Minority groups in China have frequently found their way into the news cycle in the last several decades and especially in the last few years. These issues are not new and have their roots in the major changes in the way China organized itself over a century ago. Despite the massive Han majority, China is not an ethnically homogeneous country and has had to continually address issues of cultural and ethnic diversity. Integration of ethnic minorities into China has ranged from open embrace to violent resistance for much of the 20th century. What follows is a quick history of minority policy in China that has led to some of the contemporary issues that make their way into the news cycle.
Jonathan Moody explains.
A Uyghur prince. Source: Tilivay, available here.
The Qing Dynasty
To find the roots of contemporary minority policy, we must travel back to the end of the Qing dynasty. The Qing stormed their way into power in the 17th century and succeeded in both conquering the Ming Empire and expanding the borders and influence of their empire to encompass the vast majority of East Asia and large sections of Central Asia. On a map, the Qing Empire is a giant but drawing geographical borders around historic political entities with contemporary map standards can be deceiving and is often more of a reflection of modern ideas of the way states look. The Qing, like their predecessors and many contemporary political institutions of the time, was an empire and not the modern version of a state that much of the world lives under today. ‘Modern states’, while obviously not all the same, have embraced a high degree of political uniformity (i.e. passports, laws, national militaries , etc.) within set boundaries that often border other politically autonomous states. Unlike a modern state, territories under Qing control could vary vastly in how they were governed or exactly how much control Beijing was able to wield and the line between Qing territory and non-Qing territory was not always clear. For example, most eastern parts of the empire were full provinces with viceroys and the full application of the Qing law while in the peripheries (Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang, etc.), Beijing would give titles to local leaders and rely on these leaders to keep the peace. Beijing’s involvement was not uniform in many of these areas but, in general, Qing law and influence was limited to almost non-existent depending on the place. Also, unlike many states today, uniformity of political control was not a main priority. Attempts to make periphery areas into full provinces only happened at the tail end of the dynasty from fears of outside influence and most of the periphery was highly, if not completely, autonomous. This loose or lumpy system was by no means utopian but for most of the life of the empire, it worked to both bolster the dynasty’s political power in the center and co-opt potential threats in the periphery to become nominal allies.
Modern China
When the Qing fell, the Republic of China claimed these disparate territories and pursued bringing them into the fold of a new modern state that had stronger centralized control over its territory. Part of state creation for the early republic was determining who was a member of a Chinese nation-state and what their position was in that state. For many outside of China, words like Chinese people and Chinese language can be deceptively oversimplifying in the diversity they cover. The majority ethnic Han population is classified as a single ethnicity but many Han dialects are mutually unintelligible and there is plenty of cultural diversity across the Han regions. The non-Han ethnic groups speak a variety of languages (Tibetan, Mongolian, Uyghur, etc.) and have their own cultural diversity as well. One of the problems faced by the early Republic of China was how to incorporate the politically and ethnically diverse empire of the Qing into a state that did not want to continue the loose relationships of the past, especially when regions like Tibet and Mongolia rejected any political connection with the Republic and pursued a more independent path. The Republic, under the Kuomintang (KMT), eventually embraced a policy that there was only one ethnicity in China, the zhonghua minzu. The zhonghua minzu were compared to a tree where the Han were the trunk and other ethnicities were merely branches that grew from the Han tree. The KMT dominated Republic of China avoided questions of diversity with this program and embarked on Sinicization programs to teach the branches how to embrace their true national identity.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the other hand, took the exact opposite approach, especially early in the life of the party. With a combination of Marxists/Leninist/Stalinist ideologies and later time spent among non-Han communities, the CCP rejected notions that Tibetans or Mongolians were nascent Hans and promised recognition of various ethnic groups and specialized policies for these ethnicities. The party even embraced the idea of self-determination for these regions early on but backtracked by the time they took power in 1949. Self-determination gave way to fostering patriotic minority identities that allowed for a non-Han identity loyal to the state.
CCP
After 1949, the CCP adopted an approach to minority populations that had strong Soviet influences (i.e. titular or recognized nationalities/ethnicities) and was aimed at incorporating these people into a modern socialist state while allowing varying degrees of autonomy in specified national minority areas. Much of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century can be seen as a mixture, and at times conflict, between hardline and accommodationist approaches. Accommodationists have advocated a slow and welcoming approach to minorities by offering special benefits, at times with the opposition from some of the Han population, to convince hesitant minority populations that inclusion in the PRC is more beneficial than independence. These policies have included exemptions from the one-child policy and preferential placements in the competitive university process. Hardliners have been less sympathetic toward differences and have advocated an approach that has little space for dissent and exemptions. Many of the issues we see today have been as a result of hard liners pushing policies that take a more forceful approach to minority incorporation.
Most countries today have consider ethnic diversity and how to include different populations in one political entity. China is no exception and has been dealing with this issue with varying levels of success. The issue of minorities in China very much stems from a change in the way the state was organized and how different groups fit into this modern vision of a state. This change in state organization and vision renegotiated looser affiliations and has led to many of the issues that make their way into the news today.
What do you think of minority policy in China? Let us know below.
Further reading
Goldstein, Melvyn C., and Gelek Rimpoche. A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2007.
Khan, Sulmaan Wasif: Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy. China's Cold War and the People of the Tibetan Borderlands. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Westad, Odd Arne. Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750. Basic Books, 2015.
