Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism
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Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism

Elena Barabantseva

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Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism

Elena Barabantseva

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About This Book

Elena Barabantseva looks at the close relationship between state-led nationalism and modernisation, with specific reference to discourses on the overseas Chinese and minority nationalities. The interplay between modernisation programmes and nationalist discourses has shaped China's national project, whose membership criteria have evolved historically. By looking specifically at the ascribed roles of China's ethnic minorities and overseas Chinese in successive state-led modernisation efforts,

This book offers new perspectives on the changing boundaries of the Chinese nation. It places domestic nation-building and transnational identity politics in a single analytical framework, and examines how they interact to frame the national project of the Chinese state. By exploring the processes taking place at the ethnic and territorial margins of the Chinese nation-state, the author provides a new perspective on China's national modernisation project, clarifying the processes occurring across national boundaries and illustrating how China has negotiated the basis for belonging to its national project under the challenge to modernise amid both domestic and global transformations.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, Chinese politics, nationalism, transnationalism and regionalism.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2010
ISBN
9781136927355

1
Overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities in imperial and Republican China

The processes of dealing with ethnic and cultural difference and managing Chinese migration overseas have been closely intertwined with the history of China. The expansion of China was in many ways the result of the policies towards populations outside its core and its orientations towards overseas trade and migration. The way China’s leaders viewed these policies and acted them out shaped the development of China as a national and regional power. In other words, the history of the conceptual formation of the overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities is closely related to the processes of China’s transformation from the empire to the nation-state. And so, a historical overview of China’s conceptual formulation of overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities and of policies toward them sheds light on the dynamics of China’s formation as a multinational state.
Chinese society had been ethnically diverse long before its encounter with the Western powers. The legacy of the dynastical rule over ethnically-diverse populations influenced the institutional codification of this diversity during the period of China’s decline as a dynastical power in the second half of the nineteenth century. Similarly, China’s stance towards its subjects abroad in the last years of dynastic rule presented the next generations of China’s leaders with a lesson to learn from. At the turn of the twentieth century, identity politics associated with securing the population’s loyalty were made a priority. Overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities played crucial roles in this process as, through assuring their support and loyalty, Chinese leaders essentially guaranteed the security of the territorial border and unity of the multinational entity. The themes of territory and ethnicity in nation-state building were intimately intertwined.
The conceptualisation of overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities coincided with, and in many ways was a product of, China’s encounter with the modern world in the era of imperialism. Their conceptualisation was part of the process of negotiating what constituted China and who the Chinese people were. Elites debated how to establish links among these groups and the emerging structure of the new state, and how to include them in China’s nation-building process. At the turn of the twentieth century, overseas Chinese were identified by the politically conscious Chinese elite as a group that could help China overcome its dependence on the West, and regain independence and respect internationally. The issue of ethnic minorities emerged as the contested site of heated discussions on the origins and character of the Chinese nation among the predominantly Han revolutionaries. They resorted to discussions of minzu in their plans to unite with other minorities in the struggle against the Manchu rule.
This chapter examines the positions that overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities occupied in the evolution of the national discourse, and political strategies associated with it in the Late Imperial and Republican China. The Chinese rulers had been dealing with both groups long before their encounter with the Western powers, but the concepts of overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities were conceptualised and institutionalised during the turbulent years of China’s transition from the empire to the nation-state. The discussion in the chapter traces the roles of ethnic minorities and overseas Chinese in the debates on modernisation and nationalism which shaped evolving conceptions of Chinese nationhood since the mid-nineteenth century. It also examines their statuses in relation to the concept minzu, which featured prominently in the debates on the nature of the Chinese nation-state, and discusses the stances of the competing groups, in particular nationalists and communists, on the role of the overseas Chinese and ethnic minorities in their conceptions of the Chinese nation.

