S11: Socialist Nationalities

• 1949 from the periphery: Xinjiang, Tibet, and Yunnan
• How did China define its national identity?
• How did China become a nation of 56 ethnicities?

• Personal possessions – cookware, tables, etc. – turned over to communal mess halls
• No longer able to store and prepare own food
• Suspension of work points and rations
• Rapid expansion of rural bureaucracy: millions of new full-time cadres running communes, production brigades and teams
• Centralized control of resources previously in hands of households and villages

• End of seasonal agriculture: Planting and harvest as busiest time; winter as slack time
• Constant and incessant demand on labor: Irrigation projects, road building, terracing of hillsides, small factories
• Diversion of labor away from agriculture led to poor production and harvest
• Militarization of rural life: All time and effort subject to campaign

• Inflated numbers: Grain harvest in 1958
  • Official figure: 375 million tons
  • Actual figure: 200 million tons, 2.5% increase from previous year
• By April 1958: Widespread food shortages and riots
• By early 1959: Famine spreading nation-wide
• Result: Worst famine in human history, with excess deaths of between 24 and 30 million

Nikita Khrushchev

• Speech to 12th congress of Soviet Communist Party on Feb 25, 1956
• Stalin’s “mania for greatness” and “nauseatingly false” adulation disguised reality as incompetent leader and weak commander

Mao Zedong

• Wrong to condemn Stalin completely
• Stalin’s wrongdoings towards China: failure to treat CCP as “equals”
• Mao calling for greater leadership in int’l communist movement

“Minutes of Conversation, Mao Zedong and Ambassador Yudin”, July 22, 1958

• What made Mao so upset and why?
• According to Mao, what was the relationship between the Chinese Communist Revolution and the Soviet Union?
• How should the Soviet Union respond? Why?

Nikita Khrushchev

• Post-Stalinist socialism: Bureaucratic system staffed by individuals motivated by career advancement and special privileges
• Major role of highly educated experts in science and technology

Mao Zedong

• One form of repression replaced with another
• Deviation from revolutionary path and threat to ideals of mass line and struggle

• “Permanent revolution”: 1949 as only “the first step in the long march of the Chinese revolution”
• Despite unrestricted power, profound anxiety: How to prevent revolution from losing momentum?
• Desire for leadership: After Stalin, is the Soviet Union still a leader of the int’l communist movement?

• Who is Fu Gui? Is he a good father? A good husband? A good citizen? A good community member? What does it mean to be good in these roles during difficult times?
• Were you surprised by the actions and reactions of Fugui’s family throughout the story – his wife, Jiazhen; his daughter, Fengxia; and his son, Youqing?

• Throughout Chinese history, there has been a strong patriarchal tradition. After 1949, Mao Zedong enacted policies that were meant to create more equity between the sexes. Did you see these changes reflected? How did you react to the novel’s portrayal of gender roles?

• The movie moves through four decades of modern Chinese history marked by war, famine, political turmoil, and natural disasters. How does the author manage this pacing and still include details of everyday life? What is the effect of a story that covers so much? What are some of the details that surprised you?
• What does it mean to Fugui and his family to live? What does it mean to you?

• Ethno-territorial entity with a higher population of a particular (or titular) minority ethnic group
• Five regions (founding date):
  • Inner Mongolia (1947)
  • Xinjiang (1955)
  • Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (1958)
  • Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (1958)
  • Tibet (1965)

China in 1952-1953 census

• Only 11 recognized ethnic groupings
• Across the country, 400+ self-reported groups, including 260 in Yunnan

China today

• “56 nationalities”

• Initial break from Qing China in 1911
• De facto independence since July 1921
• Led by the one and only political party: Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (est. 1919) and renamed Mongolian People’s Party (in power till 1990)

• Monastic authorities: Tibetan Buddhist clergy, powerful (and wealthy) lamas presiding over large monasteries
• Feudal nobles: Property of the wealthiest nobles was confiscated from 1929

• Prince Demchugdongrub (1902-1966), Mongol prince from the Borjigin imperial clan
• Leader of an independence movement in Inner Mongolia: Chairman of the pro-Japanese Mongol Military Government (1938–39) and later of the puppet state of Mengjiang (1939–45) during WWII

• New technologies: Expansion of modern communications (rail and telegraph)
• New ideologies: nationalism, modernization, socialism
• New geopolitics: Anglo-Russian rivalry, revolutions in Russia and China, and two World Wars
• New politics: regional Chinese warlords with weak ties to central gov, hopeful Turkic republics, satellites of the Soviet Union

• Migration of Kashgari merchants and Taranchis of Semireche to Soviet Union
• At the same time, arrival of Ottomon and Tartar intellectuals in Semireche and Xinjiang
• Xinjiang as intellectual meeting place of Soviet class universalism, pan-Turkism, and narrower nationalisms

• Political union of all Turkish-speaking peoples in the Ottoman Empire, Russia, China, Iran, and Afghanistan
• Inspired by linguistic, ethnolinguistic and racial research in European Oriental Studies in the 19th century
• Common characteristics: related languages, shared descent, history, and cultural traditions.

