Ethnic cleavages in China
For a country where the official line is that minorities are merely cultural artifacts of ancient times (well, except, perhaps, in Tibet), there is a surprising amount of dissatisfaction around the edges of the "central kingdom."Ethnic Protests in China Have Lengthy Roots
The Mongol nomads who have ranged across these blustery grasslands for millenniums have long had a tempestuous relationship with their Han Chinese neighbors to the south…
By the time Mao’s Communist rebels declared victory in 1949, the Mongolians who occupied what became the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China had been by and large pacified through Han immigration, intermarriage and old-fashioned repression.
But the ethnic Mongolian protests that have swept a number of cities in recent weeks are a sobering reminder that government largess, assimilation or an iron fist cannot entirely extinguish the yearnings of some of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, who account for 8 percent of the country’s population…
Although the immediate trigger of the demonstrations was a hit-and-run accident in which a Han coal truck driver struck and killed a Mongolian herder in early May, the underlying enmity can be tied to longstanding grievances that spilled out during interviews with more than a dozen Mongolians last week: the ecological destruction wrought by an unprecedented mining boom, a perception that economic growth disproportionately benefits the Han and the rapid disappearance of Inner Mongolia’s pastoral tradition…
“The Mongolian situation is very worrying for the Chinese leadership because you can’t just throw money at an issue like ethnic identity,” said Minxin Pei, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College in California…
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Labels: China, cleavages, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:09 AM
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China Pledges to Improve Lives in Inner Mongolia
"China's central government pledged Wednesday to improve living conditions for farmers and herders in Inner Mongolia while continuing to promote the development of the border region that recently saw its biggest demonstrations in two decades…
"The statement did not mention the recent demonstrations, but the outcome of the high-level meeting is in line with Beijing's well-honed strategy for responding to protests: after deploying overwhelming force to prevent more demonstrations, address some grievances and pledge to improve lives while maintaining the need for development.
"Similar tactics have been used in response to protesting Tibetans and Turkic Muslim Uighurs, as well as in dealing with the tens of thousands of large-scale disturbances by people in the country's Han Chinese majority…"
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