[Feature: How to Perceive China] Masahiro Hoshino: How to Perceive China's Ethnic Minority Issues

In Chinese history, which has seen repeated changes of dynasties between different ethnic groups, the political and social fluctuations that occurred in the approximately 100 years since the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the birth of the Republic of China in 1912 were a process of absolutizing the political power of the Han Chinese as the majority. This great upheaval was driven by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding on July 1, 2021.

Since its founding in 1921, the CCP has wavered on how to govern ethnic minority regions—whether to adopt a federal system that recognizes the self-determination rights of ethnic minorities or a system that grants them autonomy under a centralized system—depending on its relationship with the Kuomintang and the development of the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the war ended and the CCP won the civil war against the Kuomintang, it decided on a policy of governing ethnic minority regions under a centralized system from the perspective of prioritizing external security, and established the People's Republic of China as a non-federal state.

After the founding of the nation, the CCP's ethnic policy was integrated into the political system as the Regional Ethnic Autonomy system. Ethnic minority regions were reorganized into ethnic autonomous areas such as autonomous regions, autonomous prefectures, and autonomous counties according to their administrative level, and ethnic minority people living in these areas were granted a certain degree of autonomy and preferential measures.

However, residents of ethnic autonomous areas included not only ethnic minorities but also many Han Chinese, although the population ratio varied by region. Therefore, the CCP presented two principles that were difficult to reconcile: preferential measures for ethnic minorities and equality for all ethnic groups.

During the Mao Zedong era, when equality was pursued, preferential measures for ethnic minorities did not function effectively. For example, in Tibet, where the introduction of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy system had been postponed due to its political, social, and cultural peculiarities, socialization proceeded rapidly. After the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India in March 1959, Tibet was incorporated into the Regional Ethnic Autonomy system as the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965.

In the 1980s, when the Reform and Opening-up began, reflecting on the Mao era, preferential measures for ethnic minorities were legally guaranteed, and ethnic minorities were appointed as leaders of ethnic autonomous areas. However, since legal rules do not apply to CCP organizations, the post of CCP Secretary, who holds real power, is held by Han Chinese in major ethnic autonomous areas. In China under an authoritarian regime, ethnic minorities are placed under a double rule: the one-party system of the CCP and the monopoly of political power by the Han Chinese. This hollowed-out form of ethnic autonomy has led to the provocation of ethnic unrest.

Even after the Xi Jinping administration started in November 2012, ethnic issues occurred frequently. Incidents related to Uyghurs occurred even outside the autonomous region, such as the October 2013 Tiananmen Square vehicle attack and the March 2014 Kunming railway station attack in Yunnan Province. What particularly shocked the Xi Jinping administration was the explosion at Urumqi South Railway Station on April 30, 2014, which was the final day of Mr. Xi Jinping's visit to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In response to the frequent occurrence of such incidents, the government further strengthened control over ethnic minorities, such as by launching the "Special Action to Crack Down on Violent Terrorist Activities with Xinjiang as the Main Battlefield" from May 23, 2014.

The background of the CCP's hardline ethnic minority policy is also related to structural reasons surrounding ethnic minorities. First, the issue of ethnic minorities in China has a structure directly linked to external security. The total area of ethnic autonomous areas accounts for 64% of China's land area and includes most of the land borders. China is adjacent to neighboring countries through ethnic autonomous areas such as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Tibet Autonomous Region, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and is placed in an environment where it must formulate ethnic minority policies from the perspective of how to ensure national integration. Next, to stabilize ethnic autonomous areas where the influx of the Han population is progressing, it has become an important political task to prevent the dissatisfaction of Han residents from exploding, even more so than that of ethnic minority people. In the July 2009 Urumqi riots, after the Uyghurs rioted, the Han Chinese retaliated with even larger demonstrations. It is extremely rare for inter-ethnic conflict to manifest so clearly. If preferential measures to resolve the dissatisfaction of ethnic minorities face backlash from the Han Chinese, it could lower the CCP's governing ability. However, even if the police or military are mobilized to suppress ethnic minorities, the structure is such that critical voices are unlikely to arise from the Han Chinese, who make up 90% of the total population.

