Martin Jacques - When China Rules the World

By curbing Han chauvinism, eschewing the claim that the Han represent the core of China and granting the ethnic minorities full legal equality, [783] [783] Harrell, Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers , p. 23. the Communist government has avoided the worst assimilationist excesses of the Nationalist period. Under Mao, the language of race was replaced by that of class. However, the underlying attitudes of the Han have remained little changed. There is an ingrained prejudice amongst great swathes of the Han Chinese, including the highly educated, towards the ethnic minorities. According to Stevan Harrell, a writer on China ’s ethnic minorities, there is ‘an innate, almost visceral Han sense of superiority’. [784] [784] Ibid., p. 25. He quotes the example of a Han official who had worked on a government forestry project in the middle of a Yi area and who, despite living there for twenty years, had never tried Yi food on the grounds that it was dirty and would make him sick. Far from the ethnic minorities being seen as equals, they are regarded as inferior because they are less modern. There is an underlying belief that they have to be raised up to the level of the Han, whose culture is considered as a model for the minorities to follow and emulate. [785] [785] Ibid., pp. 25-7; Zhao, Nation-State by Construction , pp. 202-8. Also, ‘ China: Minority Exclusion, Marginalization and Rising Tensions’, Human Rights in China , Minority Rights Group International, 2007. Their cultures are recognized at a superficial level, for example in terms of traditional dress and dance, but not treated as the equal of the Han in more substantive matters. In essence, this is not so different from the kind of Confucian ethnically infused cultural hubris that informed the imperial era. Although racialized ways of thought became less explicit after the 1949 Revolution, they never disappeared, remaining an integral, if subterranean, part of the Chinese common sense; and, since the beginning of the reform period, they have been on the rise in both popular culture and official circles. [786] [786] Dikötter, ‘Racial Discourse in China ’, pp. 25-6; Jenner, ‘Race and History in China ’, pp. 70, 73-6.

Xingjiang and Tibet provide the best insight into Chinese attitudes towards difference, with over half the population Uighur or Tibetan respectively, and in both instances ethnically and racially very different from the Han. The anti-Han riots by Tibetans in Lhasa, and in neighbouring provinces to Tibet, in March 2008 were the worst seen for many decades and a powerful reminder of the simmering tensions that exist between Tibetans and Han. There were over 120 separate protests in the various Tibetan areas, the great majority non-violent.

Tibet was originally brought under loose Chinese influence by the Qing dynasty in the early decades of the eighteenth century, but its rule grew weaker until towards the end of the century the Qing intervened again and established a form of tributary rule. In the nineteenth century Chinese influence slowly waned until the Qing eventually reasserted control in 1910. Tibet enjoyed considerable autonomy in the decades after the 1911 Revolution, when China was in a state of division. Following the Chinese invasion in 1950 a new agreement was reached, but the promised autonomy never mat erialized and the resulting tension culminated in a major uprising in 1959 which was crushed by China, with the Dalai Lama, together with some 80,000 Tibetans, going into exile. Most countries now recognize Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, including the UK as of October 2008. The Dalai Lama, who accepts Chinese sovereignty, claims a much larger territory as Tibet than is presently contained within the Tibet Autonomous Region: the TAR is an administrative rather than ethnic region, with around half of Tibetans living in neighbouring provinces, as well as in India and Nepal.

