Ethnic minorities in China are the non-Han population in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The PRC officially recognizes 55 ethnic minority groups within China in addition to the Han majority. , the combined population of officially-recognized minority groups comprised 8.89% of the population of Mainland China. In addition to these officially-recognized ethnic minority groups, there are Chinese nationals who privately classify themselves as members of unrecognized ethnic groups, such as the very small Chinese Jewish, Tuvan, and Ili Turk communities, as well as the much larger Oirat and Japanese communities.
In Chinese, 'ethnic minority' has translated to (), wherein () means 'nationality' or 'nation' (as in ethnic group)—in line with the Soviet concept of ethnicity—and () means 'minority'.Binggao, Jin. 1988. "When Does The Word 'Minority Nationality' [Shaoshu Minzu] [First] Appear in Our Country?," translated by Tibet Information Network. Bulletin of the History of the Tibet Communist Party 1(19). p. 45 ff.Chang, Ntxheb. "Conclusion: Splendid China and Being Minzu ." Being Shaoshu Minzu in Contemporary China. US: Boston College. via Mediakron. Since the anthropological concept of ethnicity does not precisely match the Chinese or Soviet concepts, some scholars use the neologism zúqún (, 'ethnic group') to unambiguously refer to ethnicity. Including shǎoshù mínzú, Sun Yat-sen used the term zhōnghuá mínzú (, 'Chinese nation' or 'Chinese nationality') to reflect his belief that all of China's ethnic groups were parts of a single Chinese nation.Landis, Dan, and Rosita D. Albert. 2012. Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: International Perspectives. Springer. . p. 182 (archived).
The ethnic minority groups officially recognized by the PRC include those residing within mainland China, as well as Taiwanese indigenous peoples pursuant to its sovereign claim over Taiwan. However, the PRC does not accept the term people or its variations, since it might suggest that Han people are not indigenous to Taiwan, or that Taiwan is not historically a part of China. Also, where the Republic of China (ROC) government in Taiwan, as of 2020, officially recognises 16 Taiwanese indigenous tribes, the PRC classifies them all under a single ethnic group, the Gāoshān (, 'high mountain') minority, out of reluctance to recognize ethnic classifications derived from the work of Japanese anthropologists during the Japanese rule. This is despite the fact that not all Taiwanese indigenous peoples actually inhabit the mountains; for example, the Tao people traditionally inhabit the island of Lanyu. The regional governments of Hong Kong and Macau do not use this ethnic classification system, so figures by the PRC government exclude these two territories.
History of ethnicity in China
Early history
Throughout much of recorded Chinese history, there was little attempt by Chinese authors to separate the concepts of nationality, culture, and ethnicity. Those outside of the reach of imperial control and dominant patterns of Chinese culture were thought of as separate groups of people regardless of whether they would today be considered as a separate ethnicity. The self-conceptualization of Han largely revolved around this center-periphery cultural divide. Thus, the process of Sinicization throughout history had as much to do with the spreading of imperial rule and culture as it did with actual ethnic migration.
This understanding persisted (with some changes during the Qing dynasty due to the importation of Western ideas) until the Communists seized power in 1949. Their understanding of minorities had been heavily influenced by the policies of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his 1913 pamphlet on the subject—and they also influenced the Communist regimes in the neighbouring countries of Vietnam and LaosMichaud J., 2009 Handling Mountain Minorities in China, Vietnam and Laos : From History to Current Issues. Asian Ethnicity 10(1): 25–49.—but the Soviet definition of minorities did not cleanly map onto the Chinese people's historical definition of minorities. Soviet thinking about minorities was based on the belief that a nation consisted of people who spoke and wrote a common language, people whose culture was historic, and historic territory. Therefore, the people who inhabited each nation had the theoretical right to secede from a proposed federated government. This differed from the previous way of thinking mainly in that instead of defining all those under imperial rule as Chinese, the nation (as defined as a space upon which power is projected) and ethnicity (the identity of the governed) were now separate; being under central rule no longer automatically meant being defined as Chinese. The Soviet model as applied to China gave rise to the autonomous regions in China; these areas were thought to be their own nations that had theoretical autonomy from the central government.
