“Deaf-mutes, Illiterates, And Women”

Abstract

In the Tibet Autonomous Region of China (TAR), the local labor policy has contributed to converting the Tibetan population into citizens of the People's Republic of China (PRC). This paper analyzes this socio-political process by looking at the changing labor relations and management in a Tibetan carpet factory amidst China's modernization projects. I argue that in the labor policy discourse and implementation, varied labor categories and labels were constructed to legitimize socialist or exploitive labor relations and to create a class of carpet weaver-workers within the PRC framework of citizen-laborer. In this case, the making of Tibetan weaver workers has intertwined with ethnicity and gender politics. Sino-centric and gendered labels associated with carpet weavers provoked discontent among the Tibetan cadres and workers. However, such discriminatory labeling is increasingly applied to justify the exploitive conditions in today's TAR carpet industry. Using archival and oral history materials, I demonstrate that since the 1970s Tibetan carpets have been celebrated as Tibetan cultural heritage under the protection of the Chinese Communist Party. But Tibetan women weavers, who migrated to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, from the rural areas in the 1990s are treated as “temporary” workers and their contribution to this economically and symbolically important industry is not acknowledged.