China's decades-long repression of Tibetan independence continues on as its global economic power continues to grow. In response to the former and despite the latter, the independence movement persists, represented here through the voices of Wang Lixiong and Tsering Shakya. Born into the repressive one-party regime, both writers now seek for Tibetan cultural and political autonomy, and although each writer theorizes this goal differently, both are in agreement about what must now be done. The result is this milestone exchange. While Wang suggests the complicity of a fear-stricken religion in perpetuating Chinese imperialist rule, Shakya interprets recent Tibetan history as a history of colonialism, against which the independence movement struggles for autonomous rule. These differing and sometimes opposing lines of thought finally climax in the present struggle for independence, ending upon a joint statement regarding Tibet's future: true autonomy is the only way.

Tsering Woeser and Wang Lixiong are widely regarded as the most eloquent, insightful writers on contemporary Tibet. Their reportage on the economic exploitation, environmental degrada-tion, cultural destruction and political subjugation that plague the increasingly Han Chinese-dominated Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is as powerful as it is profound, ardent and analytical in equal measure, and not in the least bit ideological. Voices from Tibet assembles essays and reportage in translation that captures many facets of the upheavals wrought by a rising China upon a scared land and its pious people. With the TAR in a virtual lockdown after the 2008 unrest, this book sheds import- ant light on the simmering frustrations that touched off the unrest and Beijing's relentless control tactics in its wake. The authors also interrogate long-standing assumptions about Tibetans' political future. Woeser's and Wang's writings represent a rare Chinese view sympathetic to Tibetan causes, one that should resonate in places confronting threats of cultural subjugation and economic domination by an external power.