From the language of class to the rhetoric of development: Discourses of 'nationality' and 'ethnicity' in China

Journal of Contemporary China

Volumn 17, Issue 56, 2008, Pages 565-589

  Barabantseva, Elena ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE; ETHNIC MINORITY; ETHNOPOLITICS; MULTICULTURALISM; NATION STATE; STATE BUILDING;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 46249129110     PISSN: 10670564     EISSN: 14699400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10670560802000332     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. See Fengyuan Ji, Linguistic Engineering: Language and Politics in Mao's China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004).
2. There are many newly introduced political terms and phrases which common Chinese struggle to understand (three representatives, harmonious society, spiritual civilisation, etc.), which the leaders explain in one or another way to maintain its legitimacy, but on the ground they might take various forms and meanings (I thank Outi Luova for this observation).
3. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Volume 1, Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 145-157.
4. Duncan Bell, 'Language, legitimacy, and the project of critique', Alternatives 27, (2002), pp. 327-350.
5. Skinner, Visions of Politics, p. 182.
6. Quentin Skinner, 'Rhetorical and conceptual change', Contents 3, (1999), p. 63.
7. See, for example, Quentin Skinner, 'Some problems in the analysis of political thought and action', in James Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (New Jersey: Princeton University, 1988), pp. 97-118
8. Skinner, Visions of Politics.
9. Skinner, 'Some problems in the analysis of political thought and action', p. 111.
10. Ibid., pp. 111-112.
11. Skinner, 'Rhetorical and conceptual change', p. 64.
12. Quentin Skinner, 'A reply to my critics', in Tully, ed., Meaning and Context, p. 283.
13. Frank Dikö tter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (London: Hurst and Company, 1992), p. 92.
14. Ibid., p. 75.
15. Sun Yatsen, San Min Chu I: The Three Principles of the People (Shanghai: The Commercial Press Limited, 1932), p. 9.
16. Sun Yatsen writes in his Three Principles of the People, 'China, since the Ch'in and Han dynasties, has been developing a single state out of a single race, while foreign countries have developed many states from one race and have included many nationalities within one state ... The Chinese race totals four hundred million people, for the most part, the Chinese people are of Han or Chinese race with common blood, common language, common religion, and common customs - a single, pure race'.
17. See Sun, San Min Chu I, p. 25.
18. Although Sun in San Min Chu I, p. 12 recognises that there are several races numbering in total no more than a million people of 'alien' races within the territory of China, such as Mongolians, Manchus, Tibetans, and Turks, he later in the book notes that at least two of them (Mongols and Manchus) were absorbed by the Han, thus 'becoming fully Chinese', i.e. Han (Ibid., p. 31). Thus, he continues 'although China has been twice subjected politically, the race has not been seriously injured' (Ibid.).
19. According to Sun (San Min Chu I, p. 8) a group of people united by the force of nature is a race, and a group developed by human forces is a state. He further equates race and nationality in opposition to state.
20. Paomin Chang, 'Nationalities, nationalism, and globalization: The case of China', in Leo Suryadinata ed., Nationalism and Globalisation: East and West (Singapore: ISEAS, 2000), p. 278.
21. Henrietta Harrison, China: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold, 2001), p. 4.
22. See Harrison's discussion on the Han-centric nationalism of the Republican China in Ibid., pp. 132-149.
23. Leslie Chen, 'On Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People', paper presented to the 1995 ASPAC Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Pacific University, Selected Paper Series (Oregon: Pacific University, Forest Grove, 1995), available at: http://www.chen-jiongming.com/English/material/paper/chen_paper2.htm (accessed 20 September 2006).
24. Pamela Crossley, 'Thinking about ethnicity in early modern China', Late Imperial China 11(1), (1990), pp. 1-35.
25. Joseph V. Stalin, 'Marxism and the national question', in J. V. Stalin, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), p. 308.
26. This is not to say that Stalin's other criteria, such as common territory, language and livelihood, fitted China's situation well. On the contrary, as June Teufel Dreyer in China's Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the PRC (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 143-146 points out, they were lacking in most cases.
