Exile from the GrasslandsReconstructing lifeways on the Tibetan Plateau Open access edition: DOI 10. 6069 9780295748207 At the beginning of the new millennium, the Chinese government launched the Great Opening of the West, a development strategy targeted at remote areas inhabited mainly by indigenous ethnic groups. Intended to modernize infrastructure and halt environmental degradation, its tactics in western China have resulted in the displacement of pastoral Tibetans to