Ethnic Minorities in China

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The contemporary globalizing world is a place where the boarders are getting vaguer and vaguer, people travel and migrate due to various reasons and this creates new multinational societies with their confrontations and conflicts based on the need of people of different cultures to collaborate and to share the territories. The clash of cultures and ethnicities is not a new subject in the world of nowadays. Every country in the modern world has faced the experience of national and racial tensions. There can be various reasons for such confrontation. The national and ethnical minorities can feel oppressed and discriminated by their own country and the national majority based on their language, religion, culture, even the clothes they wear or the way they look.

Racial and ethnic issues are one of the most important social problems in the world of nowadays, solving these problems is considered to be the primary goal of the political leaders of every country. Different governments employ different ways of dealing with racial and ethnic issues on the territories of their countries. The politicians work on special measures and policies designed to alleviate the cultural tension in their states, give recognition to various ethnicities, and provide equal rights in many spheres of people’s lives. People’s Republic of China claims to be a multi-ethnic country. The political leaders of this state have been dealing with the ethnic and racial issues of all degrees of severity for centuries. The Chinese government today presents the country as a state with equal rights for the ethnical minorities dwelling on its territory, besides the politicians’ position is that the government provides recognition and opportunities to develop their culture to all of the ethnic minorities of China, at the same time the ethnic and cultural tensions in the country remain serious.

The Chinese government’s statement that China is a multi-ethnic state is based on the fact that the official number of various ethnicities living on the territory of this country counts fifty six different ethnic groups. It also has to be noted that the percentage between the ethnic minorities and the majority is very uneven. The biggest ethnic group living on the territory of China is called Han. The Chinese people of Han origin account for over ninety one per cent of the general number of the Chinese population, which is around one billion two hundred million people (Chinese Ethnic Groups, par. 1).

This means that the rest of the ethnic groups compile less than nine per cent of the overall population of China. Even though it seems that the per cent of ethnic minorities in China is really small, the general size of the Chinese population needs to be taken into consideration. Knowing how high the density of the Chinese population is and how large the number of people living on the territory of this country is, it is not hard to realize that all of the minority ethnic groups would also include large numbers of people. Some of the biggest Chinese minority groups are Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongol, Zhuang, Manchu, Miao, Yao, Kazakh and Koreans. None of these ethnic groups have less than one million people. In spite of the claims of the Chinese government about distributing equal rights and recognition to all the ethnic minorities of the Country the tension between the Han people and the other nations never goes down.

The history of ethnic and racial conflicts on the territory of China is very rich and long. These conflicts are very complicated and they can be caused by various factors such as the Chinese nationalism, cultural development and history, national identity, or religion. In pre-modern history of China the disrespectful attitude towards people of other cultures and races was very common. Basically, all the non-Han people were considered barbarians potentially dangerous for China. The cases of genocide also occur in the Chinese history from time to time. Muslims, Christians and Jewish people were unwelcome in China. It has to be noticed that in modern China not only Han people can be nationalistic. All of the minorities carefully protect their own ethnic identities, some of them refuse to be called Chinese, reject the national languages of China. Even though the number of ethnic groups dwelling in the territory of the country is quite big, not all of the groups clash with the Chinese government and have conflicts with Han people.

The ethnic groups that are known to confront the people of Han and the political leaders of China the most are Uyghurs and Tibetans. These ethnic minorities confront the national government and official policies of China very often. The issues these groups experience are very serious, this is why there have been multiple separatist movements within these ethnic groups, some of which turned into heated conflicts. In the contemporary China the relationships between Han and Tibetans, or Han and Uyghurs are very tense; there constantly is a possibility of attacks and pro-independence movements.

The Chinese-Tibetan conflict is a very well known happening. Centuries ago Tibet used to be the center of a big empire. At some point in their history the Tibetans even managed to occupy the Chinese capital during one of the ethnic confrontations (Ethnic Minorities in China, par. 7). Today the annexation of Tibet that happened as a result of an armed invasion remains a very contradictory issue. Currently Tibet is considered as one of the districts of the People’s Republic of China, it is called an autonomous region. Tibet’s capital city is Lhasa and Tibetan refugee government led by Dalai Lama the Fourteenth is based in India. According to the data of the Tibetan government, there are around six million of ethnic Tibetans living in China these days. The tensions between the Chinese and the people of Tibet are based on the cultural differences and the discrimination against the Tibetan way of living, religion and cultural heritage.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution brought a lot of ruination to the territory of Tibet. The Tibetans were under a threat of being eradicated as a culture and a religious group. The end of 1980s is known for massive uprisings in Tibet directed against the Chinese government. The population of the autonomous region was severely oppressed by the Chinese government. In the present days the oppression is lower than it used to be, yet the rights of Tibetans are still neglected. This is why Dalai Lama the Fourteenth is actively fighting for the true autonomy of Tibet and the rights of its people. The conflict between deeply religious people of Tibet and the atheistic and materialistic government of China is based on the disrespect of Tibetan religious culture and an attempt of the political leaders to take over the selection of Tibetan Lamas ad base it on political principles instead of traditional search for reincarnations.