Pre-Republican China’s relations with ethnic diversity and transnational subjects

The Chinese empire’s relationship with ‘otherness’ has been a longstanding subject of scholarly enquiry. It became a common wisdom that the earliest rulers of the unified China referred to their domains as central state (zhongguo), and distinguished between people who inhabited central state’s territories and those who dwelled outside them. It is widely acknowledged that in their governing practices the Chinese followed a distinction between xia (civilisation) of the Empire’s core and yi (barbarism) of the borderlands – this distinction is captured in the imperial ruling principle yixia zhibie (distinction between barbarism and civilisation). The populations outside the territory of the central state were called man, yi, rong and di. For a long time the dominant academic interpretations of the Chinese central state’s dealings with outsiders were divided between those who characterised these interactions as assimilation and those who adhered to the argument of accommodation, the debate which Shin cogently summarises in his recent study (Shin 2006: 2). This binary interpretation of imperial China’s relations with ethnic diversity has been recently questioned for its unproblematic treatment of the Chinese cultural core, xia, and its policies. It has been argued that a lot of policies of the Chinese central state towards outside populations cannot be characterised as either accommodation or assimilation, as their policies varied over time and included demarcation, categorisation and differentiation (Gladney 2004; Crossley et al., 2006; Shin 2006).
The Empire’s diverse approaches to dealing with its ethnic others gained prominence during the Ming and Qing dynasties, whose reign essentially shaped the contemporary territorial boundaries and ethnic composition of the PRC. The southern border of the contemporary China was shaped by the imperial conquests of the Ming dynasty, while China’s northern border was finalised during the rule of the Qing dynasty. For example, during the expansion of the imperial rule to the south in the Ming period (1368–1644), when Yunnan was incorporated into the central dominion and Guizhou established as a province, the minority categories appeared in the historical chronicles, and ethnographic demarcations of the borderland populations were made (Shin 2006: 13). Shin finds in his study of the Ming’s expansion to the south that the Ming rulers distinguished the people who belonged to the Empire and those who were outside it along the categories of the subject of the Empire min (citizen) or hua (civilised) and man, yi or man yi (beyond the pale). He documents that the Ming developed very elaborate policies of ‘culture of demarcation’ towards the ‘beyond the pale’ people who were classified according to their level of difference from the people inhabiting the core of the Empire.
With the Manchu conquest of the Ming in 1644, the new rulers of China had to tackle the dual problem of establishing its legitimate authority as the non-Han rulers of the Empire and to guarantee the unity of the growing multiethnic polity. They dealt with these challenges through a combination of policies of assimilation, often violently enforced, adaptation, and recognition and inclusion of ethnic difference. Elliott (2001: 3) credits their abilities to rely on existing Chinese political and cultural tradition of Confucianism and to maintain their distinct Manchu identity, manifested in the success of the banner system (baqi zhidu), for their prolonged rule of the Chinese Empire.
The Manchu origins as barbarians of the Empire played a central role in their organisation of rule. After taking over the empire, the Qing, whose Manchu origins were opposed by the Ming loyalists, adopted the language of the earlier dynasties. For example, Lydia Liu’s study shows that the Qing did not prohibit the use of character yi (barbarian), which was used by the Han dissidents in their opposition to the Manchu rule (Liu, L. 2006: 72). Instead the Qing used the Confucian language of yi to consolidate their empire. The Manchu Emperor Yongzheng undermined the hua/yi distinction as a valid basis for legitimacy, emphasising instead the Confucian value of virtue as the criterion for legitimate rule. In contrast to the earlier governing principle of yixia zhibie the Qing popularised the idea of zhongwai yijia (the Center and the Outer are one family) to emphasise the universalism and multiethnic character of their empire. The Manchu adaptation tactics extended even further. They referred to their expanded Empire as both Da Qing Guo (Qing Empire) and Zhongguo (Central State) calling all subjects of the Empire recently and previously conquered as ‘Chinese’ (Zhongguo zhimin, Zhongguo zhiren, and later Zhongguoren or Zhonghuaren) (Zhao Gang 2006: 6–7; Leibold 2007: 10–11). The Qing used the earlier imperial language in their dealings with the ethnically diverse subjects of the Empire, but had to apply this language in new ways to address the issue of their non-Han origins. Hanren, huaren, huaxia, xiaren referred to the core of the Empire, and waifang (exterior), xiyu (western regions) or bianqu (borderlands) were used to refer to the newly incorporated territories (Leibold 2007: 9). The multiethnic view of the empire was endorsed in state and private schools, where students of geography were required to study one of the four ‘dialects of China’: Tibetan, Manchu, Mongol or Uyghur (Zhao Gang 2006: 13).