• Arrival of European archaeologists, geographers, diplomats, missionaries, other adventurers from the late 19th century
• Rich discovery of manuscripts and material evidence of the “Silk Road”
• Communication of people, goods, and ideas between India, China and the Mediterranean world

• Reform movement among Muslim intellectuals in Central Asia
• Motivated by belief in modern education as a prerequisite for social change and cultural revitalization
• Emphasis on education of children, economic development, emancipation of women, language reform, new forms of media such as newspapers and magazines, etc.
• Not just religious and ethnic, but secular and modernizing

How to build a unitary state while encouraging ethno-nationalism?

• Neither nationalism nor national identity necessarily reactionary
• National movement as policy to speed up class cleavages and mobilize support for socialism
• Nationalism disarmed by granting forms of nationhood

• Challenge to Sheng Shicai rule in 1937 from Turkic forces (followers of Mahmud Muhiti) and Huis (under Ma Hushan) in southern Xinjiang
• With help from Soviet troops, an estimated 50,000 “rebels” killed
• After the rebellion, some 50K to 100K Uyghur and Hui intellectual and political leaders purged and killed

What he did:

• Official designation of Altishahris and 13 other groups as “Uyghurs”
• Cultural promotion organizations: stipends for shrine and mosque personnel, management of religious land trusts
• Script reform and codification of literary canon

What he achieved:

• Growing institutionalization and popular acceptance of Uyghur identity, especially among elites
• Extension of bureaucratic control deeper into local systems
• Resistance from Pan-Turkic intellectuals: Ethno-natioanlism used to dilute solidarity

From Soviet to American:

• After US entry to WWII in 1941, Sheng shifted allegiance from Soviet backers to Nationalist government
• 1942: Trade between Xinjiang and Soviet Union closed, Chinese communists and pro-Soviet Turkic Muslims purged
• Sheng Shicai appointed as KMT chairman of Xinjiang party branch

Then back again:

• After Soviet victory in the Battle for Stalingrad in Feb 1943, Sheng shifted patrons back to the Soviet Unions
• Stalin refused to back him; Sheng turned to Chiang, who removed him in Sep 1944
• Bribery to KMT spared his life; retreat to Taiwan in 1949

• Sheng Shicai’s policies – closing of Soviet border, disarmament of Kazaks, and Han settlement – angered locals
• Following Sheng’s departure, a rebellion slowly broke out in East Turkistan.
• Chiang Kai-shek dispatched new governor Zhang Zhizhong to form coalition gov with ETR.
• Under Zhang, new Turkicization policy: quota for Uyghur and minority officials

• Centralization and sinicization
• Ethnicization: Creation of identities to provide cohesion to cross-cut identities
• Creation of cross-regional ethnic and proto-nationalistic political identity

Common features:

• Ethnic classification
• Territorial units based on titular minority groups
• Minority-specific public policies

Differences:

• Rejection of self-determination (and secessionism)
• Rejection of ethno-federalism: China as a composite multi-ethnic nation, rather than a land of heterogeneous nationalities in separate existence

• Developmental equality: State subsidies and tax relief to peripheral regions
• Education equality:
  • Universal elementary and secondary schools in minority regions
  • Network of special colleges for minority students
• Language equality:
  • Standardization of writing systems: Latin letters for Uyghur and Kazakhs
  • Parallel tracks: Ethnic schools and state schools

• Creation of territorial units named after ethnic group of main inhabitants
• Written in Chinese constitution in 1954
• Materialize class universalism by enforcing equal rights
• Groups big or small recognized as equal through scientific classification

• Soon after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 39 ethnic groups were recognized in 1954.
• The number of recognized ethnic groups increased to 54 by the second national census in 1964, and to 56 in 1979.
• Today, approximately 92% of the population classified as Han
• Major ethnic minorities: the Zhuang (19.6 million), Uyghurs (11 million), Hui (11.4 million), Miao (11 million), Manchu (10.4 million)

• Rural China as the foundation of Chinese society.
• There is a shared cultural identity that unifies Chinese society.
• China as a “multiplex society”: Various social groups coexist and interact while maintaining their distinct identities.
• Chinese society has a hierarchical structure and emphasizes interpersonal relationships.

• Who was responsible for ethnic classification in Yunnan? What was their training / background?
• How did Chinese ethnologists conduct “investigation meetings”?
• What is “ethnic potential”? How is it used to create nationalities?
• How are ethnic names chosen when amalgamating various groups? Discuss the case of Yi, the fourth largest minority group in China.

Intended goals

• Political integration by associating ethnic governance with titular group
• Diffusing the weight of large peripheral groups, especially Mongols, Uyghurs, and Tibetans

Unintended consequences

• Increased intra-ethnic competition within an ethno-territorial unit
• Strengthened claim to ethno-nationalism: Uyghur political imagining given formal, territorial shape

You are a director commissioned by the Chinese Communist Party to create a film on ethnic relations in contemporary China. Pitch a title and a story.

• Panchen Lamas are living emanations of the buddha Amitabha
• The incarnation line began in the 17th century after the 5th Dalai Lama gave Chokyi Gyeltsen the title.
• Choekyi Gyaltsen (1938 – 1989) became the 10th Panchen Lama in 1949.

• What happened to the 10th Panchen Lama?
• How did he remember the Mao era? What are the turning points?
• Who is the intended audience of his speech? What effect did it have?