Let us Understand the Chinese

[Ray]

Ethnic Boundaries

China is, like all large states, multiethnic; but one ethnic group--the Han Chinese --dominates the politics, government, and economy. This account focuses on the Han, and it considers the minority peoples only in relation to the Han ethnic group.

Over the centuries a great many peoples who were originally not Chinese have been assimilated into Chinese society. Entry into Han society has not demanded religious conversion or formal initiation. It has depended on command of the Chinese written language and evidence of adherence to Chinese values and customs. For the most part, what has distinguished those groups that have been assimilated from those that have not has been the suitability of their environment for Han agriculture. People living in areas where Chinese-style agriculture is feasible have either been displaced or assimilated. The consequence is that most of China's minorities inhabit extensive tracts of land unsuited for Han-style agriculture; they are not usually found as long-term inhabitants of Chinese cities or in close proximity to most Han villages. Those living on steppes, near desert oases, or in high mountains, and dependent on pastoral nomadism or shifting cultivation, have retained their ethnic distinctiveness outside Han society. The sharpest ethnic boundary has been between the Han and the steppe pastoralists, a boundary sharpened by centuries of conflict and cycles of conquest and subjugation. Reminders of these differences are the absence of dairy products from the otherwise extensive repertoire of Han cuisine and the distaste most Chinese feel for such typical steppe specialties as tea laced with butter.

Official policy recognizes the multiethnic nature of the Chinese state, within which all "nationalities" are formally equal. On the one hand, it is not state policy to force the assimilation of minority nationalities, and such nonpolitical expressions of ethnicity as native costumes and folk dances are encouraged. On the other hand, China's government is a highly centralized one that recognizes no legitimate limits to its authority, and minority peoples in far western Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region, for example, are considered Chinese citizens just as much as Han farmers on the outskirts of Beijing are.

Official attitudes toward minority peoples are inconsistent, if not contradictory. Since 1949 policies toward minorities have fluctuated between tolerance and coercive attempts to impose Han standards. Tolerant periods have been marked by subsidized material benefits intended to win loyalty, while coercive periods such as the Cultural Revolution have attempted to eradicate "superstition" and to overthrow insufficiently radical or insufficiently nationalistic local leaders.

What has not varied has been the assumption that it is the central government that decides what is best for minority peoples and that national citizenship takes precedence over ethnic identity. In fact, minority nationality is a legal status in China. The government reserves for itself the right to determine whether or not a group is a minority nationality, and the list has been revised several times since the 1950s. In the mid-1980s the state recognized 55 minority nationalities, some with as few as 1,1000 members. Minority nationalities are guaranteed special representation in the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Areas where minorities form the majority of the population may be designated "autonomous" counties, prefectures, or regions, subject to the authority of the central government in Beijing rather than to provincial or subprovincial administrations. It is expected that local administrations in such regions will be staffed at least in part by minority nationals and that application of national policies will take into account local circumstances and special needs. In the early 1980s, for example, minority peoples were exempted from the strict limitations on the number of children per family dictated to the Han population.

Most Han Chinese have no contact with members of minority groups. But in areas such as the Xizang (also known as Tibet) or Xinjiang autonomous regions, where large numbers of Han have settled since the assertion of Chinese central government authority over them in the 1950s, there is clearly some ethnic tension. The tension stems from Han dominance over such previously independent or semi-autonomous peoples as the Tibetans and Uygurs, from Cultural Revolution attacks on religious observances, and from Han disdain for and lack of sensitivity to minority cultures. In the autonomous areas the ethnic groups appear to lead largely separate lives, and most Han in those areas either work as urban-based administrators and professionals or serve in military installations or on state farms. Since the late 1970s, the central authorities have made efforts to conciliate major ethnic minorities by sponsoring the revival of religious festivals and by increasing the level of subsidies to the poorest minority regions. Because of these efforts, other moderate government policies, and the geographic distribution and relatively small size of minority groups in China, the country has not suffered widespread or severe ethnic conflict.

China Ethnic Boundaries

This should explain much, as also why the Chinese posters don't understand our contention wherein one reads repeated posts as "Tibet is Ours".

This is a post I wrote on another forum!

