Organizers: Keng-Fong Pang, National University of Malaysia; Barry Sautman,
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Chair: A. Thomas Grunfeld, SUNY, Empire State College
Discussant: F. Kris Lehman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Part two of "Re-Assessing China's Minority Policies and Social Relations in the 1990s" complements the first panel by seeking to explore beyond stated policies in specific localities. Consisting of primarily anthropologists and historians with solid ethnographic data among minorities in China, the panelists theorize actual minority-majority social relations on the ground.
Naran Bilik, an indigenous anthropologist, goes beyond old political grounds and examines the impact of the changing economic landscape in Inner Mongolia on current Mongol-Han relations. He also explores urban-grassland differences in the unequal processes of Sinicization and Mongolisation. From an unusual angle on minority-majority relations, Stevan Harrell examines the situation of poor Han peasants who live as a minority population among numerically dominant minority populations in Southwest China. How do these poor Han people relate to and interact with minorities in whose midst they have settled? Colin Mackerras presents new data and analyses on both intra-Muslim (specifically Hui, Uygur, Kazak, and Tajik) and Han-Muslim social relations in northwestern China in the light of recent political developments. Finally, Keng-Fong Pang analyzes the politically sensitive topic of ethnic conflicts in Hainan Island and examines the real impact of unforgiven and unforgotten ethnic conflict on everyday social relations among the Austronesian-speaking Muslims, minority Li, and majority Han. Kris Lehman, whose multi-disciplinary and China-Southeast Asia ethnological expertise will be invaluable, will contribute to this panel as the discussant.
Mongol-Han Relations in a New Configuration of Social Evolution
Naran Bilik, Institute of Nationalities Research, Beijing
With a huge wave of marketization in China, economically bound individualism is changing the face of the country. The rebuilding of Han-minority relations is inevitable. In the recent past, the core of Mongol-Han relations was based mainly on political events and dealings. Now its foundations are changing to economics. If the former involved moving along the dimension of political collectivization and group imagination, the latter is taking the course of economic regionalism and individualistic pragmatism.
In the new configuration of Mongol-Han relations, both sides make full use of symbolism to serve economic ends. Political power is no longer understood as emotional. It is something that has to be converted into economic capital. Sinicization is accelerating among the Mongols, and different interest groups have formed among both Mongols and Han. Provincialism and regionalism, sustained and nourished by economic considerations and individual competition, are reshaping Mongol-Han relations. The conflicts between herding areas and agricultural areas are intense, while those between urban residents of different ethnic origins are less fierce than during the Cultural Revolution. The trend of Mongol-Han relations is a lopsided evolution: there is far more Sinicization than Mongolization, considering the state of language communications, political power, economic resources, widely accepted symbolic space, population size and geographical importance. However, we still cannot jump to the conclusion that the Mongols are suffering an identity crisis because ethnic identities are ultimately psychological and ethnic identities can always change with space and over time.
Being Poor, Peripheral, Outnumbered, and Han
Stevan Harrell, University of Washington
Throughout the "minority areas" (shaosu minzu diqu )of southwest China live scattered families and neighborhoods of Han Chinese peasants. Most researchers know little about these people, since the object of their research is to examine "minority cultures." This paper is an attempt to open a window on the lives of these "majority minorities" and their relationships with the local "minority majorities" who control resources and local politics.
This paper, based on visits and interviewing in these Han communities in the course of working on projects about ethnic relations, proposes hypotheses for further research, and presents preliminary evidence from fieldwork in China's Southwest in support of these hypotheses: (1) Isolated Han living in minority areas are disenfranchised by the government's local autonomy policy, and tend to be poorer than their neighbors; (2) There are two kinds of isolated Han populations-economic refugees who have migrated to remote areas in search of economic security and forced migrants brought as slaves or war captives; (3) Economic refugee Han tend to compensate for poverty and disenfranchisement by adopting airs of cultural superiority and by being less accommodating to surrounding cultures and traditions than minority peoples are to Han traditions; (4) Forced migrant, or former slave, Han tend to acculturate to the locally dominant culture.
Han-Muslim and Intra-Muslim Social Relations in Northwestern China
Colin Mackerras, Griffith University, Australia
Based on research visits to western and northwest China between 1992 and 1995, this paper focuses principally on two sets of social relations in the regions of Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu: first, relations among the various Muslim communities (particularly between the Hui and the Uygurs, Kazaks and Tajiks) and second, relations between the Muslims and the Han. These relations will be analyzed within the context of minority policies instituted and implemented in these regions. Additionally, the paper will comment on the relation between religion on the one hand and gender relations and the arts on the other.
Using specific examples drawn from these three areas it will propose: (1) that in general the influence of Islam in such social relations is considerably stronger than earlier studies have suggested; (2) that the impact of Islam varies considerably in a number of ways, including from nationality to nationality and from urban to countryside: (3) that tensions between revived Islam and the early stages of modernity are just as important as those between Islam and the Communist Party; (4) that the Muslim communities' transnational ties with foreign Muslims across the borders in recent years have had a major impact on China's relations with neighboring Muslim nation-states; but, finally, (5) the breakup of China due to religious and ethnic strife is not likely in the near term.
Unforgiven and Remembered: The Impact of Ethnic Conflicts in Everyday Muslim-Han
Social Relations in Hainan Island
Keng-Fong Pang, National University of Malaysia
Ethnic conflicts between and among minorities and Han populations occur frequently enough in the People's Republic of China to warrant a closer examination of their impact on everyday social relations.
Based on my research among the Austronesian-speaking Muslims (Utsat or Hainan Hui) in Hainan Island between 1987 and 1994, this paper focuses on the nature and frequency of ethnic conflicts of varying seriousness. It analyzes how these ethnic conflicts, remembered and unforgiven in part because of unsatisfactory resolution, affect Utsat's everyday social relations with the Han and other minority groups by asking the following questions:
How effectively have minority nationality policies in China managed and anticipated social problems which are precursors to erupted ethnic violence and conflicts? How have local state authorities and state-appointed minority officials dealt with participants of ethnic conflicts when it does happen? What are the reasons for recurrent ethnic conflicts in this locality? How do memories of unresolved conflicts affect both Han and Utsat perceptions of one another as well as their actual social relations? Has the abolition of the minority autonomous region in Hainan and increased economic opportunities as a Special Economic Zone improved or worsened inter-ethnic relations? My analysis of these issues will draw on practice/structuration theories as well as ethnomethodogical and phenomenological insights.