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The Chinese state's efforts to incorporate Tibetan regions into the rest of China through economic development have been complicated by religious leaders and secular Tibetan intellectuals who indeed need to survive in a space provided by the state through religious measures and other policies. In the recent slaughter renunciation movement, Tibetan Buddhist leaders have suggested that Tibetan herders refrain from selling their livestock to the slaughter market for religious reasons. Calls for slaughter renunciation are delivered to Tibetan herders in the language of development, yet it goes against the state development project of promoting the yak meat industry. The debate about the movement reflects complicated interpretations by, and interests of, multiple groups. This article proposes the metaphor of development as an "entangled cultural knot" that captures the complex relationships, fuzzy positions, and overlapping interests of Tibetan Buddhist leaders, state officials, secular Tibetan intellectuals, and herders in their negotiation of development.
Introduction: The Slaughter Renunciation Movement
We are not saying Tibetans don't need development. Yes, Tibetans need development, but the massive slaughtering of their yaks for the meat market is not the way to be developed.
- Khenpo Tsullo, religious teaching in Wakhor Village, Sichuan, 2006.1
This statement by Khenpo Tsultrim Lodroe (T. Mkhan po tshul khrims blo gros, hereafter Khenpo Tsullo), a prominent Buddhist leader in contemporary China and one of the major forces behind the slaughter renunciation movement (T. Bshas tshong mi byed pa, or rgya bshas la mi phab pa)2explored in this article, reflects an era in which the imagination of development has dictated the shape of Chinese culture, China's landscape, the state, and its citizens for the last several decades. This imagination was accelerated by Deng Xiaoping's famous declaration in the early 1980s that "development is the first principle." Since then, development has become a hegemonic goal for all government departments and their officials. While the meaning of development from the Chinese state perspective is not a stable one, several key elements have remained unchanged. In China, development is mostly understood as economic progress that improves the living standards of ordinary people and that serves to realize the Chinese national dream--the making of China as a major global economic, political, military, and cultural power. The discourse...