Assessing China - Ethnicity and China up to Mao (and beyond)

Beginning with the pre-1949 and even pre-Mao view, the emperor traditionally tolerated the non-Han residents of his realm. They were officially regarded at different times as ‘less-than-human’ and ‘barbarians’, though. In imperial times they were generally classified simply as northern, southern, eastern and western barbarians with or without a directional prefix (as follows when without):

狄 Di Northern Barbarians literally: dogs who make fire

蠻 Man Southern Barbarians literally: worms who have language

夷 Yi Eastern Barbarians literally: people with bows

戎 Rong Western Barbarians literally: possessing daggers

So essentially they were sub-human with weapons in this long-held conception of the various non-Han elements to be dealt with in China. The 1911 republic moved on to more specifically recognise the Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, Hui and Han races. The Hui may be the least familiar with the general reader of this blog. They are a group of generally Chinese-speaking and generally Muslims distributed widely within China often in cities. The republic’s official policy was to promote assimilation.

Marxism of course had something to say about ethnicity and Mao developed his ideas even before achieving government. Marx’s view was that attention paid to racial differences was actually “false consciousness”. He would have said that ordinary workers in Siberia and Australia would have more in common with each other than with their bosses. This was his ‘internationalist’ impulse that so annoyed Adolf Hitler. For Marx all the differences that mattered were related to economic roles, relationships and power and therefore class.

Stalin was a prominent Marxist theorist of ethnicity. He was more of a nationalist than either Marx or Lenin. I’ve already noted that Mao was also quite a nationalist so he was bound perhaps to be most influenced by Stalin in dealing with ethnicity. Stalin defined a distinct national and identity group as any group that had:

1) A common and distinct language;

2) A common and distinct homeland;

3) A common and distinct economy; and

4) A common and distinct culture.

He also thought any such group deserved the right to self-determination and Mao as quite a fervent nationalist in his public pronouncements at least was willing to at least pay lip service to this idea. Stalin also paid lip service to it but his personal nationalist paranoia undid the reality of this in the USSR and Eastern Europe (at least). Autonomy as separate peoples within the USSR (and any Communist state) was Stalin’s goal in theory, though.

In the 1950s, the CCP gave attention to how to rule over the variety of ethnicities it did in fact rule over and attempted to identify all the separate Chinese 'races' using Stalin’s above four criteria (with some modifications that suited China – for example the Hui generally spoke no distinct language (they generally spoke local Chinese languages) but the CCP nevertheless wanted to recognise their race as a race so they did – ‘ancestry’ was given equal status to the other four criteria to allow this). Chinese anthropologists and ethnologists looked at nearly 500 theoretical claims to status (actually not all potentially distinct groups chose to submit claims so that gives some idea of the diversity within China). Finally 54 minority nationalities (少数民族 – shaoshu minzu is the singular as well as plural) and a bit later 55 were recognised giving 56 distinct recognised nationalities in China including the Han majority.

At first, Mao was conciliatory but by 1954 real autonomies were ultimately rejected for three reasons:

1) Minority areas (as in the USSR) tended to be in important border regions and therefore strategically vital;

2) Several of the areas also contained important mineral deposits for China as a whole; and

3) Finally, the areas tended to be sparsely populated and therefore ripe for settlement by Han migrants especially as Han areas tended to be quite overcrowded.

Also, especially during the CR, minorities and their practices came to be associated with the backwardness from which China was allegedly attempting to rise. Minority religions and styles of dress were both widely criticised and attempts were made to ‘proletarianise’ the minorities. So unity and equality was a rather far off concept for some time. It was thought and planned (with political ‘development’ campaigns) that economic development would erase ethnicities being as they were believed to be ‘feudal cultural practices’. The CR saw minorities forced to wear Chinese-style clothes, to stop celebrating religious and other traditional festivals, to stop traditional singing and dancing, to use Chinese and to conform (as good proletarians). Their temples and sacred places were destroyed.

Nevertheless the state came to define itself as a united state of many nationalities – the Zhonghua Minzu (the Chinese Nation - 中華民族 in traditional characters). Five province-level entities are now officially autonomous (along with Hong Kong and Macau, made autonomous after more recently being returned from Western control) and some county, district, township and lesser level entities are also designated Autonomous Regions (自治区 - Zizhiqus). The policy has also officially changed from assimilation (tonghua - 同化) to melding (ronghe - 融合).

Nomads were in addition encouraged to settle and become more productive growing grain crops for China rather than herding animals far and wide and minority cadres were especially educated and trained.

Today there are also incentives to claim ethnic status for individuals because of positive discrimination in higher education (for example in the form of quotas). Of the total population of China 8% belong to one of the shaoshu minzus (around 100 million of a total Chinese population of more than 1,000 million) and they are somewhat dominant races historically in at least 50% to 60% of China’s land area. The only two province-level entities with concentrations of more than 50% non-Han ethnicity today are the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (mostly Uyghur) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (mostly Zang (Tibetan)). The other three official province-level Autonomous Regions (ARs) are the Inner Mongolia, the Guangxi Zhuang and the Ningxia Hui ARs.

Many of the separate ethnicities are mountain folk of various regions. The following table shows the largest eight minority groups in millions (based on China’s 1990 census):

Zhuang (mainly south-western)	15.5
Manchu (north-eastern – mainly in Manchuria)	9.8
Hui (Muslim – mainly north and north-western)	8.6
Miao (Hmong-like mountain people – south-central)	7.4
Uyghur (western)	7.2
Yi (central to western)	6.6
Tujia (fairly central)	5.7
Mongol (northern – mainly in Inner Mongolia)	4.8

We may notice that only one group of these eight (the Uyghur) is known in the West as interested in more autonomy today. Zang is the official name for the main recognised Tibetan ethnicity and the Zang are around the ninth largest minority.

Other smaller groups with interest in changes in (at least) their degree of autonomy but with less of a reputation for violent actions than the Uyghurs include the Tajiks, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz (mostly living in Xinjiang like the Uyghurs and also Muslims).

There are around 8 other minority groups in total with populations of at least a million including Bouyei (or Buyei), Dong, Yao, Korean, Bai, Hani, Li and Dai.

The Tajiks and the Kyrgyz populations are substantially less than one million but along with the Kazakhs they are interested in enhancing at least their Islamic ties with the nearby former USSR central Asian republics that bear their names.