[Ray]

The Chinese concept of the Han and the non Han centres on the concept of the Middle Kingdom of Zhongguo. And the remainder world is what is called Tianxia. The system is graded in a hierarchical equation. The whole Chinese outlook is centred around the Han Chinese culture, starting from the 3rd Century. The position of the non Han centred around to what extent they resembled or assimilated the Han culture.

The same cultural arrogance can be noticed from KV Lin’s post where he exults over how the Mongols adopted the Han system and culture.

In other words, both Xinjiang and Tibet had better kowtow to the Hans and their culture or else they will make them do so! It is like saying all Pakistan better kowtow to the Punjabi culture or else and likewise the same application in India. Therefore, the rebellion in Xinjaing and Tibet is understandable since the Chinese are hell bent in Hanising the people. The problem in Tibet and Xinjiang is not so much for religion, but a back to the wall resistance to preserve their identity and culture!

It is worth noting if the non Hans showed a willingness to adopt the Han culture, they were referred to as Shu or ‘cooked’ and those who did not were Sheng or ‘raw!’

The interaction of the Han and non Han, of course, did not always take place in peaceful ways, such as through trade and commerce. For the Han Chinese, the exchange often arose from their having suffered an invasion. While confident in the superiority of their culture, Han Chinese resorted to various means to achieve a satisfactory outcome. As summarized by John Fairbank, these options "included cessation of contact; indoctrinating the foreigner in the Chinese view by cultural-ideological means; buying him off by honours or material inducements or both; using one barbarian against another through diplomatic manoeuvres; and in the final extremity accepting barbarian rulers at the apex of the Chinese world." Of course, there was no guarantee that any of these methods would work in a given situation. But this spectrum of options for the Han Chinese in designing their relation with non-Hans further reveals the fluidity and indeterminacy in the Chinese worldview. The platitudes and homilies of the Chinese in their statements indicate their ambiguity and subterfuge to disarm the adversary and at the same time, maintain their perceived moral and cultural superiority. Take any world issue and observe the Chinese smug statements, glaring being the military support to Mugabe and in the Sudan issue and the smug statements thereof!

At times when all these methods failed to work, or when the Han Chinese failed to fend off non-Han invasion, the effort to preserve China's cultural superiority was continued in the form of sinicization. In other words, as argued by both traditional and modern scholars who believed in the theory of sinicization, while the Han Chinese lost their battles, their culture and lifestyle could captivate their conquerors. As the Chinese worldview was based on a sense of cultural superiority, the military success of a non-Han ruler often failed to shake this basic belief, so long as he chose to adopt Han Chinese culture--namely, the Confucian ideology, the bureaucratic system, the civil service examination (after the Tang dynasty), the sedentary lifestyle, and agricultural economy. However, as pointed out recently by Evelyn Rawski and shared, to some degree, by her opponent Ping-ti Ho, the sinicization thesis can be simplistic in attempting to describe the often rich and complex relationship between the Han and the non-Han in China's long history. While Rawski attempts to draw attention to the efforts made by the non-Hans to preserve their own cultures, Ho defends the validity of the thesis. But Ho also devotes a large portion of his article to discussing the phases and facets of the Han and non-Han relations in various historical periods and notices that sometimes "sinicization" was achieved through practices of "barbarianization."

The Chinese view of China, as summarized by Fairbank, three zones was formed, according to these neighbours' cultural affinities to and geographical distances from China. The first was known as the "Sinic Zone" and consisted of Korea, Vietnam, and, at brief times, Japan. The second was the "Inner Asian Zone," to which most non-Han ethnic groups of nomadic tribes belonged. And the third was the "Outer Zone," which included regions in Southeast and South Asia, as well as Europe in later ages.

The difference among the states in these three zones could be seen in nomenclature: most states in the Sinic Zone were given a name, such as Chaoxian (Korea) or Riben (Japan), whose derogatory meaning was either nonexistent or eventually lost. States in the Inner Asian and Outer Zones were simply referred to by names such as yi, fan, and man, all terms used to designate "barbarians" in the Chinese language. The continuous use of these contemptuous terms by the Chinese to refer to their neighbours inevitably suggests their ethnocentrism. But it also shows the limited success of Confucian culture with regard to its power of assimilation. Although the Han Chinese made many efforts to spread their culture among their neighbours, they also encountered various challenges and failures. In the span of two millennia, only a few peoples who entered China proper and established dynasties were regarded by the Han people as successful examples of cultural assimilation. In other words, in the Chinese perception of the world, there was always a center-periphery consideration that helped situate the zhongguo in the known world, the tianxia.

