By Patricia Lee Sharpe
There was Han-Uighur violence in Urumqi and other Xinjiang cities this past week. It followed an incident involving Uighur migrant laborers and Han in Guangdong. Chinese officials in Beijing, even so, are insisting there’s nothing wrong with the government’s policies toward ethnic minorities. The policies are perfectly “effective,” they say, which seems like a brilliantly ambiguous choice of words. Effective for what?
The Chinese government is never to blame for violence in Tibet, either. In short, the current rulers of the Chinese empire are never wrong. They are strong. And the ethnics, however numerous, are weak, which means that, even in the absence of "criminal violence," unhappy agitating protesting minorities are always wrong.
Meanwhile, I’ve just seen a wonderful exhibit of traditional costumes—ceremonial or holiday clothing actually—worn by the men, women and children of ethnic minorities in the southwestern part of China, in this case, Yunan, Guizhuo, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Sichuan and Hainan Island. The exhibit (including this Miao headdress and this Yi women's ensemble) came into being thanks to cooperation between the University of Hawai’i and the the Evergrand Art Museum of Taoyuan, Taiwan. Taiwan, note. Not the People’s Republic of China, where the heirs of those who once wore these outfits actually live. Meanwhile, this exquisite collection is currently being exhibited at the International Museum of Folk Art in Santa Fe, where an excellent exhibit centered on wayang kulit, the shadow puppets of Indonesia, is also under way. The IMOFA is one of the treasures of the museum world, another good reason to live in Santa Fe.
Back to the textile display. The people who celebrated by wearing these beautifully executed costumes could hardly be called barbarians in need of absorbing and civilizing. But that’s what’s happened over time. So says the curatorial note posted on the wall at the entrance to the exhibit. The text, however, approaches the issue of political demographics in China via a language of masterful understatement: “Although each group attempts to maintain their unique culture, assimilation and acculturation with the Han majority did occur....”
A & A certainly did occur! An interesting study shows that small minority groups in China are very likely to intermarry with the Han majority, thus hastening their own dilution and disappearance. Members of the more numerous groups tend to be largely endogamous, however. Hence, the more tenacious clinging to culture among the Tibetans and the Uighurs, who claim they have not always belonged to China and do not do so voluntarily now. The triumph of the Red Army over the Nationalists, which created the “People’s” Republic of China, did not bring liberation to minorities: “Attention to minority rights took place within the larger framework of strong central control. Minority nationalities, many with strong historical and recent separatist or anti-Han tendencies, were given no rights of self-determination.” Perhaps mainland China does not dare to publicize the glories of its relatively powerless smaller ethnic groups, like the Miao, like the Yi, lest they encourage members of the larger, better known minorities to insist ever more stubbornly on their own distinctiveness.
Here is how the assimilation process is supposed to work:
Approximately 93 percent [give or take a point or two] of China's population is considered Han. Sharp regional and cultural differences, including major variations in spoken Chinese, exist among the Han, who are a mingling of many peoples. All the Han nonetheless use a common written form of Chinese and share the social organization, values, and cultural characteristics universally recognized as Chinese.
Mandarin is taught in all Chinese schools as the national language. It’s said that over 70% of the population speak Mandarin as their first language. There are six other major Chinese dialects including "Cantonese, Chu-Chow, Shanghainese, Fukenese, Taiwanese, and Hainese." One complaint in Xinjiang is that “the government has severely curtailed the use of the Uighur language in classrooms.” This is no accident. When language dies, culture languishes. When populations languish, as frequently with minorities, languages don’t usually survive.
The word minority as applied to China can be somewhat disarming. Let’s look at numbers. Though estimates vary, it’s believed that somewhat less than 10% of the population within the boundaries of modern China belong to ethnic minorities. Only ten per cent you say? Well, in China, that’s around 100,000,000 people, more than the population of most countries! The world is very well aware of Tibet. (For disputed Tibetan population figures, read this.) Now the Uighur and Turkic minorities in Xinjiang are becoming visible in ways that do not please Beijing. Numbers in both cases are politically fraught. So are provincial boundaries, which affect numbers. For instance, China’s misnamed Tibetan Autonomous Region is half the size of historic Tibetan territory.
Both the Tibetans and the Uighurs are strongly identified with world religions, Islam in the former case, Buddhism in the latter, a mixed blessing for both. On the one hand, Beijing has done its best to squash any competing ideology, including essentially Chinese religious manifestations like Qi Gong. On the other, Uighurs and Tibetans can count on moral support at the very least from co-religionists outside China, however defined. Hence, it’s harder to strip them of traditional identities.
