any way … what happened to Tibet since 1950” (221). His goal is to deepen our understanding of the complexity of the problem, which is often discussed by the general public in terms that are, in Tuttle’s words, “overly simplistic” (221).

Tuttle devotes the first part of his book to describing Sino-Tibetan relations in the Qing period, stressing how they were channeled mainly through the Manchu imperial household and were based on the Manchu recognition of the vital role played by religion in Tibetan political and cultural identity. This was a mutually beneficial relationship since the Manchu protected the Tibetan elites from domestic and external challenges to their authority. On the other hand, it allowed the Manchu to cultivate the image of patrons and protectors of Tibetan Buddhism, bolstering the dynasty’s political legitimacy in the eyes of the Mongol population of the empire. This relationship allowed for a relatively “light” supervision by the empire, granting Tibet a significant measure of autonomy.

Tuttle skillfully describes how the demise of the Qing dynasty and the new Republic’s efforts toward modern nation building led to the end of this special relationship. The Chinese modern nation’s need for political and administrative centralization required a tighter integration of the borderlands, not only challenging Tibet’s newly recovered independence—a result of the collapse of the empire—but also precluding the possibility of a return to the relative autonomy enjoyed under the Qing. In addition, the secular nature of the new state displaced religious patronage from its central position in Sino-Tibetan relations and replaced it with new notions of nationalism and citizenship. This strategy—adopted most systematically by the Nationalist Government (1927–1949)—was destined to fail because it did not resonate with the Tibetan belief in the unity of politics and religion.

According to Tuttle, the Nationalists were more successful in their attempt to integrate Tibet into their discourse of Chinese modern nationhood (they did not have the political or the military power for a forceful annexation) when they brought religion back into their negotiations with Tibet. Tuttle illustrates how some Nationalist leaders attempted to present Tibetan Buddhism as a common tradition that could transcend ethnicity and form the glue for keeping China proper and its borderland minorities together. Dai Jitao, for example, became a patron of Tibetan Buddhism and sponsored lavish Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies for the protection of the Chinese nation. This strategy was possible, as Tuttle argues, because of Tibetan Buddhism’s new popularity in China, a result of the emergence of notions of a Pan-Asian Buddhism in the East Asian region and of its localization...