Although the Qing talked of the Empire in the language of multiculturalism and equality of all subjects, the Manchu enjoyed a privileged status in the imperial political hierarchy and society. Manchu hairstyle and dress were made compulsory for all Chinese males to display their loyalty to the Manchu regime. Those who were resentful and did not obey were severely punished. The inter-marriage between the Manchu and Han, and the Han migration to Manchuria were banned. The tensions between Manchu and Han officials were observed by Lord Macartney during his mission to China: ‘The predominance of the Tartars [Manchu] and the Emperor’s partiality to them are the common subject of conversation among the Chinese whenever they meet together in private, and the constant theme of their discourse’ (cited in Elliott 2001: 218).
In addition to addressing the task of securing the legitimacy of its rule, the Qing had to guarantee unity and stability of the expanded multiethnic empire. The Qing dynasty had significantly enlarged the territory of the empire through conquest that secured its position in Xinjiang, southwest China, Tibet, Mongolia and Taiwan. This expansion brought with it myriad ethnic groups. In this system, the state appointed officials to administer the distant regions, gradually transforming the mode of governing these regions; the state treated them as the interior part of the empire (Hostetler 2000: 626). The Qing ethnic policies in the newly-incorporated northern parts of the Empire were more accommodating than the tactics towards ‘southern’ peoples in Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou (Elliott 2001: 456, note 11). The Qing loosely reigned (ji mi) many of these territories, restricting their role to internal supervision and allowing most regions to maintain their own institutions and styles of governing (Hamashita 2008; Leibold 2007).
The territorial conquest and encounter with ethnic populations in the newly-dominated regions, which previously had not been directly ruled from the imperial centre, gave impetus to numerous ethnographic studies of the frontier people commissioned by the imperial court. Hostetler (2000, 2001) demonstrates how the emerging ethnographic studies of the populations on the empire’s frontier showed the imperial character of the rule of the Qing Empire. 1 The fascination with the newly-encountered populations and cultures produced numerous detailed records of their customs, modes of dress and traditions, formalising the apparent cultural differences with the imperial centre. Tellingly, the writing of the history of the diverse populations inhabiting the empire and their relations and statuses within it became the prerogative of state officials. 2 The state was preoccupied with ‘scientific’ representations of the people inhabiting the empire through cartography and ethnography, which were employed for precise designation and demarcation of the Chinese territories.
The process of cultural identification and classification of diverse populations comprising the Qing Empire went hand in hand with the creation of its fixed territorial borders, long before the empire’s break-up. The negotiation and signing of the border treaties, most notably the treaty of Nerchinsk with the Russian Empire in 1689, initiated what one can characterise as the beginning of the conversion of the land into the national territory (Kaiser 2004: 231). The border agreement signed by the Qing court and Tsarist Russia was the first attempt to draw a permanent territorial dividing line with another empire. Perdue (2005b: 191) illustrates how the fixation of the territorial borders closed off the intermediate space, with its multiple identities, and transformed it into national territories with assigned identities, laying the ground for the future nation-state before the expansion of the ideology of nationalism in the late 1800s. Importantly, the enclosed territory of the empire was not, strictly speaking, organised around one culture. Zhao Gang (2006: 12) points to the fact that one year after the treaty with Russia was signed, the memorial stone was inscribed in Latin and Russian on one side and in Chinese, Manchu and Mongol on the other. This signifies that there was an attempt to publicly endorse the official view that the Chinese empire was a multiethnic entity.
