The decade of the 1990s witnessed a burst of scholarly publications in the
West on ethnic minorities in China, most of which deal with issues such as
relations between Han Chinese and minority peoples, ethnic identity, minority
cultures and traditions, and the like.1
To some extent, this scholarly interest in
minority peoples in China was inspired by the importance of the ethnic factor
in the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the potential scenario for
ethnic conflict and separatism in China.2 Indeed, ethnicity may be easilytransformed into nationalism and thus become a destabilizing political force
capable of breaking down a multi-ethnic country.3 Nevertheless, this
transformation is contingent upon many factors, one of which is inter-ethnic
inequality, an under-researched topic in China studies.4 As Emily Hannum
and Yu Xie point out, research on market reforms and social stratification in
China has paid little attention to China’s ethnic minorities.5
As a matter of
fact, ethnicity has not been used as a control variable in the existing literature
on social stratification in China.6 Relying on a data set (n = 1,532) collected in
Beijing in 1998, we analyze major factors of income inequality by ethnicity in
China.
In this research, we examine earnings determination mechanisms for
Han Chinese and members of ethnic minorities respectively, seeking to
understand factors of income inequality by ethnicity in urban China during the
1990s. In the following, we first briefly discuss general information on ethnic
minorities in China. We then review the literature on ethnic inequality in
China, using it as a reference point for our research. Next, we discuss our data
and variables and conduct analysis. Finally, we summarise our research
findings and propose possible scenarios on ethnic stratification in urban China.
For convenience, we use ethnic nationalities and minorities interchangeably in
this research.