The country's rise as a great world power, accompanied by the gospel of ‘peaceful rise' as enunciated by its former President Hu Jintao, is redefining cultural ascendancy, not so much in terms of Maoism or Marxism, but of the Han race
The dominance of China’s major ethnic group, the Hans, seems to be all-pervading. It’s fully supported by the Government-backed policies and progarmmes which are resonated across the country.
Surprisingly, this is actively reflected in the country’s foreign policy agenda which has been deliberately followed around the world in the Chinese Diaspora. For many, globalisation may mean an actively interconnected world. A world, described as ‘flat’ by Thomas Friedman and ‘borderless’ by Kenichi Ohmae, does not hold good for others, including the majority of the Chinese people.
The western imperialists deliberately used race, ethnicity, caste, religion, etc, to divide and rule in many of their former colonial outposts. But by 1911, when the Qing dynasty in China fell, the new elite tried to bring a unique rationale for the emerging nation state.
A sense of uniformity was drawn mostly from race and language. Eventually, this helped the Chinese nationalists embark on the idea that all Hans were descended from ‘Huangdi’, known as the great ‘Yellow Emperor’, nearly 5,000 years ago. Today, the Han consists of China’s 1.2 billion people in the mainland, but the minorities across the country are around 110 million. Sadly, only the Hans are referred to as ‘Chinese’.
Ethnicity has become synonymous with national identity in China. As China’s economy grows and attracts billions of foreign direct investment, the growing legal labour market is heavily flooded with the people from the Han descent.
Interestingly, those Hans who have left the mainland decades back, are still treated as a part and parcel of this national identity both by the Communist Government and its people. What an ironyIJ People, who have already become permanent citizens of some other countries, are again forced to display allegiance to their earlier parental roots. Only China can do this for harbouring its great ‘China Dream’ launched by the country’s current President Xi Jinping.
Since his takeover in 2012, he has been intensifying a mega campaign for ‘rejuvenating the Chinese people’. While bolstering the nation’s foreign policy with security activism and economic diplomacy, Xi is soon branding himself as the most powerful leader of China after Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Many say he is trying to restore the role of China to the standards set by once powerful Chinese empire from 221BC-1911 AD.
Some other experts opine that Xi may be having the ambitions to drive the country to the glory of the Ming dynasty of 1368-1424. Around this time, China achieved a long period of hegemony in East Asia, but not definitely in the true sense of the term. What reflects from these policy designs is that China has an ambition to maintain its old empire, but of course in a more pragmatic style.
Certainly, Chinese leaders and their common folks can never be contented without the country’s larger-than-life image in the global stage. And in this, its Han identity plays a crucial role.
What defines China’s national identity today has nothing to do with its socialistic ideological roots. The country’s rise as a great world power, accompanied by the gospel of ‘peaceful rise’ as enunciated by its former President Hu Jintao, is redefining cultural ascendancy, not so much in terms of Maoism or Marxism, but of the Han race. Though the minorities are theoretically treated as equal and officially granting them some privileges, yet in front of the Hans, they are nowhere to be seen. The most disheartening part of the Chinese society is that its borderlines once marked by distinct ethnic minorities are now fully flooded by the Hans.
It has been fast forwarded by the state-sponsored programmes over the years by Beijing. For example, the Han population in Xinjiang has risen from barely four per cent in 1949 to above 42 per cent today. And, in the same way, the Mongols are now only 17 per cent in Inner Mongolia. The same story continues in Tibet. The grand policy designs of Beijing are strongly made in favour of the Hans. In Xinjiang, the Government is consistently pursuing strict policies against the locals, the Uighur Muslims as it is the only province of China where jehadis are slowly making their presence felt over the years.
Thus, the Government is deliberately pushing the Hans so as to outnumber the Uighurs one fine day. This will help Beijing reduce the Uighurs to a minority in their own land soon. Today, the ethnic clashes between the Han Chinese and the Uighurs; and between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans are on the rise. This suggests that Beijing’s single agenda of national integration is badly failing in bringing the Uighurs and the Tibetans to the mainstream.
