Accelerated social and environmental change in the Tibetan Plateau is sharpening the need for a modern Atlas of Tibet. The world outside China has little access to detailed information or maps of Tibet, even though the region plays an important geopolitical role. Three nuclear powers – China, India and Pakistan – face each other across Tibet’s contested, though formidable, western mountain borders. China is constructing enhanced road networks and many new airports in Tibet, ostensibly for peaceful purposes. but border tensions flared into open conflict in 2020 and 2021 between Indian and Chinese military forces.
China’s international ambitions, furthermore, require that it control a politically stable Tibet as it extends its sphere of influence westwards. Several major trade routes created as part of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative (Frankopan 2018) either pass close to Tibet, in the case of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or directly across it. The projected rail and road routes under this initiative will connect Kathmandu firmly to Beijing (Ray 2018). As part of this control, China is putting pressure on the ancient culture of Tibet to follow a radically different political and social model. Tibet’s widespread network of monasteries, one of the foundations of its traditional society, is being persuaded to conform to the rigid model of society imposed by the Chinese Communist Party (Tibet Watch 2016). Xi Jinping himself has recently said:
It is necessary to actively guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to the socialist society and promote the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism.
(Apple Daily 2020)
The increasing influence of tourism, which is mainly Chinese in origin, is applying a subtler form of stress on Tibetan culture, and may lead to its eventual destruction (Tibet Watch 2014; Sydenstricker 2014).
The geography of the Tibetan Plateau also draws the attention of the world’s climate scientists and glaciologists. It has been called the “Third Pole” for good reasons. Home to the vast Hindu Kush-Himalaya ice sheet, the plateau contains the world’s third largest amount of snow and ice after the Arctic and Antarctica. China’s glaciers, including those in Tibet, account for an estimated 14.5 percent of the global total (Vince 2019). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2019), in a special report, warned that up to two-thirds of the region’s remaining glaciers and a third of all its ice are on track to disappear by the end of the 21st century, even if countries adhere to the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming by 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.
This Atlas, following on from Karl Ryavec’s ground-breaking A Historical Atlas of Tibet (2015), reflects the current state of the Tibetan Plateau and its culture. The Atlas will serve as a tool for research in social, political and environmental fields and may aid in the preservation of a threatened society and its ancient and fascinating culture.