Uyghurs represent the biggest ethnic group that occupies the lands along the Silk Road. The Uyghur conflict is even more complicated because the ethnic, cultural and religious preferences of Uyghurs are significantly different from the ones that are traditional for China. Uyghurs are the people of Eastern Turkestan, which is another autonomous district of People’s Republic of China. Uyghurs traditionally are Muslim and their language has derived from the Turk group of languages. The nation with such special background had only two options of further development in China – to rebel against the changes or to adjust to them and assimilate. The Muslims in China did neither (Gladney,108).The cases of violence between the Chinese people and Uyghurs are frequent. Yet this violence is mainly of non-ethnic character, it has the anti-colonial mood and it happens when Uyghur idea of their national identity clashes with the nationalism if the Chinese people.

The well known Chinese attempts to oppress and destroy the histories and cultures of the nations and ethnicities included into the Republic have always resulted as severe armed conflicts with ethnic minorities. Being Uyghur in China means to be constantly confronted by the country, its government and policies (Are Ethnic Tensions on the Rise in China?, par. 5). Uyghur culture there constantly undergoes all kinds of discrimination. For example traditional meetings of Uyghur people are not permitted, veils are forbidden, and the national Muslim intellectuals are called terrorists. Even traditional Uyghur names are unsuitable for the Chinese ID cards because of their length, this is why they have to be transformed or shortened.

According to the statement of its national government, China is a multi-ethnic state, although the meaning that the Chinese government includes into this word is very different from the traditional understanding of multi-ethnic state. Basically, multi-ethnic notion of China today is mainly theoretical. This means that practically there are many ethnicities dwelling on the territory of the country. A proper multi-ethnic contemporary state is the one where the rights of all the ethnicities living on its territory are respected, maintained and protected. Ethnic minorities of the truly multi-ethnic state are allowed to practice their religions and develop their cultural and national identity. None of this is done in modern China.

On the contrary, the Chinese government is trying to create the homogenous nation artificially by means of forcing Chinese culture and history on the people of other ethnicities, as if it is possible for them to simply change their background, beliefs, roots and traditions and become Chinese. The so-called autonomous districts of China are often named the best evidence of respect towards the cultures of the ethnic minorities and the desire to support them and let the flourish and develop under the authority of the Chinese government, while actually these autonomous districts have no real autonomy, they are struggling with constant intrusion into their traditional ways of living and attempts to dictate the “right” religion, culture, social rules, traditions, customs and history. The official policies employed by the Chinese national government provided no real support for the ethnic minorities on the territory of the country, they were only meant to create an illusion of respect of human rights of the minorities, which continue to be oppressed and discriminated in China.

In order to start moving towards the solution of the ethnic conflicts on the territory of China, the country’s government needs to admit its own imperialistic moods. This is a completely new perspective to the Chinese side because they have never managed to view themselves as the aggressors of this conflict. The historical and cultural teachings in the modern China work as means of propaganda of the Chinese government’s point of view towards the cultural and ethnical relationships within the state; this is why people of all ages are unable to see the events happening in their country subjectively and independently. In fact, the term “ethnicity” has replaced the word “nationality” in China.

This was done in order to avoid the attempts to characterize the groups of people associated with their territory and political rights over it. This leads to a lot of confusion and frustration in China because various groups of people are given the stats of ethnic groups according to the criteria that exist in other groups too, but are not recognized for the administrative reasons. As a result of this uneven division some of the minorities have to undergo multiple restrictive policies and others are free of them. As soon as ethnical moods within some of the groups start to show and rise, the state responds with aggression caused by the fear of separatism this causes more protests and more disorders.

To stop this vicious cycle the government of China needs to start admitting the identities of all the ethnic groups and their rights to have their own special cultures and histories. One of the possible ways out of the conflict might be the federalization of the state and giving the autonomies more power and freedom. The minorities have to stop being pressured into some “proper” ways of living and feeling like their cultures are being colonized.

Works Cited

Are Ethnic Tensions on the Rise in China?China File. 2014. Web.

Chinese Ethnic Groups.Travel China Guide. 2014. Web.

Ethnic Minorities in China. Asia Society. 2014. Web.

Gladney, Dru, C. Making Majorities. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Print.

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Ethnic Minorities in China

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