The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) setbacks in a remote corner of Sichuan province, Aba prefecture (more accurately, the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture), may in time be seen as the beginning of the end of its authoritarian reign.
Today, Aba is in the news because of a string of self-immolations at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Kirti, on the outskirts of a county town in Aba, in response to a brutal government crackdown. Aba was also in the news in 2008, when an earthquake in the southeastern corner of the prefecture, Wenchuan, killed tens of thousands.
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