27. Lei Wang, 'The definition of "nation" and the formation of the Han nationality', Social Sciences in China 2, (1983), p. 169.
28. Xiaohua Wu, 'Lun minzu yu zuqun de jieding' ['The definitions of minzu and zuqun concepts'], Guangxi minzu yanjiu [Ethnic Research in Guangxi ] 1, (2003), p. 14.
29. George Moseley, The Party and the National Question in China (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966), p. 15. This understanding falls within Stalin's interpretation of a nation, which belongs to the epoch of capitalism. As he puts it 'The process of elimination of feudalism and development of capitalism is at the same time a process of the constitution of people into nations' (Stalin, 'Marxism and the national question', p. 314).
30. The Chinese concept of buzu was closer in its meaning to Stalin's interpretation of 'narodnost'. Buzu, as summarised in Wang ('The definition of "nation"', p. 176), 'is merely an unformed nation', and it is transformed into nation or nationality as a result of a qualitative change in the four factors of the formation of a nation. The culmination of the development of the issue on the correct use of the terms fell in the year 1962, when a special conference examining the use of the term minzu took place. At that conference the term buzu was rejected as an adequate term to refer to minority nationalities groups in China. It was agreed that although shaoshu minzu are really narodnosti or buzu, i.e. temporal formations, they should be referred to as nationalities for convenience: See George Moseley, 'China's fresh approach to the national minority question', The China Quarterly 24, (1965), pp. 20-21.
31. Moseley, The Party and the National Question in China, p. 4.
32. Since the late 1990s there have been at least three nation-wide conferences specifically enquiring into the nature of the terms minzu and ethnic group or zuqun. See, for example, Chuanbin Zhou, 'Lun zhongguo tese de minzu gainian' ['The characteristics of the Chinese minzu concept'], Minzu wenti yanjiu [Ethnic Issues Research ] 3, (2004), p. 11.
33. For example, Kejin Chen, 'Lishi shang Zhongguo he Zhonghua minzu de xingcheng yu fazhan wenti shilun mil)dsue' ['Commentary on the historical form and development of China and the Chinese nation'], Yunnan shehui kexue [Yunnan Social Sciences ] 4, (2003), pp. 65-69.
34. and Xiaohua Wu, 'Lun minzu yu zuqun de jieding', pp. 12-16.
35. Manifesto of the Second National Congress names 'unification of China proper (including Manchuria) into a genuine democratic republic' and 'the achievement of a genuine democratic republic by the liberation of Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang into a free federation' among seven primary CCP objectives. See Manifesto of the Second National Congress of the CCP (July 1922) in Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz and John Fairbank, A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1959), p. 64.
36. In 1934-1935 the Chinese communists covered a 6,000-mile trek across China from southwest to northwest to escape the threat of annihilation by GMD forces, which took them through some of the most heavily populated minority areas. During this time, it became imperative that communists gained the support of the minorities in their struggle against GMD.
37. In Xiaotong Fei, 'Modernisation and national minorities in China', in Toward a People's Anthropology (Beijing: New World Press, 1981), p. 85.
38. Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, p. 94.
39. Mao Zedong, 'Great victories in three mass movements', Opening Address at the Third Session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, 23 October 1951, in Selected Work of Mao Tse-tung, available at: http://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_16.htm (accessed 24 September 2006).
40. Mao Zedong in his remarks to the Third National Congress of the New Democratic Youth League of China pronounced that 'the Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people. Without this core, the cause of socialism cannot be victorious'. See Mao Zedong, 'The Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people', 25 May, in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, 1957, available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/ selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_62.htm (accessed 9 September 2006).
41. This task of the CCP (in relation to Chinese society in general) is presented in detail in the textbook The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (1939) jointly written by Mao Zedong and his Yenan comrades, available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_23.htm (accessed 9 September 2006).
42. Moseley, 'China's fresh approach to the national minority question', p. 17.
43. For more on social transformation in minority regions see Xiaotong Fei, 'Modernisation and national minorities in China'; and Xiaotong Fei, 'Social transformation', in Toward a People's Anthropology (Beijing: New World Press, 1981), pp. 36-59.
