Panel discussion: Politics of Culture and Nature in Northwest China

The University of California at Berkeley presents a discussion on China's northwest, the border region of China proper.

Moderator: You-tien Hsing, Geography, UC Berkeley

One of the most interesting aspects of China's northwest is its position as a border region of China proper. A "border region" is often understood as the frontier of territorial expansion of a nation state or an empire; a periphery to the power center. Yet a border region could also be at the center when placed at the regional scale that includes multiple political entities. China's northwest is a case in point. When looking at China's northwest from a maritime perspective, it is remotely located in the heart of the continent, peripheral to Han-centered civilization; but when we see the region with a continental orientation, it has long been the economic, cultural and political center of the immense central Eurasia, where traders, nomads and semi-mobile agriculturalists of richly diverse ethnicities move frequently across tribal, national and cultural boundaries.