This center-periphery thinking was essential to the formation of the Chinese worldview. An early attempt by the Chinese to conceive the world is shown in the Yugong (Yu's Tribute), traditionally attributed to Da Yu, a legendary hero whose deeds were comparable to Noah's in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Yugong perceived the world in "five zones" (wufu), centering on the Yellow River region, or China proper, which was divided into "nine states" (jiuzhou). Based on these ideas, the first diagram of the world was drawn by the Chinese. The criteria for dividing the five zones were based on the distance of each zone from the center, which, in turn, affected the level of civilization of its inhabitants. Indeed, the farthest zone was named the "desert zone" (huangfu), suggesting a remote and hence uncivilized culture. But the "desert zone" was not the end of the world. In the Yugong, the term "four ends" (sizhi) was used to indicate the four utmost ends of the world, located respectively in the east, west, north, and south. At these "four ends" one could find nothing but vast oceans or great deserts.

While the Yugong showed a limited knowledge of the world, it largely shaped the Chinese worldview. For example, the terms zhongguo and tianxia were both already used, although the latter was more like a cosmographical term referring to the universe. The universe was made up of heaven, earth, and everything in between; heaven was not only larger but covered the earth, as suggested by the term "all under heaven." Thus, the cosmographical theory known as the "covering heaven theory" (gaitian shuo) was developed. According to the theory, heaven was like a bowler hat covering the earth, and the earth was like a dinner plate placed upside down under the heaven. The "covering heaven theory," of course, had an obvious deficiency: it implied that the universe was flat. During the Han dynasty some scholars replaced it with a new one, known as the "organic heaven theory" (huntian shuo), in which the universe was likened to an egg: earth was its yolk, hanging in the middle and surrounded by the white, which was heaven. Despite their difference, both theories consider the universe in a holistic manner.

This holism, however, did not mean that every component in the universe played an equal role. Rather, the universe was characterized by heaven's domination and earth's subordination. This cosmography, therefore, presented a preconceived political order in the universe. Moreover, it was employed by the Chinese to support the center/ periphery relationship between themselves and their neighbors. China's superiority, for example, derived from its proximity to heaven. Considering their country as the celestial empire (tianguo) and their emperor as the son of heaven (tianzi), the Chinese believed that it was only natural for them to become the center of the world and carry out the mission of civilizing the rest, just as heaven was superior to the subordinated earth. Thus the self-image of China, or the "central kingdom," had a base in the cosmography of heaven and earth.

In the early imperial period, when Chinese historians produced some model texts in historiography, they basically followed the center/periphery approach to configuring the world. Ban Gu (A.D. 32-92), a historian of the Han dynasty, is famous for his composition of the Hanshu (Han History), a text that paralleled the influence of Sima Qian's (145-86 B.C.) Shiji (Historical Records) in Chinese historiography. In comparison with Sima Qian, one of Ban's novel contributions was a chapter on geography, called Dilizhi (Treatise of Geography), in which he gave a general description of the territorial topography of the known world. Ban Gu used both terms, tianxia and zhongguo; the latter, read according to the connotation, referred to the capital of Ban's perceived world empire. According to Ban, after Yu successfully controlled the great flood, the world was divided into five zones (wufu), in which nine states (jiuzhou) were established. The distance of each from the capital affected the level of civilization of the inhabitants. Those who lived closer to the zhongguo enjoyed a higher level of civilization than those who lived far away.

The level of civilization of the peoples in different areas was determined in the Han dynasty by cultural and geographical proximity to China, as well as by ethnic differences. As Richard Smith has noted, while most Chinese believed that "people outside the pale of Chinese civilization could be culturally transformed," there were others who thought that the ethnic difference was destiny. As a result, Han rulers held different expectations for the behaviors of the peoples and took a hierarchical approach in their perception of the world. They hoped that their neighbors would adopt Han culture, but they did not expect everyone to become as civilized as they were. As a result, the ethnic distinction between the hua (brightness) and the yi (barbarian) remained intact during the early imperial period. This distinction suggests that even though the Han people made a claim of universalism about their culture, they were also aware that this universalism not only worked in a center-periphery context but also reflected ethnic differences.

A post I wrote in a different forum.

