Tibet and Nationalist China's Frontier

In this ground-breaking study, Hsiao Ting Lin demonstrates that the Chinese frontier was the subject neither of concerted aggression on the part of a centralized and indoctrinated Chinese government nor of an ideologically driven nationalist ethnopolitics. Instead, Nationalist sovereignty over Tibet and other border regions was the result of rhetorical grandstanding by Chiang Kai-shek and his regime. Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier is invaluable for an understanding of past and present China-Tibet relations.

Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier makes a crucial contribution to the understanding of past and present China-Tibet relations. A counterpoint to erroneous historical assumptions, this book will change the way Tibetologists and modern Chinese historians frame future studies of the region.

Xiaoyuan Liu, author of Frontier Passages: Ethnopolitics and the Rise of Chinese Communism, 1921-45:
This book adds an important Chinese dimension to the current scholarly discourse on the Tibet question. Lin’s coverage of recently declassified Chinese government files and his mastery of the literature in both English and Chinese is remarkable. De-centralizing and de-ideologizing Chinese Nationalists’ frontier policies, his provocative arguments will certainly invite serious responses from others in the field.

Jonathan Lipman, author of Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China:
Lin’s insightful, carefully documented book describes the Nationalist regime’s evolving attempts to move from ‘imagined sovereignty’ to nation building in its relationship with a de facto independent Tibet. Including valuable comparisons with Xinjiang and Mongolia, Lin reshapes the history of modern China’s relations with its vast frontiers. This is an original and noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the creation of today’s China.