Muslim, trader, nomad, spy: China's Cold War and the people of the Tibetan borderlands. By Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Abstract

In Muslim, trader, nomad, spy, Sulmaan Wasif Khan gives an account of how events in Tibet from the 1950s to the early 1960s informed not just important elements of Chinese foreign policy, but also wider relations among Third World states in an era of post-colonial statebuilding. As bottom-up history, it is a delightful corrective to reductionist accounts of international relations which focus on state capitals—there are not many analyses of diplomatic history which start from the subnational level. It also sheds light on developments in Tibet during a crucial period for the region. Khan argues that in the 1950s, ‘the Chinese state was weak in the Tibetan borderlands; that addressing that weakness caused the PRC to change from empire-lite to a harder imperial formation; and that the transition brought about a shift in Chinese foreign policy during the Cold War’ (pp. 4–5). The shifts in Chinese foreign policy have had long-lasting consequences. Khan shows how the ‘five principles of peaceful coexistence’ of 1954 (namely mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; non-interference in others' internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence), which remain a central part of Chinese diplomatic rhetoric, emerged from interactions with India over managing trade in the Tibetan borderlands. Because events in those geo-strategically important borderlands contributed to the breakdown in Sino-Indian relations and the conflict between the two countries in 1962, China's Tibetan frontiers would not just play a role in relations between these two Asian powers, but affect the prospects for Third World solidarity for the rest of the Cold War.