Beijing or the relentless fusion of ethnic minority identity with Han identity

By Olivier Guillard, a specialist in Asian issues, research associate at the Institut d'études de géopolitique appliquée, a researcher at CERIAS (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada), Director of Information at CRISIS24 (Paris), and lecturer (geopolitics; political science) at EDHEC Business School (Lille).  

The Rising Tide of 'Imperial Han' Nationalism in China: This extreme Han ethno-nationalist sentiment, once relegated to the fringe, is increasingly influential [1]. With these eloquent words - as faithful as they are to the dismaying realities of the individuals and communities concerned - a well-documented paper began, offering readers of The Diplomat magazine at the end of last year an uncompromising look at Beijing's contemporary designs regarding ethnic minorities in the former Middle Kingdom. In the summer of 2024, the least that can be said, if not written, is that China's central authorities have done little since then to reverse the trend and challenge this highly questionable Han nationalism.

With Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era enunciated in the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2017 serving as the guideline, the CCP is proceeding fast to steamroll the minority ethnic groups in China like Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims of diverse origin and merge their culture, religion and language with the dominant Han [2] Chinese culture.

Afraid that a federal system will split the Chinese nation, the Chinese Communist Party considers internal ethnic diversity to be a threat to its own supremacy and plans to deal with the problem of ethnic minorities in China by merging these ethnicities into the majority Han Chinese ethnicity. The CCP follows a highly centralized system and believes this will increase control of the CCP and help it reach every corner of China. The ultimate goal of this policy is to ensure that the minority ethnic groups in China can never challenge the leadership of the CCP or aspire to form an alternative leadership, as analysts have pointed out. The leaders of the CCP identify themselves with the Han Chinese culture, and want to feel safe by subsuming all other ethnic identities in China with the Han identity.

China's approach to ethnic minorities under the regime of President Xi is 'Sinicization;' making them to reject all "foreign influence," and force them to change their religion, manners and customs. The Xi Jinping Thought has given birth to the 'Five-Year Planning Outline for Persisting in the Sinification of Islam (2018-2022)' in China. Under this, different aspects of Islamic identity and culture are being subsumed in Han culture in an attempt to keep out alleged "foreign influence." The communist leaders of China consider Islam to be a religion of foreign origin and are not comfortable about it.

In Tibet, the subsuming of the culture of Tibetan Buddhists in Han Chinese culture has taken the shape of forcibly sending Tibetan children to boarding schools where they are taught only in Mandarin language and are forced to imbibe Han Chinese culture. According to a Tibet Action Institute estimate quoted in a Council of Foreign Relations study. 78 percent of Tibetan students between six and 18 years of age live in boarding schools; away from their families and taught primarily in Mandarin. The state monitors the daily operations of major monasteries, with facial recognition cameras posted outside, and reserves the right to disapprove an individual's application to take up religious orders. In 2018, CCP officials were given control of Larung Gar, one of the world's largest Buddhist study centres in the Sichuan province. In 2019, nearly half the centre was demolished, displacing about 6,000 monks.

Significantly, the Chinese rulers make a distinction between Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism and consider Chinese Buddhism to be a home-grown religious faith; many of the Han Chinese people themselves adhere to the Buddhist faith. The Chinese rulers do not trust the Tibetan people and consider Tibetan Buddhism, which is the tantric form of Buddhism, and consider it a faith of foreign origin.

In fact, this mistrust explodes the myth that the communist leaders of China try to sell to the world that Tibet has been a part of China since the ancient days. For, tantric Buddhism had originated in Tibet in the days of Padmasambhava and is very much the predominant indigenous religious faith of Tibet, from where it had spread to the southern and the western slopes of the Himalayas like Sikkim, Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. In Tibet, the communist rulers of China are afraid of the personality of the Dalai Lama who President of China Xi Jinping considers as a threat to his own personality. In Inner Mongolia, too, the CCP is trying to wipe out the Mongolian language by imposing on the ethnic Mongolians the language of the Han Chinese; Mandarin.