[Ray]

While I had some idea of the Chinese history, I thank the Colonel to direct my nose in the right direction!

[Kansas Bear]

Brig,

Excellent read. My sincerest thanks to the Colonel as well!

[Ray]

I would also like to mention that the same cultural situation I don't find in many overseas Chinese and less with those who have settled outside China for long!

I find the Chinese Han culture superiority to control non Hans a repeat of Macaulay's policy to convert Indians to WOGs (Westernised Oriental Gentlemen) and it worked!

[Ray]

It had worked, but much to my dismay, I find the modern India too damned crass, having replaced the Mother Country with the upstart, which has also converted the Mother Country!

Wrong and silly accent, eating with just a fork, talking in a loud tone, not wearing a tie or a suit and all that!! ;)

Even the silly BBC has fallen in line!

I am glad the Queen remains unimpressed!

God Bless the Queen and I mean it!

[bolo121]

Thank god for Lord Maculay, he made it possible for indians from all over the country to talk to each other. In my office we have malayalees, tamils, telegu, punjabi and Gujratis all getting along fine because of english.

[gunnut]

Thank god for Lord Maculay, he made it possible for indians from all over the country to talk to each other. In my office we have malayalees, tamils, telegu, punjabi and Gujratis all getting along fine because of english.

I speak English (well...Americanese) and Mandarin. I have a friend (born in the states) who only speak English and Taiwanese. My other friend's mom speak only English and Cantonese. We all talk to each other in English. So I know where you're coming from.

[Ray]

From England?

Wrong.

It is America which rules the waves.

Pax America!

[xunil]

Official attitudes toward minority peoples are inconsistent, if not contradictory. Since 1949 policies toward minorities have fluctuated between tolerance and coercive attempts to impose Han standards. Tolerant periods have been marked by subsidized material benefits intended to win loyalty, while coercive periods such as the Cultural Revolution have attempted to eradicate "superstition" and to overthrow insufficiently radical or insufficiently nationalistic local leaders.

Cultural Revolution was a disaster to all ethnic groups in China, including Han Chinese. It tried to impose Communist standard to all ethnic groups, not impose Han standard to other ethnic groups. In RPC history, the government never had tried to convert other ethnic groups to Han.

[Cactus]

I would also like to mention that the same cultural situation I don't find in many overseas Chinese and less with those who have settled outside China for long!

I find the Chinese Han culture superiority to control non Hans a repeat of Macaulay's policy to convert Indians to WOGs (Westernised Oriental Gentlemen) and it worked!

Brig Ray,

It is apples and oranges: The old Chinese imperial annexation and assimilation is in the classic pattern followed all over the world, the new English imperialism/colonization was run on completely different template (especially in India). Consider as a small example that in the old Chinese (or Roman, or Byzantine, or Persian, or Indian...) system it was perfectly possible for a Sinicized Afghan (An Lushan) to reach the highest level of power in the empire, or a Turk (Zeng He) to command its entire navy; now again consider how bitterly contested even the inclusion of the woggiest of the Indian WOGs into the mere 8-unit Indianization plan was. The neo-imperalistic tendencies - even when we see it from China - is distinctly on much more modern and western template.

[Ray]

Cactus,

I would not know.

I am going by what the experts say and what is happening on ground in Tibet, Xinjiang and the areas South which are no ethnic.

I think that it would be obtuse to think that materialistic proigress ahs not come to Tibet or Xinjaing. For all what one knows, life would be way better than earlier.

And yet they are not happy!

To believe otherwise, would be obtuse and ostrich-like! After all one does not rebel if one is happy.

Why are they not happy?

Maybe, like the Hans, they also believe that their culture, religion and way of life, is way superior to the Han's way!!

[Ray]

AS I see it, the problem of Tibet is not suzerainty or autonomy that the Chinese are debating about!

They are debating about to the extent the Tibetans are ready to be Hanised!

[xunil]

AS I see it, the problem of Tibet is not suzerainty or autonomy that the Chinese are debating about!

They are debating about to the extent the Tibetans are ready to be Hanised!

Ray, you really know some history of China. But you were talking about Chinese who lived hundreds years ago. People today don't think like that. Otherwise where would be no Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, and no open up policy today.

[Officer of Engineers]

People today don't think like that.

Of course they do. You cannot be successful in China without speaking Mandarin.