Minzu 民族

Introduction

Minzu(民族) is one of the most important terms for understanding ethnic politics in China. The term is hard to translate because it describes what westerners generally call ethnic groups or races. In China minzu means ethnicity but not race. Party policy in Xinjiang is based on the idea of minzu/ethnicity.

In the early 20th century, when the empire transformed to a nation-state, Chinese nation-builders borrowed the term minzu from Japanese minzoku to name the vast diverse population. The imagined nation was named zhonghua minzu (中华民族) to fit the state name zhonghua minguo (中华民国) in republic era, as the founding father Sun Yat-Sen called for a “union of five races” (wuzu 五族) which refers to Mongol, Hui, Tibetan, Han, and Manchu). This idea of minzu drew from western notions of biological race. Communist china inherited the concept minzu and launched a nationality identification (minzu shibie 民族识别) project in the 1950s. however, the communists followed the Stalinist definition of nationality that is based on culture, language, and shared history but not biological ideas of race. This resulted in the recognition of 56 minzu in china, with Han being the majority and other 55 groups defined as minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu 少数民族). In public discourse however, minzu has gradually become a term to denote only the minority nationalities, as Han-ness has become the default for what it means to be Chinese.

This bibliography shows another historical shift in china’s ethnic policy that known as “the second generation minzu policy,” which is pioneered by Beijing University sociology professor Ma Rong, and state theoreticians Hu Angang and Hu Lianhe. This new policy has steered away from the first generation minzu policies that focused on “unified polyethnic national configuration” (多元一体化格局). The key ideas of the second generation theory include depoliticizing minzu that are entitled to land rights and self-determination, focusing on ethnic mingling (jiaorong 交融), and prioritizing Mandarin Chinese as the national language (guoyu 国语) to forge a shared national identity in ethnic minority regions. these ideas are behind many of the state policies in Xinjiang today.

Keywords: 民族工作 minzu work, 民族融合 ethnic integration, 第二代民族政策 the second generation minzu policy, 去政治化 depoliticization, 国语教育 ‘national language’ education