The administrative division, ethnographic categorisation, promotion of the idea of a multiethnic entity and territorial demarcation prior to the Western and Japanese imperialist incursions into China in the nineteenth century suggest that the processes associated with nation-crafting were part of the imperial ruling structure. The concepts of ethnicity and territorial fixity, albeit not in the contemporary senses, were applied to the ruling mode of the Chinese empire. 3 With the collapse of the Qing Empire these concepts were further formalised and reorganised to fit the model of the nation-state imported from the West. The formulation and institutionalisation of these concepts in relation to the ethnically diverse populations of the territories included in the empire contributed to the process of transformation of the imperial space into a nation-state.
Before the Qing Empire, the policies towards overseas Chinese was an aspect of China’s foreign trade policies. Chinese maritime expeditions in search of new markets and tributaries were accompanied by the movement of Chinese subjects overseas. The first wave of emigration from China is attributed to the seventh- to eighth-century emigration to the Penghu islands and Taiwan where Chinese served as middlemen between their homeland and their host communities (Hamashita 2008: 33). The second wave of Chinese migration coincided with the travels of Admiral Zheng He in the fifteenth century under the auspices of the Yongle emperor. The Ming (1368–1644), with the exception of the reign of the Yongle emperor, were antagonistic to private maritime commerce and restricted it until 1567. Zheng He’s journeys to ‘the West’, the area which we now call Southeast Asia, resulted in the establishment of seventy Chinese missions in tributary states. These relations stimulated trade with many Southeast Asian communities and boosted Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia. Notwithstanding the lift of the ban on migration, the prejudice against emigration continued into the Qing dynasty who, between 1656 and 1717, issued a series of imperial decrees which made overseas travel a capital crime and prohibited the Empire’s subjects from leaving and re-entering China (Zhuang 2006: 98). The Chinese abroad were condemned for refuting the Confucian value of filial piety and engaging in trade, an activity deemed corrupting by Confucianists (Yen 1981: 264). The nature of overseas Chinese as mobile subjects did not correspond with the sedentary agricultural values emphasised in Confucianism. They were seen as traitors, rebels, opium smugglers and conspirators. The emperor referred to them as ‘undesirable subjects’ or vagabonds who were suspected for their involvement in ‘secret societies’ and conspiracies against the imperial rule (Zhuang 2006: 98). These first two waves of migration laid the foundation for Chinese traders’ (hua shang) migration pattern, which was dominant until the mid-nineteenth century when the coolie trade established another channel for Chinese migration (Wang Gungwu 1989).
A new wave of Chinese migration was the result of China’s early relationship with the West in the aftermath of the two Opium wars. Foreign trade was replaced by war, rebellions and China’s growing population as the push factors for migration from China. With China’s defeat in the Opium Wars, the treaties of Tianjin and Beijing included clauses on overseas travel by Chinese workers, who were needed by the victorious states as a substitute for the slave labour from Africa made unavailable with the abolition of the slave trade. The 1866 Chinese Labour Immigration Agreement signed by China with Britain and France established the framework for the Chinese coolie trade (Hamashita 2008: 33). The impact which these historical developments had on the conditions of Chinese coolies around the world changed the overall view of the overseas Chinese by the Qing in the last decades of their rule. After 1860, knowledge of the working conditions of Chinese in British colonies significantly increased among Qing officials, since China was forced to allow its subjects to work in those colonies. In 1874 the first systematic investigation of the conditions of overseas Chinese in Cuba was undertaken by Chen Lanpin who would become China’s first ambassador to the United States, Spain and Peru. Chen’s investigation report detailed the forcible nature of transportation, disastrous working conditions and atrocities committed on the Chinese workers (Godley 1981: 65–66). This investigation dramatically changed the image of overseas Chinese in the eyes of the Qing government. Chen’s Cuban mission laid the foundations for establishing China’s first consulates in the ter...

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