There leaving on Wednesday and we still don’t know if the Visa has been granted.

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“Lu Jianhua, a prominent sociologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was reportedly sentenced to 20 years for ‘leaking state secrets’ in a case linked to that of Hong-Kong based reporter Ching Cheong, who was sentenced in August 2006 to five years for ‘spying.’ Lu was well known for the essays he wrote and his appearances on TV talk shows and often assisted Ching with articles on the political and social situation in China that were published in the Singapore newspaper The Straits Times. Some Chinese officials claimed that three of these articles, published in 2004, contained state secrets.” (Excerpted from HRIC’s report on China’s State Secrets System, full text available “here”:http://hrichina.org/public/ )

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On the other hand, starting from the time of reports of a Tibetan uprising, I worried that this meeting would be cancelled or postponed because of the topics to be discussed in some panels such as indigenous rights, Tibetan peoples, and many other ethnic minority groups in Yunnan and Szechuan. My session was entitled “How the Lisu Became Southeast Asian,” and the Lisu, like many other minority groups in SW China, are Tibeto-Burman speaking peoples whose physical location, and ritual and political cultures were deeply influenced by the substantial influence of Tibetan kingdoms and models of governance from long before the real, everyday influence of the Chinese empire.

And then there’s anthropologists, whose core ethical principles revolve around the rights of cultural expression if not outright self-determination. Chinese officials were apparently nervous enough about how they would be depicted in these sessions to compel the organizers to include a session on the advantages of Chinese government assimilation for the ethnic minority peoples (I can’t remember my source for this right now, sorry, but it was one I judged as reliable in its analyses).

Then you’ve got the fact (or at least a fact reported in the New York Times) that the Chinese government has basically closed off a part of western China (up to? including?) the size of France, then you’ve got the prospect of many uncontrollable outsiders very close to an area the government is nervous about.

Finally, think of the bureaucracy involved. The report of cancellation was finally confirmed at the time when we should have been receiving letters of invitation that would ensure our getting a visa. These bureaucratic requirements on top of those for the Olympics has to have stretched the Chinese visa services very thin indeed.

I feel terrible for our Chinese colleagues. Like Richard Irvine, I was having some doubts about whether it was right to show support for the Chinese government at this time by attending an international conference that would symbolically support its claims to being a beneficient state. But, again on looking at the program, I had decided that our Chinese anthropologist colleagues in Yunnan and their students deserved a stage on which to shine, to get support for their own academic and intellectual work. I’ve worked with several colleagues from Yunnan over the years, and have been consistently impressed with how carefully and delicately they walk the line of free intellectual expression and the power of their government to control what they can do. They’ve put a fantastic amount of work into organizing in a place that isn’t all that receptive to Western-styles of organization. Up to just a few days before the announcement, I was getting quick responses to questions I posted through the IUAES web site. Think of the graduate students who spent so much time helping to set this up — it’s a great loss to them.

Even if this is just a postponement, I doubt I’ll be able to attend at a later date. I have already bought my plane tickets (my partner was coming with me), and doubt I’ll get the full amount, or even a little, back.

KG

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That would be an interesting question indeed and until I get some news from them directly I could not say. However, having carried out research in Inner Mongolia (China’s ‘forgotten’ Tibet), I can say that many minority scholars are not resolutely pleased with the way in which the current Tibet debate is unfolding. Many believe it to be a knee-jerk response on the part of western protesters, complaining that when it was announced China would host the Olympics, there was nothing of the same condemnation that was shown recently. Then, after the commencement of local Tibetan protests, everyone in the west all of a sudden became supporters of the Tibetan cause. And now, as the situation has become more quiet, it seems to many that supporting Tibet is a fad, rather than a long-term interest.

Some minority scholars whom I have spoken with argue that a far more nuanced approach is needed when it comes to minority issues, with shifts only coming to the fore in small stages, and only if the West avoids embarrasing the central government. The cancellation of the IAES, in this regard, is interpreted by many as a direct result of the protests, hindering potentially positive relationships between minority scholars and minority intellectuals, relationships that could have benefited minority peoples far more productively than any Parisian or London protester.

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From discussions that have been reported back on various e-mail lists, it does not seem that health concerns entered into this.

Richard,

I’d be curious what those local scholars feel would be appropriate action on the part of the international community?

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I myself was to attend the conference, participating in a panel organised solely by local minority scholars. The cancellation is a major blow to Chinese anthropology’s engagement with the international anthropological community and a clear example of how international pressure, however much ‘needed’, can have problematic results for well-meaning scholars.

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Of course, as Rex just pointed out to me, combating the image of China as the source of uncontrolled infectious diseases is also a political concern (as well as a public-health concern). But it’s probably worth noting that there may be possible reasons for the cancellation of the conference other than the repression of anthropological critique.

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