Map 10. Tibet

The Chinese strategy towards Tibet has comprised a range of different approaches. It has pursued a strategy of repression and forced assimilation, which has included refusing to recognize the Dalai Lama, restricting the role of Buddhist priests, and forbidding Tibetan students and government workers from visiting monasteries or participating in religious ceremonies. The six-year-old boy who was named Panchen Lama, the second holiest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, by the Dalai Lama in 1995 was apprehended by the Chinese authorities and has not been seen or heard of since, the Chinese instead nominating a different boy. In addition, China has encouraged large-scale Han migration to Tibet in an effort to alter the ethnic balance of the population and thereby weaken the position of the Tibetans, who for the most part live in the rural areas and in segregated urban ghettos, whereas the Han, who comprise over half the population of Lhasa, are concentrated in the urban areas. Given the rapid pace of Han migration, encouraged by the new direct rail link between Beijing and Lhasa, it is possible that the proportion of Han in the TAR could rise rapidly in the future. In what appears to have been a typical case of divide and rule, China chose to dismember the Tibetan population by putting heavily Tibetan areas under non-Tibetan jurisdiction in the neighbouring provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu. On the other hand, China has made a major effort to generate economic growth and raise living standards in the belief that this would help win the acquiescence of Tibetans, with Tibet being heavily subsidized by Beijing. Since 1950 Tibetan living standards and life expectancy have been transformed, with economic growth averaging 12 per cent over the last seven years and incomes rising by more than 10 per cent over the last six years. The Tibetans are widely viewed by the Chinese as a backward and primitive people who should be grateful for the fact that the Chinese are seeking to bring them civilization and development. [787] [787] For a very sensitive view of Tibetan culture, and the nature of Chinese attitudes, see Sun Shuyun, A Year in Tibet: A Voyage of Discovery (London: HarperPress, 2008), for example, pp. 2–3, 37-8. Also, Geoff Dyer, ‘The Great Brawl of China ’, Financial Times , 11 July 2008. This is eloquently illustrated by the Confucian-like pronouncement of Zhang Qingli, Communist Party secretary of the TAR, that: ‘The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need… the central party committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans.’ [788] [788] Jim Yardley, ‘After the Fury in Tibet, Firm Hand Trembles’, International Herald Tribune , 18 March 2008.

The riots of 10 March 2008, which took place on the anniversary of the failed uprising in 1959 and were by far the worst since that occasion, show that this strategy has singularly failed. Tibetan rioters attacked Han shops and businesses in the old Tibetan quarter of Lhasa, setting them alight and killing many Chinese. The protests continued for five days, with around 100 Tibetan and Chinese deaths. The government blamed the riots on a conspiracy led by the Dalai Lama, accusing him, in traditional Chinese racial terms, of being a ‘wolf in monk’s robes’, ‘a wolf with a human face and heart of a beast’, ‘a jackal wrapped in a habit’ and the ‘scum of Buddhism’. [789] [789] Howard W. French, ‘Again, Beijing Cues Up Its Propaganda Machine’, International Herald Tribune , 4 April 2008. The prime minister Wen Jiabao asserted that the protests were ‘organized, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique’. [790] [790] Jim Yardley and Somini Sengupta, ‘ Beijing Blames the Dalai Lama’, International Herald Tribune , 19 March 2008. The two biggest Tibetan grievances concern their lack of cultural and religious freedom, and Han migration. They believe that they are systematically being turned into a minority in their own homeland and deeply resent their lack of cultural and religious freedom. The Tibetans see the Han population as having been by far the biggest beneficiaries of the economic prosperity: the Han live in the urban areas where economic change has been concentrated, run most of the businesses and shops, and dominate positions of power and privilege in the administrative apparatus. Relations between the Chinese and Tibetans are characterized by disdain, distrust and resentment, ‘by stereotyping and prejudice and, among Tibetans, by deep feelings of subjugation, repression and fear’. [791] [791] Howard W. French, ‘Side By Side in China, While Still Worlds Apart’, International Herald Tribune , 20 March 2008. ‘Our government has wasted our money in helping those white-eyed wolves,’ commented Wang Zhongyong, a Han manager of a Lhasa handicraft shop that was destroyed in the riots. ‘The relationship between Han and Tibetan is irreconcilable,’ said Yuan Qinghai, a Lhasa taxi driver. ‘We don’t have a good impression of them, as they are lazy and they hate us, for, as they say, taking away what belongs to them. In their mind showering once or twice in their life is sacred, but to Han it is filthy and unacceptable.’ [792] [792] Quoted in ibid.