In recent years, a debate has emerged over whether to maintain the current ethnic minority policy centered on the Regional Ethnic Autonomy system. Proponents of policy change argue that although boundaries between ethnic groups in China have historically been ambiguous and flexible, current ethnic policies excessively emphasize differences between groups, which works disadvantageously in forming a national-level sense of community, such as the commonality of the Chinese nation. While the ethnic policy has not been officially changed at this point, the institutional reforms of the Party and state in March 2018 placed both the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and the State Administration for Religious Affairs, which are deeply involved with ethnic minorities, under the umbrella of the United Front Work Department of the CCP Central Committee. Furthermore, in December 2020, a Han Chinese leader took office as the Director of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, a post that had been held by ethnic minority leaders for nearly 70 years.

In this way, China's ethnic minority policy is undergoing a de facto policy shift from a policy of respecting the individuality of each ethnic group to a policy of promoting the integration and fusion of each ethnic group more than ever before.

China's ethnic minority issues have previously attracted global attention as individual human rights issues, such as the Tibet issue before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. However, the strong interest and condemnation shown by the international community toward China's ethnic minority issues and policies in recent years is unprecedented.

The catalyst for this was the operation of "Vocational Education and Training Centers" in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This name is based on China's official view, and China explains that the purpose of these facilities is to remove the soil where frequent "terrorism" and religious extremism spread, improve knowledge levels to promote employment and increase income, and thereby stabilize Xinjiang.

Based on the current stage of ethnic minority policy discussed so far, the Uyghur issue symbolized by the "Vocational Education and Training Centers" can be said to be a problem that was bound to happen. In China, when problems related to ethnic minorities such as Uyghurs occur, there is a tendency to perceive them as security issues related to national integration. Regarding the Uyghur issue, which is particularly related to Islam, the government has strengthened control over religious leaders and places of religious activity, believing that religious issues lie at the bottom. China takes the position that what is recognized in the country is not "freedom of religion" but "freedom to believe in a religion," and that religious doctrines should be subordinate to national rules. They believed that by strictly managing religious activities such as Islam, which easily form communities across borders, they could suppress the radicalization of Uyghur society and the occurrence of "terrorism." However, when they began to perceive that young people and women, whose participation in religious activities is relatively low, were highly involved in ethnic incidents, they likely judged that managing religious activities alone was weak in maintaining public order. For China, the establishment of "Vocational Education and Training Centers" is a highly political policy aimed at directly incorporating young people and women to stabilize Xinjiang.

Regarding these facilities, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that nearly one million Uyghurs are being forcibly detained, and parts of internal Chinese government documents allegedly obtained by the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) have also been made public. Although it is reported that the operation of these facilities has already ceased, countries like the United States have strongly condemned China's policy as "genocide" and imposed sanctions on Chinese companies and government agencies involved in the Uyghur issue.

International global companies operating in Xinjiang are also facing strong criticism for profiting from the forced labor of ethnic minorities. Some of these companies have moved to review their relationships with related suppliers, but recalling that the essence of the Uyghur issue lies in protecting the culture and enriching the lives of the Uyghur people, it is necessary to move toward ensuring appropriate employment for Uyghur people rather than just cutting ties with related suppliers. Furthermore, this awareness needs to be shared not only by companies operating in Xinjiang but by all individuals and companies conducting economic activities in China.

The ethnic autonomous areas spreading across China's periphery are regions extremely rich in diversity from all perspectives, including lifestyle, religion, language, and values. How China faces this diverse society can be said to be a litmus test for how China intends to behave in the international community.

In an essay I published exactly ten years ago in 2011, I concluded: "China's ethnic issues have a structure that is linked to the transformation of the regional order in East Asia. As a member of East Asia, Japan must face the political challenges arising from China's ethnic issues while considering a desirable future vision for the region" (Ryosei Kokubun ed., "China Now," Iwanami Shinsho). This conclusion, through the analysis of the Tibet and Uyghur issues, advocated the necessity for Japan to face China's ethnic minority issues not just within the framework of individual issues like human rights, but from the perspective of larger global structural changes. It seems that now is exactly the time to provide an answer to the challenge of how to perceive China's ethnic minority issues.