Balkinization: China's autonomous zones

China's autonomous zones

Lauren Hilgers

On a typical tourist circuit through China, one of the most common evening attractions is a minority show. This is not a guarantee that minorities will be performing in the show; it is, instead, an exhibition of minority culture. Performers don traditional minority outfits, sing traditional minority songs and dance to a backdrop of laser-lights and subtly-added techno beats.

However over-the-top these shows can get, the story that they tell—that of the happy minority group—is an important one. Since the founding of the PRC, China’s 55 minority groups have been an important part of national identity. And since the 1950s, China has been carefully creating a body of laws and regulations aimed at giving ethnic minorities a degree of independence. According to reports from human rights groups, however, these laws are getting lost in the shuffle.

In China, there are exactly 55 recognized ethnic minorities. This was established in the early days of the People’s Republic, when the country took applications for state-recognized minority groups. They received more than 400 applications, but using criteria based on common language, geographical region, economy and culture, the government whittled the number down to the more manageable 55. It’s worth noting that minorities make up around 9% of China’s population. The country is overwhelmingly Han (prompting some of my Chinese friends to claim that China does not suffer from racism at all, only “placism” in which, for example, Shanghai residents discriminate against Han Chinese migrants from other provinces).

While they are a small percentage of the population, minorities cover a great deal of the Chinese map. According to Article 4 of China’s constitution, large groups of minorities living in the same area are entitled to their own autonomous zones. There are five existing autonomous regions (including Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia), over 30 autonomous prefectures and 120 autonomous counties.

Autonomous areas are intended, according to a white paper released by the government in 2005, to give minorities “the right to administer the internal affairs of the ethnic group and be the masters of their own areas.”

The unique rights of China’s minorities were first outlined during the 1950s, when Inner Mongolia was created as the country’s first autonomous zone. Each autonomous area has the freedom, under China’s current constitution and the 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law (REAL), to develop their own oral and written languages and maintain authority over their own customs and traditions. Minorities within these regions have the ability, under the law, to control their own natural resources and are granted greater control over their own economic development. They are, in theory, free to administer their internal affairs (subject to the approval of China’s National People’s Congress) and amend central directives to fit local conditions.

With approval from the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, autonomous areas can also establish self-governing regulations, setting up the structure of regional governance as well as plans for economic and cultural development.

Implementation of these laws, according to the 2005 White Paper, “is critical to enhancing the relationship of equality, unity and mutual assistance among different ethnic groups, to upholding national unification, and to accelerating the development of places where regional autonomy is practiced and promoting their progress.”

While some weaknesses are built into the law itself—relying on the NPC’s approval for local regulations limits the scope of autonomy—in many cases the framework of the REAL appears to have been ignored entirely. The party secretaries in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have been imported from other provinces. Officials brought in from outside the regions reportedly bring in higher salaries than their local counterparts. Education, in theory an enterprise left to the minority, is in fact closely controlled by the central government.

Human rights organizations have also complained about the treatment of the environment in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, where grassland has actively been turned to farmland and nomadic groups have been encouraged, or sometimes forced, to settle. Economic development has also, in many regions, been left largely to Han Chinese. Even protecting cultural sites has proved difficult.

China faces a difficult task in addressing the needs of minority groups in the country and it is not the only Asian country that faces clear ethnic divisions along geographic lines. With accessible courts and even implementation, the REAL could provide a framework for addressing the concerns of those groups in China that no longer fit into the myth of the happy minority. For now, however, China’s central authorities are running the show.

Posted 12:21 AM by Lauren Hilgers [link]