Violence in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in late July has once again drawn attention to Beijing's ethnic policy. On Aug. 1, according to Hong Kong media, more than a hundred Han Chinese protesters gathered at the People's Square in Kashgar, where the most recent violence had occurred, claiming their personal safety was being threatened and blaming the local government for its slow reaction to the July 30-31 Uighur unrest. Increasingly, as ethnic minorities in China express their frustrations over their socio-economic situation, China's Han majority is expressing its frustration over Beijing's handling of ethnic tensions in Xinjiang.

Ethnic Policies

For Beijing, controlling Xinjiang, along with other regions in China that have concentrations of ethnic minorities, is a matter not only of preventing social unrest but also of preserving vast buffer zones to shield China's core. Since ancient times, whether the country was ruled by Han Chinese or another ethnic group, managing minority populations has always been essential in maintaining central power over established buffer zones. In ancient China, however, the shared identity of China's Zhongyuan culture, which originated from the area around the Yellow River and was predominantly shaped by the Han population, overrode ethnic differences. In fact, as this Han-dominated culture expanded over the centuries, ethnic minorities were more or less assimilated into it, either voluntarily through economic exchange or forcibly through relocation or war. Still, ethnic minorities have continued to resist the authority of China's central government. Part of the reason is the remoteness of the regions in which many minority groups are concentrated, where it is difficult for the central government to enforce its writ. Beginning with the Qin dynasty (221 to 206/207 B.C.), the first ruling dynasty of imperial China, central governments sought to maintain ethnic loyalties with various incentives, such as promoting trans-ethnic marriage and transferring a greater amount of funding to outlying regions. This approach proved to be quite effective, especially when the central government was a strong one, but the weaker the central government the more active minorities were in challenging the state. These problems continued throughout Chinese history until the mid-19th century, when Western countries invaded China using modern military tactics and hardware. In the process of resisting the West, the Chinese promoted a common Chinese identity rather than individual ethnic identities, with some ethnicities, especially those along the southern border, fighting together with the Han population. However, in other buffer regions, such as Tibet, Xinjiang and part of Manchuria, especially after the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Western forces were able to promote ethnic identities that supported their own interests, which was made easier by the diminishing power of the central government. Some of these ethnic minorities, particularly the Tibetans and Uighurs, had much stronger cultural identities to begin with than other minorities, anchored in part by religious and linguistic differences. And compared to regions in northeastern and southwestern China, where most minorities reside, Tibetans and Uighurs have less of a history of assimilation with the dominant Han culture and have been more vulnerable to exploitation by other powers in the region, such as the Soviet Union and India. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Zedong categorized 55 ethnic minorities in the country, in addition to the Han. He also learned how to craft ethnic policy from the Soviet Union, creating different autonomous regions for the major minorities based on their regions of origin and appointed ethnic elites to administer the autonomous regions. In the beginning this policy worked quite well, particularly in southwestern China, but its deficiencies were soon revealed.

Problems

First, the idea behind differentiating the various ethnicities was to distinguish them from the Han population and allow Beijing to use a variety of policies for social management. The approach also reinforced ethnic identities through the required use of identity documents or the Hukou household-registration system. Meanwhile, key decision-making remained a privilege of the Han, who hold the highest Party offices with authority over China's ethnic affairs. To maintain this dominance, authorities imposed restrictions on religious practices and discouraged the use of ethnic languages and celebration of cultural traditions, all of which made China's ethnic minorities feel as though they had little real autonomy in their autonomous regions. Beginning in the 1980s, with Beijing's initiative to promote economic development, China's Han population along with certain ethnic elites reaped financial benefits that the ethnic minorities have not. Massive energy projects in autonomous regions (e.g., oil, gas and coal), intended largely to meet demand elsewhere, as well as an influx of Han culture, has led to resentment against the Han population that could in turn be reflected on to the central government. To even things out, Beijing has granted certain social and economic privileges to ethnic minorities, including lower required scores on college-entrance exams and allowing minority couples to have more than one child. And now, this appears to be leading to a Han backlash, particularly by Han Chinese who have been forced to migrate to the ethnic regions as part of a government program that began in the 1950s and who now see themselves as disadvantaged minorities, despite their economic gain. Traditionally, the buffer regions of Tibet and Xinjiang have been the hot spots in this struggle mainly because of their strategic significance in shielding the core and their distance from China's core Han population. But Beijing is also concerned about domestic unrest, and if existing ethnic policies prove counterproductive, in the buffer regions and elsewhere, it may have to take a different approach.