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Title:
Collaboration and Colonialism on the Tibetan Grasslands of Early-Maoist China: The Political Lives of a Patriotic Nationality Representative
Abstract:
Among the thorniest issues historians face when researching non-Han communities during the Maoist period is evaluating the political lives and legacies of members of the pre-1949 traditional elite who after 1949 were enlisted into the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front (tongyi zhanxian). These were people who under different circumstances would have been targeted by the new regime as class enemies. Instead, they were christened “patriotic nationality representatives” (aiguo minzu daibiao) and given positions as leaders of local and regional “nationality autonomous areas.” I have written about the Party’s ideological justification for opting, at least for a time, to preserve and promote non-Han indigenous elites (2020, 2023). Acting both as agents of the new state and through the charismatic authority of their indigenous positions, these figures would prove pivotal in the establishment CCP power across non-Han borderlands in the early years of the People’s Republic. Keeping in mind that individual choices are made for a host of reasons, the question, then, is how did these local elites-turned-patriotic nationality representatives understand and rationalize—in real time—their collusion with the CCP. Finding answers is complicated by the paucity of contemporary records that might provide insight into their thinking. While numerous retrospective accounts have been published by and about non-Han members of the United Front, these are colored both by the political moments in which they were produced and by the knowledge over how events played out. As a result, they inescapably privilege what Peter Zarrow (1999) has called the “narrative self” over the “experiencing self.” In 1949, however, the “experiencing self” lacked the ‘benefit’ of hindsight. Those suddenly thrust into a likely bewildering, potentially dangerous, and perhaps electrifying new political order were ‘outcome blind.’
Borrowing from theorists of colonial collaboration such as Ronald Robinson’s “excentric idea of imperialism” (1986) and Uradyn Bulag’s notion of “collaborative nationalism” (2010), this paper explores the contemporary decisions made by one Tibetan “patriotic nationality representative” as a grassroots vantage point from which to consider the complex interplay of agency, belief, coercion, and resistance within a colonial setting that masked itself both through a transformative ideology and by demands for the active political participation of the colonized. Gélek Gyatso (1920-1969, T. gde legs rgya mtsho, C. Gelei Jiacuo) was a locally prominent monk-official from contemporary Qinghai province in the region Tibetan speakers refer to as Amdo. Most of what is known about Gélek Gyatso comes from official Chinese-language sources published in the 1990s and early 2000s that celebrate his life as an exemplary United Front figure. Unlike most of his contemporaries, however, Gélek Gyatso left a spotty but revealing archival footprint which suggests a more complex political subjectivity. Augmented by insights drawn from other regionally prominent United Front figures, this paper
considers a range of possible interpretations for the actions of Gélek Gyatso and other traditional elites in Amdo and beyond when confronted with unprecedented challenges but also new opportunities presented by incorporation into an extraordinarily interventionist, transformative, and ultimately colonial state power.
