The most pressing economic challenges facing the Tibetan areas of western China relate to the marginalization of the majority of Tibetans from rapid state-led growth. The urban-rural divide plays an impor-tant role in this polarized dynamic but alone only partially explains differences with other Chinese regions, all of which generally exhibit strong spatial inequalities.

This book therefore focuses on several further factors that determine the ethnically exclusionary character of current peripheral growth in the Tibetan areas. These include processes of urbanization, immigration, employment and education as key factors underlying structural economic change. The study draws generally from the analytical framework of social exclusion and is based on extensive use of official Chinese statistics, focusing on the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai but with numerous comparisons to the other provinces of western China. A variety of qualitative insights are also taken from recent fieldwork and second-ary sources. The macro focus of this investigation aims to complement the growing wealth of micro-level studies on Tibet produced from a variety of disciplines.