China and Its National Minorities

Autonomy or Assimilation

Thomas Heberer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351696166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 1990: This book is a study of past and present policies of the People's Republic of China towards its numerous and varied minority groups, a subject about which there is scant information in the West. It examines the impact of Chinese culture on these diverse groups and China's attempt to bring them into the mainstream of Han life. The impact of the Cultural Revolution on the minority peoples, the future of Tibet, and the implications of Chinese minorities policies for Sino-Soviet relations are among the topics discussed in this book.

Preface

This book owes its origins to the wish to make my study Nationalitätenpolitik und Entwicklungspolitik in den Gebieten nationaler Minderheiten in China (Nationality Policy and Development Policy in Ethnic Minority Regions in China) accessible to English-speaking readers. That original study was published by the University of Bremen in 1984 in two parts: a general section on the development of nationality policy, and a special section dealing with the Yi in the Liangshan Autonomous Prefecture (Sichuan Province). The second part was based on material gathered during an extensive research visit to several counties of this prefecture in the summer of 1981. Since the vastness of the project proved to be prohibitive to the production of an English edition, however, the author and Μ. E. Sharpe, Inc. agreed instead to publish a volume on some of the current and key problems of the nationality question in China. This meant that most of the material on the Yi had to be dropped from this edition; it is available to the interested reader in the above-mentioned book which, however, is available only in German.

1
Introduction to the Problem

Conflicts between majorities and minorities, between the nationalities within a country, and between those in different countries, are worldwide phenomena that are causing a resurgence in the study of nationality problems in the social sciences. The problems of ethnic minorities and their inherent potentials for conflict are themselves important factors in the numerous international conflicts that take place against the backdrop of national conflicts. Since national minorities can be used or exploited for or against a country's interests, in multinational states the stability of a country quite often depends on the system of relations woven among its different peoples.

This study, which is concerned specifically with China, belongs in that general classification of works dealing with the analysis and documentation of minority problems. Accordingly, it will be useful first to illuminate the global character of the nationality problem on the basis of a few examples. The definition of a few terms (general terms as well as specifically Chinese terminology) will help to give a better picture of the nuances of the minority question, with special reference to the Chinese situation.

The nationality question in an international context

Nationality problems and conflicts exist today in most countries. Whereas larger ethnic minorities are often able to defend themselves politically and, not infrequently, militarily against oppression, exploitation, and assimilation, the minor nationalities (such as the Indians of South America) are often exterminated, their cultures destroyed, their lands confiscated, and their strength sapped by disease, hunger, persecution, and illiteracy.¹ According to UN estimates, 200 million hunters and gatherers are today faced with annihilation through hunger, disease, and war. And not only do the governments of the native countries contribute to this annihilation, but so also do the multinational concerns and local Christian missions.² This is equally true of developed countries—such as the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—and Third World countries.

For example, in North America, and in most of the South and central American countries in which the Indian population makes up less than 5 percent of the total population, Indians live on reservations as a national minority, often with restricted rights. In Brazil, for example, according to the "law for Indians," Indians are regarded as legally non responsible, and are therefore subject to Brazilian guardianship law.³

Historically, Indian peoples have been violently exterminated in the Americas when they have stood in the way of the extraction of raw materials, construction of highways, or other projects.⁴ It is no different on other continents. For example,

In 1967 the Australian aborigines solemnly obtained their civil rights in their own country—and in addition access to alcohol—under UN pressure. For them, alcohol has become a status symbol of equality with the whites. Since then, more and more of them are to be found hanging about in a drunken stupor on the outskirts of cities. They are losing all points of reference to the world about them, and have proved unable to cope with the other "gifts" of the white man, namely tuberculosis, measles, prostitution, venereal diseases, and money, competitiveness, and greed. Thus the aborigines, invested with their "civil rights," are now threatened by degeneration, the total forgetting of the skills that were necessary for survival, and indeed, a loss of instinct pure and simple. Unable to adapt to that which has never before occurred, to the new, to the unintelligible, to the never practiced, these vestigial Stone Age groups are suspended between two worlds, and their creative capacities are stifled and paralyzed. They opt for resignation and so are lost.⁵

The Kurds were dispersed arbitrarily into several countries, where they have been subject to severe persecution and cultural oppression.⁶ More than 150,000 Papuans have been killed since 1967 when the Suharto regime took power.⁷ The gypsies, who have lived for more than a century in the Netherlands, have neither the right to determine their own lifestyle nor guarantees that they may remain permanently in that country.⁸ The Maori of New Zealand and the aborigines of Australia had their land violently taken from them on a mass scale.⁹ And the Federal Republic of Germany has its own nationality problem of gypsies and foreign workers; the federal government has yet to make full restitution for the crimes committed against them during the the National Socialist (Nazi) era. The litany goes on and on.

In the Soviet Union, the thesis of the "convergence and fusion of the nations under socialism" produced a policy of denationalization, putting the non-Russian nationalities under heavy pressure. The principle means used were:

—providing moral, political, material, and economic advantages to the Russified while discriminating against nationality-conscious non-Russians;

—the "internationalization" of national cultures through the administratively forced spread of the Russian language; and

—an "international exchange of cadres" and migration of Russians, with "internationalization" usually meaning "Russification."¹⁰

Just recently, the Soviet nationalities have started to fight openly for their national rights, leading the Soviet Union into a new phase of awakening nationalities consciousness.

In the late seventies, Karoly Kiraly, a top-level Rumanian Communist Party official of Hungarian origin, wrote to the Bucharest party leadership that the "tendency to force the assimilation of the national minorities living in Rumania is obvious and undeniable."¹¹ In Hungary, the gypsies have not been recognized as an independent nationality since 1961 and are therefore also subject to the threat of forced assimilation.¹²

Major nationality problems also exist for China's Asian neighbors. In Burma, the Shan and Karens have been carrying on a struggle for autonomy for years. The Burmese government, which has engaged itself militarily against these peoples, has refused them this right.¹³ The situation is not much different among the mountain tribes in Thailand, who are often held by opium traders in a state of slave-like dependence.¹⁴ The mountain tribes were not granted Thai citizenship until 1974; previously they were ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Preface
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author