There is deep resentment among these two groups as they feel that the Government is singularly pursuing policies to discriminate them. So the policies to percolate relative deprivation in China are official, though Beijing will not accept the same.
The only two groups of people, the Uighurs and the Tibetans, are purely different from that of the Hans. This further suggests that the differences with the Hans, for these two ethnic minorities will continue. Again, the dominant Han attitudes of assimilation, migration and cultural suppression have served better to stoke resentment among the Uighurs and the Tibetans. There has been a process of assimilation, mixing and melding over hundreds of years in Chinese history, but unfortunately it has shaped a national identity wherein the Hans have remained supreme.
To many China observers, Hans think the other groups will and must be absorbed and assimilated as Hans. Therefore, the other minority groups could hardly come up and maintain their uniqueness. As a result, they have remained weak and they are made to be so in future.
When it comes to Xinjiang, will it be good enough for Beijing to suppress the local identity in the name of curbing militancy in this distant provinceIJ Of course not, if the Uighurs are not allowed to safeguard their distinct culture and freedom of religion, this will severely hurt China’s global image. But China may not definitely care much about it for now, but this will prove to be fatal in future.
On the other hand, China’s immigration policy is very stringent. Since 2012, China’s working age population is shrinking very drastically. And if the Government does not allow or attract immigrants like many other advanced nations, its massive economic machine will undoubtedly suffer. Many well-educated Chinese people are averse to take up jobs like social work, care givers, nursing, etc. Its huge old age population demands these services. Else a large chunk of old age population will suffer soon.
The only immigrants that China accepted since its independence were the Hans those who moved out from Vietnam during the war in 1978-79. Otherwise, China’s all doors are closed for any immigrants from anywhere in the world. Why is it soIJ Why is it scared to accept other peopleIJ For a powerful nation like China, it should have openly encouraged migrants to its vast lands. Despite having a strong one party political system, it has nowhere to be objected by any opposition political parties or by any other semi-political forces. But still, it seems China does simply not allow any immigrants, otherwise many millions from poor developing nations would have already made China their home.
But why then so many Chinese people are heading overseas every yearIJ Interestingly, most of them do move to western nations like America and Europe, and many of them do not come back. Its closed political system accompanied by strict control of free flow of information dithers many Chinese migrants from returning home.
This in a way helps the Chinese economy, as many of them prefer to invest back home. This once again underlines the Han connection and makes the job of the non-resident Chinese easier than before. Thus, many second generation Chinese Americans have come up to their homelands and started their own firms and companies. This is a positive trend, but in Xi’s China, they will not be able to enjoy the kind of freedom that they used to enjoy in the US or Europe.
For Xi, all of them are members of one ‘Chinese family’ and hence they have a responsibility towards their motherland.
Chinese accession to the global power status will seriously be impaired by this ‘Han Worldview’. The avalanche of facts and figures, China’s officials release through the Xinhua or any other Government sources, truly reflects the country’s Han dominance.
Beyond the mantra of occupation, China has been employing the vehicles of ‘modernisation’ in Tibet and Xinjiang so that the international community can be well misguided. Actually, the ‘Yellow man’s burden’ is no other than exploitation of the massive resources of these country sides, to feed the resource-crunch economy of its fast growing coastal regions.
For Beijing, displaying respect to its other minority ethnic groups like the Tibetans and the Uighurs is nothing less than opting a break from the country’s Han attitude. And it has overtly and covertly developed over centuries, and it can hardly be avoided.
As the Hans are more than 90 per cent of the billion plus population of China, so whatsoever the numbers of the Tibetans and the Uighurs may be and how grave the resentment and the clashes may be, the ‘Chinese’ are never ever going to realise the damages inflicted on the rest, within their country. China’s long march to achieve parity in power calculus with the US, and other advanced countries, may be dwarfed by these shortfalls sooner or later.
For now and in the coming years, despite flowing the incessant currents of globalising forces, it seems the ‘particularistic’ is going to overshadow the ‘universalistic’. And for all of us, China’s Han dominance over the rest of the ethnic groups, is aptly symbolising the preference of the ‘particularistic’ over the globetrotting ‘universalistic’ ethos, even in this 21st century.
(The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer)