CHINA’S WILD WEST - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 23

increasingly become a Han-dominated city, Han make up only a relatively small propor-
tion of people on the land elsewhere, even in Tibet.
Tibetans loom large in western China, particularly in the Western imagination. In fact,
not only is there an entire field of study devoted to Tibet and Tibetans, there are also schol-
ars of the scholarship of Tibet. 9 But although it is mistaken to view all of western China
as synonymous with “Tibet” (as a naïve Westerner might 10 ), Tibetan culture produces the
largest single human impact on the land and wildlife in western China as I have defined it.
Tibetans predominate not only within Tibet itself, but also in the southern half of Qinghai,
the western third of Sichuan, the northwestern tip of Yunnan, and within various pockets
of Gansu. Most Tibetans in China are comfortable with multiple identities, as their cul-
ture has never become completely unified. Although all see themselves as Tibetan, most
also recognize, and have made some sort of accommodation with, their political status as
Chinese citizens. 11 While almost all venerate the Dalai Lama as a religious leader, many
focus more attention on local religious leaders. 12 Although a visit to Lhasa is almost as
important as the Muslim hajj to Mecca, neither the Kham speakers of western Sichuan
and the Yushu area of Qinghai nor the Amdo speakers of central Qinghai and southern
Gansu, can understand the Tibetan spoken there. The three major dialects within Tibetan
are almost as mutually unintelligible as some of the Chinese dialects. All Buddhists,
Tibetans nonetheless profess allegiance to different sects: although the Gelugpa have
dominated religious life in Lhasa for centuries (and have defined Tibetan Buddhism in
the West through the personages of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas), their sect is, in places,
less important than the Nyingmapa, Kargyüpa, or Sakya sects.
While there is no doubt that Buddhism pervades the lives of most Tibetans, in their
daily activities and world views, most Tibetan pastoralists resemble Mongol or Islamic
Kazak pastoralists 13 more closely than they do monks or lamas. They interact daily with
the natural world, and although they venerate life, they are far too close to its realities
to eschew an earthy practicality. Almost none are vegetarians (even if they prefer to hire
others to kill their livestock), and hunting is also a consistent, if never predominant,
cultural theme.
Many people in the West do not realize that there are more Mongols in China (almost 5
million) than in Mongolia. True, Chinese Mongols do not have their own country, but their
sheer numbers alone (not only in Inner Mongolia, but also in Xinjiang, Gansu, and Qinghai)
create a strong ethnic presence. Western China is also home to over a million Kazak, almost
200,000 Qiang, 143,000 Kyrgyz, 45,000 Tajik, and 15,000 Yugur pastoralists. In agricultural
and urban areas, Uygurs number well over 9 million, dominating southwestern Xinjiang,
while a large proportion of China's almost 9 million Hui Muslims live in the west (particularly
if the west is defined to include Ningxia, nominally a Hui Autonomous Region). Another
locally important Muslim ethnic group is the Salar, which although not numerous (less than
100,000), has a strong influence in commodity trade in western China.
There is little doubt that the Chinese political system has not delivered “autonomy” to these
ethnic minorities in any sense that Westerners would find meaningful. The English-language
literature is filled with topics and articles recounting and condemning the oppression that the
majority and politically powerful Han Chinese have historically meted out to ethnic minorities,