The energy with which the People’s Republic has prosecuted its essentially repressive minority policy has waxed and waned.
Pressure on the minority peoples to conform were stepped up in the late 1950s and subsequently during the Cultural Revolution. Ultra-leftist ideology maintained that minority distinctness was an inherently reactionary barrier to socialist progress. Although in theory the commitment to minority rights remained, repressive assimilationist policies were pursued. Minority languages were looked down upon by the central authorities, and cultural and religious freedom was severely curtailed or abolished. Minority group members were forced to give up animal husbandry in order to grow crops that in some cases were unfamiliar. State subsidies were reduced, and some autonomous areas were abolished. These policies caused a great deal of resentment, resulting in a major rebellion in Xizang [aka Tibet] in 1959 [when the 16th Dali Lama escaped over the Himalaya] and a smaller one in Xinjiang in 1962.
And then:
Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese government in the mid-1980s was pursuing a liberal policy toward the national minorities. Full autonomy became a constitutional right, and policy stipulated that Han cadres working in the minority areas learn the local spoken and written languages.
Full autonomy! Sigh! In so many places constitution writing is a form of fiction. Ask all the Tibetans in exile about cultural respect and autonomy. Meanwhile, other minorities are also getting restive, according to Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post:
Each conflict has had specific causes, including high unemployment, continued allegations of corruption involving public officials and charges of excessive force by police. But for the Chinese government, they add up to a major concern: Friction among the nation's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups is considered one of the most explosive potential triggers for social instability. Much of the unrest stems from a sense among some minority populations that the justice system in China is stacked against them.
Though ethnic policy is “effective,” which means minorities supposedly have no valid reason to complain, Beijing officials have come up with multiple self-exculpating explanations for ethnic unrest and violence. Scapegoats abound. The most useful of these are the outside agitators. Militant Islam. The Dalai Lama. An expat Uighur businesswoman named Rebiya Kadeer.
There's a second class of scapegoats that comes in handy whenever anything goes wrong: local officials, who may be accused of incompetence or venality even as they are actually carrying out what is, essentially, national policy. A Mr. Wu, vice minister of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission said at a press conference on July 21 that that government policies had "nothing to do with the violent crimes" in Urumqi, but "a deeper understanding is needed when it comes to making policies at the local level." In short, local authorities need to do a "better job." Another ambiguous statement. A better job of what? Satisfying minorities or suppressing minorities. Given Chinese history, the latter is more likely.
Centralization. Conformity. China has a very long history, but always these themes recur. They are explored in an original and provocative way in The Ancient Ship, a novel by Zhang Wei that is now available in English translation. Here is how it begins:
Many great walls have risen on our land. They are almost as old as our history. We have built high walls and stored up vast quantities of grain in order to survive....We have shed pools of blood at the bases of our walls to nourish the grass that grows there.
Both Tibet and Xinjian, it should be noted, are border provinces. Blood is indeed shed along those "walls."
But to the book: near the provincial town of Wali on the Luqing River, it seems, the ruins of a great old ship have been discovered in the muck of the riverbed, and some of the men of the Sui clan dream of escaping the constraints of life in the People’s Republic, where they are manufacturers of—noodles, an absolutely necessary if mundane commodity, for the vastness of the ocean, where China’s flotillas once were an impressive presence. (Remember, the Chinese invented the astrolabe.) Back then, as the Europeans were about to enter the Age of Exploration, the Chinese exacted tribute from potentates in what is now Indonesia. They sailed to India, too. These exploits I know for fact. However, a few years ago there was a runaway best seller entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which purported to prove that a Chinese fleet had circumnavigated the globe before Magellan did.
The proof cited includes DNA, chickens, plants, cairns, folklore, maps—everything but the kitchen sink. Most experts are not convinced by Gavin Menzes, an Australian admiral, and I lack the expertise to evaluate the “evidence,” so I couldn’t join the claque. But it was a good read. However, whatever the farthest extent of the voyaging of that great ancient fleet, the ships were called home and destroyed. By imperial decree, the walls went back up, the psychological walls. China refused to be changed or influenced by its contacts abroad. And the Sui never leave Wali.
Now China is once again building a blue water navy. China is also buying up natural resources all around the globe, extracting minerals where once tribute would have been exacted. Will China’s explosive new opening to the world promote greater tolerance for diversity at home? Given the long-running self-righteous official reaction to the least sign of disaffection among non-Han minorities, I wouldn't bet on it. Trade yes. Respect for other cultures, within or without—not so likely.
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