Ironically, the lands of the communities whose identities the mandarins of the CCP are now trying to obliterate had never been a part of China. These had been invaded and occupied by the Chinese army after the communist victory in China in 1948. Xinjiang had never been under the Han sphere of influence till its incorporation in the People's Republic of China in 1949. For large parts of its history, it had been under the rule of local Uighur leaders, Xinjiang had also passed under Mongol rule during the era of Genghis Khan. In its long history, Tibet has mostly been an independent country. At times Tibet had been under loose Chinese suzerainty. When the Chinese army invaded Lhasa in 1950 Tibet definitely had an independent existence. The Chinese communist leaders gained control of the region of Inner Mongolia in 1947 with Soviet support.

The people inhabiting these regions of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia had therefore never been of Han Chinese lineage. The communist leaders of China had conquered their territories by the force of arms and are now trying to subsume the linguistic, cultural and religious identities of these population groups in the Han Chinese identity by the cynic display of naked muscle power. Now the process of Sinicization of Buddhism and Islam is all about ensuring the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party, its ideology and the vision of the CCP of 'Chineseness.' Although the CCP swears by communism, its rabidly nationalistic Han Chinese outlook is far removed from the outlook of internationalism which communism professes.

The community of Hui Muslims of China are an unfortunate victim of the policy of the CCP under President Xi of Islam with Chinese characteristics though the Hui people are an indigenous community of China. This community reached China around the 7th century via trade routes. The Muslim traders settled in the coastal trading hubs, built mosques and shrines. During the Ming dynasty, the Han Chinese rulers had banned outsiders and Muslims from exhibiting their culture, hairstyles, clothing, language and surnames. These Muslims, the forefathers of the Hui Muslims who are now scattered throughout China, had assimilated themselves with the dominant Han culture; speaking Chinese and adopting Chinese names.

In the northern Ningxia region and in the Gansu province, home to large populations of Hui Muslims, as part of a process officially known as "consolidation," the architectural designs of mosques have been changed to make them look more 'Chinese.' The minarets of Arabic-style Mosque have been shortened. Their domes have been removed and replaced with pagoda-style roofs. Muslim restaurants have been required to remove their Arabic-language 'halal' signs and replace them with a Chinese-language equivalent.

The Uighur customs and culture in the Xinjiang region have in any case been under attack since the days of the Cultural Revolution in China from 1966 to 1976. Since 2017, in the Xi Jinping regime, Uighur Muslims have been sent to detention centres to "protect" them from external cultural impact; like not adhering to the family planning policy of the government, growing a long beard or wearing a skull cap. Uighur women have been subjected to forced sterilization, abortions and forced implantation of intrauterine devices.

''Another cultural revolution is in full swing in the People's Republic of China (PRC). This is not the purported class revolution Mao advocated in the past, but rather a wave of Han cultural and racial nationalism.Xi's new approach to ethnic minority policy repudiates the Party's past promise to allow minority nationalities to exercise political and cultural autonomy, becoming "masters of their own house'', an Australian academic rightly lamented last spring [3]. In view of the recent inclinations emanating from Beijing's (Han) power circles [4], we can only agree with this painful opinion (for China's ethnic minorities first and foremost).

[1] The Diplomat, December 2, 2023.

[2] The Han is China's largest ethnic group, accounting for over 90 percent of the country's population.

[3] James Leibold, ''New Textbook reveals Xi Jinping's doctrine of Han-centric nation-building'', The Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, Volume: 24, Issue: 11, May 24, 2024.

[4] ''China's ethnic policy chief says minority artists must focus on common national identity'', South China Morning Post, August 5, 2024. In this highly informative article, the author points out that China's top ethnic policy official has recently criticized "self-centered" artworks about ethnic minorities and said that they should focus on the common national identity…