In its nascent post-Liberation years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) initiated the
Nationality Investigations (NI), a project aimed at solving China’s “nationalities problem.”
In the face of inter-ethnic conflict and various claims to independence, how could the new
government under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) judiciously consolidate China’s vast
diversity of non-Han people into one unified socialist nation? Using a mélange of ethnology
and socialist theory, the Investigations named each of China’s minority nationalities and
determined their various states of social evolution.
The NI project restructured the relationship between China’s minority periphery and its
Han-dominated center. It redefined the principles, theories, and aims of Chinese social
sciences. Most importantly, in naming and describing China’s nationalities, the Investigations
scientifically reified a set of ethnic categories and assumptions. The various nationalities
within China’s borders became minority-nationality Chinese and, as minorities, they became
the objects of various policies and projects which attempted to accelerate minority
development toward socialism and integration into a new multiethnic China.