44. In Enlai Zhou, 'Report to the Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China', delivered on 24 August and adopted on 28 August 1973. The Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Documents) (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1973), available at: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/classics/mao/cpc/10cong.html (accessed 28 September 2006).
45. Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, p. 136.
46. At the time of the PRC's creation in 1949, there were 11 written languages of ethnic minorities in regular use, and seven were used sporadically. Since then, 25 written languages for ethnic minorities have been codified: See Thomas Heberer, China and Its National Minorities: Autonomy or Assimilation (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, Inc., 1989), p. 16.
47. In 1952 The General Programme for the Implementation of Nationality Regional Autonomy of the Chinese People's Republic was adopted. It classified minority autonomous areas into three levels: Regional, district and county.
48. 'Common Programme of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference 1949', in Albert P. Blaustein, ed., Fundamental Legal Documents of Communist China (South Hackensack, NJ: Fred B. Rothman and Co., 1962), pp. 34-53.
49. In Fei Xiaotong's interpretation an identification project was necessary in order to guarantee equal rights for representation of the ethnic minorities' interests.
50. See, for example, Heberer, China and Its National Minorities;
51. David Y. H. Wu, 'Chinese minority policy and the meaning of minority culture: The example of Bai in Yunnan, China', Human Organisation 49(1), (1990), pp. 2-3.
52. Stevan Harrell, 'Ethnicity, local interests, and the state: Yi communities in Southwest China', Comparative Studies on Society and History 32(2), (1990), pp. 517-518.
53. Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, pp. 122-124.
54. Moseley, 'China's fresh approach to the national minority question', p. 16.
55. Ibid.
56. Dreyer, China's Forty Millions, p. 175.
57. Ibid.
58. Alan Liu, Mass Politics in the People's Republic: State and Society in Contemporary China (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p. 200.
59. June Teufel Dreyer, China's Political System: Modernisation and Tradition, 3rd edn (London: Allyn and Bacon, 2000), p. 288.
60. Liu, Mass Politics in the People's Republic, p. 201.
61. Michael Schoenhals, '"Non-people" in the People's Republic of China: A chronicle of terminological ambiguity', Working Paper, Indiana University, 1994, available at: http://www.indiana.edu/,easc/resources/ working_paper/ (accessed 25 September 2006).
62. Hongman Wang, Xin Zhongguo minzu zhengce gailun [Introduction to New China's Policy towards Minority Nationalities ] (Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe, 2000).
63. The last recognised ethnic group was identified in 1979 as Jinuo. Ma Yin [Ma Yin, ed., China's Minority Nationalities (Beijing: People's Publishing Society, 1989)] argues that it was recognised because it was compatible with the Marxist evolutionary explanations of primitive ethnic minorities, progressing from matriarchal to patriarchal society. While most of the identification was completed in the 1970s, there are 15 more groups considered for minority status. The 1990 census revealed that there were 749,341 ethnically 'unidentified' people.
64. Tiezhi Wang, 'Shehui zhuyi jianshe xinshi minzu gangling he zhengce' ['Ethnic necessities and policies in the new period of socialist construction'], Minzu wenti yanjiu [Ethnic Issues Research ] 1, (2001), p. 4.
65. Ibid., p. 6.
66. Binghao Jin, 'Zhongguo minzu lilun fazhan er shi nian' ['Development of the PRC's ethnic theory in the last twenty years'], in Zhang Dongliang, ed., Zhongguo minzu wu shi lilun yu shixian [Theory and Practice in Fifty Years of China's Ethnic Work ] (Beijing: Central University for Nationalities Press, 1999), p. 89.
67. I thank Outi Luova for drawing my attention to this point.
68. Jing He, 'Deng Xiaoping dui xin shiqi minzu gongzuo de gongxian' ['Deng Xiaoping's contribution to ethnic work in the new period'], Qian yan [Front Line ] 8, (1999), pp. 2-3.
69. White Paper on Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China, 2005 (Information Office of the SC of the PRC), available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-02/28/content_420337.htm (accessed 25 September 2006).
