James Leibold,
Asian Ethnicity Journal
vol. 14 #1, 2013
The Sinophone research literature on ethnic, racial and national identity, or what in Chinese parlance is commonly (and confusingly) rendered as minzu, has grown exponentially in recent years. As part of China’s ongoing reform and opening up efforts, two-way academic exchanges have greatly enhanced the theoretical and empirical sophistication of the Chinese language scholarship, particularly as it relates to China’s more than 100 million ethnic minorities. In order to keep abreast of new research, Western scholars are in the habit of scanning the latest issues of Ethno-national Studies, the flagship publication of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, or numerous other academic journals associated with the PRC’s network of ‘ethnic tertiary institutions’, such as the Central Minzu University in Beijing. Yet, the diversification of media and academic outlets, as well as new communication technologies, have spawned new avenues for communicating research findings.
One of the most significant, and arguably overlooked, sources for ethnic research in China is the once irregular but since 2010 largely fortnightly Sociology of Ethnicity newsletter edited by Professor Ma Rong at Beijing University. With well over 100 back issues, the Newsletter was first ‘published’ in October 1995 under the masthead calligraphy of the late Fei Xiaotong, who along with Yang Kun and Lin Yaohua served as early patrons of the Newsletter. It had its origins as an informal bulletin for the Association of Sociology of Ethnicity , a sub-unit of the Sociology Society of China, but has long since become one of the most important and innovative repositories of Sinophone research and thought on ethnic, racial and national identity.
Along with his mentor Fei Xiaotong, Ma Rong has pioneered a distinctly sociological approach to the study of minzu since completing his PhD under Sidney Goldstein at Brown University in 1987. As outlined in the inaugural issue: The sociology of ethnicity is a branch of sociology, an interdisciplinary pursuit situated at the intersections of sociology and ethnology, whose aim is to employ modern sociological research methods to explore social
questions in multiethnic states and territories, as well as questions related to modernization and other issues in ethnic territories.Yet it is the Newsletter’s willingness to question the core assumptions underpinning PRC intellectual orthodoxy on ethnic theory, policy and practice, as well as established views in the West, that most clearly distinguishes the Newsletter from the formulaic, party-sanctioned scholarship published in Ethno-national Studies and other establishment journals. The fresh thought and cutting-edge research that appears in the pages of the Newsletter clearly benefits from its informal distribution channels. The Newsletter is freely available for download as a PDF file on a Beida library website, as well as several other locations across the Sinophone Internet, or via an email distribution network, thus bypassing more strenuous censorship and peer-review requirements that apply to
academic journals and books published inside the PRC.
Each issue contains an eclectic mix of original and mainly reprinted research articles, plus field reports, translations, book reviews, conference reports, and other academic announcements. They vary in lengthen but usually contain two to three substantial articles per issue that are drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines. Their focus runs
the gambit of issues related to minzu in China – such as the challenges associated with bilingual education in nomadic regions, the dangers of racial nationalism in contemporary China, the history of ethnic classification in the early PRC, and the management of religious affairs in Xinjiang, to name but a few – but also includes articles on ethnic issues outside of the PRC, such as recent pieces on the history and development of affirmative action policies in the USA and diasporic Ukrainian nationalism. There have been several special issues, with particular attention paid to ethnic policies in the former Soviet Union and their impact on its collapse, ethnic relations and nation-building during the late Qing and early Republican periods, and the PRC’s contemporary ethnic policies and related theories. Authors include some of the brightest and most interesting voices on ethnicity whether they are
based at PRC academic institutions or abroad. There is a real cosmopolitan feel to the Newsletter, with the translated works of leading international sociologists like John Rex, Susan Olzak, Michel Wieviorka and Robert
Cooley Angell appearing alongside top Chinese sociologists, historians and ethnographers. This brief review makes it difficult to convey the full breath, depth and sophistication of the research contained within the Newsletter. A few brief examples will have to suffice.
In July 2012, the Newsletter reprinted an article by leading Renmin University historian Huang Xingtao entitled “The ‘Chinese identity’ of Qing Dynasty Manchus: A Response to America’s ‘New Qing History”’. In this thought provoking and well researched piece, Huang seeks to rebalance what he argues is a distorted view of the Manchu-lead Qing dynasty among Western scholars. New Qing historians like Mark C. Elliott, Pamela Kyle Crossley, among others, have over emphasized the importance of minority ethnicity and the inner Asian frontier, Huang asserts, due to their use of Manchu and Mongolian language sources. For Huang, this perspective risks loosing sight of the way identity operated at the intellectual and political core of the Qing empire – favoring ruptures over continuities, the periphery over the center, and fragments over the whole. In contrast, Huang provides some interesting new evidence of ‘Chinese’ associational affinities among segments of the Manchu elite.
The English-language literature on ethnic relations in China rests on little large-scale, quantitative data, relying instead on ethnographic case studies, and at times anecdotal observations. Yet, with greater access and mobility, Chinese scholars are pioneering new methodological approaches and empirical data sources. One particularly fruitful area of inquiry is based on demographic statistics, with the Newsletter publishing a series of illuminating articles on inter-minzu marriage rates in China.
In 1999 Ma Rong asserted that inter-ethnic marriage rates are one of the best barometers of ethnic harmony and social cohesion, and based on 1990 census data argued that China’s mix-marriage rate of 3.3% was higher than both the former USSR and the USA. Yet as studies by both Ma Rong and a more recent survey based on 2000 census data by Li Xiaoxia demonstrates, this aggregated rate belies the marked diversity among different ethnic
groups and locations. While the Mongols, Manchus, She and other minorities exhibit exogamy rates as high as 50%, only 1.58% of Han men and women marry outside their ethnic group, a number that drops well below 1% in Han-dominated provinces like Guangdong, Anhui, and Sha’anxi. Among all 56 ethnic groups in China, the Muslim Uyghurs exhibit the lowest rate of exogamy at 1.05%, with religious, cultural and linguistic barriers contributing to the largely segregated nature of this community, especially in Southern Xinjiang.
Finally, following the deadly ethnic riots in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Newsletter carried a range of different analyses and commentaries of this apparent spike in inter-ethnic violence. Among the more insightful pieces, the Newsletter reprinted a draft conference paper by Zheng Yongnian and Shan Wei of the East Asian Institute at National University of Singapore, entitled “An Analysis of the Tibet and Xinjiang Riots in Light of the Singaporian Experience.” In the paper, which was subsequently published as a part of the Institute’s working papers series in Chinese, the authors explore the socio-political context in which the riots erupted, including the widening income gap between these two regions and coastal China, before suggesting that the ‘Singaporian model’ of ethnic policies might prove more useful than the PRC’s current USSR-inspired policies. The authors’ call for more emphasis on state-guided integration and a gradual weakening of the system of territorial-based ethnic autonomy echoes some of Professor Ma Rong’s own controversial ideas. But the scope and value of the Newsletter reaches well beyond any single individual or viewpoint, providing a dynamic platform for cutting-edge academic research on ethnic, racial and national identity, and thus making the Newsletter a must-read for those who think they understand the way `minzu’ operates in China, or anyone interested in ethnic issues more broadly conceived.
The author is associated with Latrobe University, Australia
