The overwhelming majority of people in China belong to an ethnic group the Chinese state calls Han. The term appears to have originated through a desire to unite the
Chinese against the Manchus when the latter ruled China under the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), but most people nowadays normally equate the Han with ‘the
Chinese’. They are themselves anything but uniform and demonstrate great linguistic and cultural diversity. Cantonese, the language spoken by the people of
Guangdong, Hong Kong and other parts of the south of China, is totally incomprehensible to a speaker of Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin), which is based on
Beijing pronunciation. At the same time, the written language of Chinese characters does not depend on region and is understood by literate Chinese all over the
country, though it is true that Taiwan and Hong Kong still use the traditional full-form characters, whereas other parts of China have adopted simplified characters. The
written language is perhaps the most important of many aspects of consistency among Han Chinese.
In addition to the Han, there are in China fifty-five state-recognized ethnic minorities, which are the subject of this chapter. The Chinese term for these ethnic groups
is shaoshu minzu, which means literally ‘minority nationalities’, and it derives from Stalin’s definition of the ‘nationality’, explained in the Introduction. These ethnic
minorities make up fewer than one in ten of China’s total population but take up about five-eighths of China’s total area, including most of the sensitive border areas.
Location near such border areas is a product of history and is similar to several other countries discussed in this volume, notably Vietnam. In many cases there are
members of the same ethnic group on the other side of China’s borders, several running their own nation-states, such as the Koreans, Mongolians, Kirghiz, Kazakhs
and Tajiks. Although most seem to be quite happy to remain part of China, there have been separatist movements among a few of them, which have created serious
challenges for the Chinese state. Some have highly distinctive cultures, languages and religions very different from those of the Han Chinese. For these and other
reasons, the minorities are actually considerably more important to China than the small proportion of their population would suggest.
Because of the general nature of this work, it is necessary to consider China’s minorities here as a whole. This is a perfectly valid scholarly exercise. The
government has a similar or identical policy towards all of them and they have many commonalities. At the same time, one of the most important points to remember
about China’s ethnic minorities is their diversity. Their languages belong to a range of different families and branches, the families ranging from Sino-Tibetan, through
Altaic to Indo-European. Some follow religions derived from the Chinese or practised for centuries among the Han, while others believe in religions not normally
associated with the Han. The enormous diversity of religions will become clear in the relevant section below. The minorities range from peoples who are not very
different culturally or ethnically from the Han to those who are very different indeed. There are even groups classified as a single minority nationality that are very
different from each other and speak different languages.
Among those quite similar to the Chinese nowadays are the Tujia and the Manchus. The Tujia, most of whom live in Western Hunan Province in Central China, are
very similar to the Han and it has been suggested that their Tujia ethnicity is more an outside construct than something meaningful to the people themselves.1
The
Manchus, whose main population concentrations are in northeast China, actually ruled China during its last imperial dynasty, the Qing. It is one of the ironies of history
that this experience encouraged them to take over the culture of those they had conquered. This contrasts with the more usual alternative pattern whereby conquerors
induce or force their subjects to adopt the culture and language of the rulers. At the beginning of the twenty-first century hardly any Manchus still speak Manchu and the
Manchu script is all but extinct. Although some aspects of Manchu tradition survive, they are weak and most Manchus are barely distinguishable from Han Chinese. On
the whole, ethnicity is not an issue in relations between Manchus and Chinese.
Among those groups at the opposite extreme, that is, totally different from the Han, are the Uygurs and Kazakhs who live in Xinjiang in far northwest China. These
peoples are Turkic ethnically, their language is similar to Turkish, they are Muslims and their arts are more Turkish than Chinese. Most are instantly recognizable as
having different features to the Chinese. Ethnicity is frequently a major issue in relations between Uygurs and Han, and there is strong support for a nation-state separate
from China among them. On the other hand, the Kazakhs get on reasonably well with the Han and, despite proximity to Kazakhstan, the pressure to secede from China
and join up with Kazakhstan is not particularly strong.
There are also many groups in between these two extremes. Two of particular interest and importance are the Koreans of northeast China and the Tibetans
inhabiting vast areas of the country’s southwest. The Korean language belongs to a different family from Chinese, and the Koreans of China insist on its use. However,
they are strongly influenced by Chinese Confucian culture, and, largely because Japanese occupation forced them to resistance and hence cooperation with the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP), they accepted Marxism-Leninism much more readily than most other minorities. On the whole, relations with the Han Chinese are good and
there are very few who would like to secede from China and join up with Korea.