70. Jingming Xiong, 'Xibu kaifa de wenhua ziyuan yu fazhan moshi' ['Cultural sources of the Western development project and development model'], Dushu 3, (2002), pp. 127-130.
71. See Qunjian Tian, 'China develops its West: Motivation, strategy, and prospect', Journal of Contemporary China 13(41), (2004), p. 631. One of the latest official documents on China's ethnic policies, White Paper on Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China, 2005, states: 'the ethnic minorities are encouraged to adopt new, scientific, civilized and healthy customs in daily life ....
72. Jue Qing and Binghao Jin, 'Zhongguo gongchandang di san dai lingdao jiben guanyu shaoshu minzu he minzu diqu jingji fazhan de lilun yu zhengce' ['The CCP third generation leadership's theory and policies of economic development for minorities and minority regions'], Heilongjiang Minzu Sikan [Heilongjiang Minority Series ] 11, (2003), pp. 16-22.
73. Rong Ma, 'Zhongguo ge zuqun zhijian de jiegou xing chayi' ['Structural differences among China's ethnic minorities'], Minzu wenti yanjiu [Minority Issues Research ] 10, (2003), p. 33.
74. Wang, 'Shehui zhuyi jianshe xinshi minzu gangling he zhengce', p. 5.
75. Changru Yang, 'Xian jieduan zhongguo minzu wenti xianshi' ['A brief introduction into China's ethnic question of the contemporary period'], Guizhou minzu yanjiu [Guizhou Ethnic Research ] 7, (1996), p. 97.
76. Xiaotong Fei, 'Plurality and unity in the configuration of the Chinese people', The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 15 and 17 November 1988, available at: http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/fei90.pdf (accessed 28 September 2006), talks of two different levels of understanding minzu. At one level this concept encompasses all people living within the territorial boundaries of the PRC, and is referred to as the zhonghua minzu. At another level it is used in shaoshu minzu, which stands for ethnic minorities. The Han nationality is left out of Fei's explanations of the minzu meaning.
77. Sun Yatsen's three principles of the people are nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood. For more on Sun Yatsen's principles see Sun, San Min Chu I.
78. Heberer in China and Its National Minorities, p. 12, introduces a term 'nationality-state' to define a state where 'all nationalities are normally equal and do not question the integrity of the state'.
79. Binggao Jin, 'When does the word "minority nationality" appear in our country?', Bulletin of the History of the Tibet Communist Party 1(19 of the General Series), (5 January 1988), p. 45.
80. See Dru Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 319.
81. Lucien Pye, 'How China's nationalism was Shanghaied', Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, (January 1993), pp. 107-133.
82. Dru Gladney, Dislocating China: Reflections on Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (London: Hurst and Company, 2004).
83. White Paper on National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China 2000 (Information Office of the SC of the PRC), available at: http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/4/index.htm (accessed 9 September 2006).
84. In Jing He, 'Deng Xiaoping dui xin shiqi minzu gongzuo de gongxian', p. 3.
85. Zuoxiu Huang, 'Minzu gongzuo, ni zou hao!' ['Ethnic work, you are going well!'], Minzu gongzuo Ethnic Work 11, (2000), p. 18.
86. Lucien Pye, 'How China's nationalism was Shanghaied', Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, (January 1993), pp. 107-133.
87. Dru Gladney, Dislocating China: Reflections on Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects (London: Hurst and Company, 2004).
88. White Paper on National Minorities Policy and Its Practice in China 2000 (Information Office of the SC of the PRC), available at: http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/4/index.htm (accessed 9 September 2006).
89. In Jing He, 'Deng Xiaoping dui xin shiqi minzu gongzuo de gongxian', p. 3.
90. Zuoxiu Huang, 'Minzu gongzuo, ni zou hao!' ['Ethnic work, you are going well!'], Minzu gongzuo [Ethnic Work ] 11, (2000), p. 18.
91. Bell, 'Language, legitimacy, and the project of critique', p. 336.
92. Feng Chen, 'The dilemma of eudaemonic legitimacy in post-Mao China', Polity 29(3), (1997), pp. 421-439.