Glossary

TACTibetan Autonomous County

TAPTibetan Autonomous Prefecture

TARTibetan Autonomous Region

A note on definitions and use of names

Tibetans often use the term Tibet to refer to a large Tibetan ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and historical area that includes what is now known as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Tibetan areas in four neighboring provinces-Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan.It is these Tibetan areas outside the TAR-home to more than 50 percent of all ethnic Tibetans-that are primarily affected by the resettlement policies discussed in this report.

For Chinese authorities and most Chinese-speaking ethnicities in China, the term Tibet (Xizang) is reserved for the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Chinese government has designated the Tibetan-inhabited areas of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan as Tibetan autonomous prefectures (TAP) or Tibetan autonomous counties (TAC). All of these Tibetan-inhabited areas more or less cover the distinctive geographic area known as the Tibetan plateau, which in contemporary Chinese sources is referred to as the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (Qingzang gaoyuan).

Geographical names of prefectures, counties, towns, and villages are given in this report in Tibetan, with the Chinese variant given in parentheses. A table of geographical names mentioned in this report is included as an appendix to this report.

A mu is a Chinese unit of land measurement equal to 0.16 acres, or 0.067 hectares.

A gyama is a Chinese unit of weight measurement equal to 0.5 kilograms or 1.1 pounds.