During World War II, the American Asiatic Association published an entry in the 40th volume of their academic journal, Asia, concerning the problem of whether Chinese Muslims were Chinese or a separate 'ethnic minority', and the factors which led to either classification. It tackled the question of why Muslims who were Chinese were considered a different race from other Chinese, and the separate question of whether all Muslims in China were united into one race. The first problem was posed with a comparison to Chinese Buddhists, who were not considered a separate race. It concluded that the reason Chinese Muslims were considered separate was because of different factors like religion, culture, military feudalism, and that considering them a "racial minority" was wrong. It also came to the conclusion that the Japanese military spokesman was the only person who was propagating the false assertion that Chinese Muslims had "racial unity", which was disproved by the fact that Muslims in China were composed of multitudes of different races, separate from each other as were the "Germans and English", such as the Mongol Hui of Hezhou, Salar Hui of Qinghai, and Chan Tou Hui of Turkistan. The Japanese were trying to spread the lie that Chinese Muslims were one race, in order to propagate the claim that they should be separated from China into an "independent political organization."
Distinguishing nationalities in the PRC Early documents of the People's Republic of China (PRC), such as the 1982 constitution,Constitution of the People's Republic of China , 4 December 1982. Retrieved 27 February 2007. followed the Soviet practice of identifying 'nationalities' in the sense of ethnic groups (the concept is not to be confused with state citizenship).Moseley, George. "China's Fresh Approach to the National Minority Question." The China Quarterly. The Chinese term (), made during the Republican period, translates this Soviet concept. The English translation (common in official documents) of 'nationality' again follows Soviet practice; in order to avoid confusion, however, alternative phraseology such as 'ethnicity' or 'ethnic group' is often used. Since the anthropological concept of ethnicity does not precisely match the Chinese or Soviet concepts (which, after all, are defined and regulated by the state), some scholars use the neologism zuqun (, 'ethnic group') to unambiguously refer to ethnicity.
After 1949, a team of social scientists was assembled to enumerate the various mínzú. An immediate difficulty was that identities "on the ground" did not necessarily follow logically from things like shared languages or cultures; two neighboring regions might seem to share a common culture, and yet insist on their distinct identities. Since this would lead to absurd results—every village could hardly send a representative to the National People's Congress—the social scientists attempted to construct coherent groupings of minorities using language as the main criterion for differentiation. Thus some villages with very different cultural practices and histories were lumped together under the same ethnonym. For example, the "Zhuang" ethnic group largely served as a catch-all for various hill villages in Guangxi province.
The actual census taking of who was and was not a minority further eroded the neat differentiating lines the social scientists had drawn up. Individual ethnic status was often awarded based on family tree histories. If one had a father (or mother, for ethnic groups that were considered matrilineal) that had a surname considered to belong to a particular ethnic group, then one was awarded the coveted minority status. This had the result that villages that had previously thought of themselves as homogenous and essentially Han were now divided between those with ethnic identity and those without.
The team of social scientists that assembled the list of all the ethnic groups also described what they considered to be the key differentiating attributes between each group, including culture, custom, and language. The center then used this list of attributes to select representatives of each group to perform on television and radio in an attempt to reinforce the government's narrative of China as a multi-ethnic state and to prevent the culture of the minority ethnic groups from assimilating by the Han and the rest of the world.
Under this process, 39 ethnic groups were recognized by the first national census in 1954. This further increased to 54 by the second national census in 1964, with the Lhoba group added in 1965. The last change was the addition of the Jino people in 1979, bringing the number of recognized ethnic groups to the current 56.
Reform and opening up However, as China started reform and opening up post-1979, many Han acquired enough money to begin to travel. One of the favorite travel experiences of the wealthy was visits to minority areas, to see the exotic rituals of the minority peoples. Responding to this interest, many minority entrepreneurs, despite themselves perhaps never having grown up practicing the dances, rituals, or songs themselves, began to cater to these tourists by performing acts similar to what the older generation or the local residents told. In this way, the groups of people named Zhuang or other named minorities have begun to have more in common with their fellow co-ethnics, as they have adopted similar self-conceptions in response to the economic demand of consumers for their performances.
The categorization of 55 minority groups was a major step forward from denial of the existence of different ethnic groups in China which had been the policy of Sun Yet-Sen's Nationalist government that came to power in 1911, which also engaged in the common use of derogatory names to refer to minorities (a practice officially abolished in 1951). However, the Communist Party's categorization was also rampantly criticized since it reduced the number of recognized ethnic groups by eightfold, and today the wei shibie menzu (literally 'undistinguished ethnic groups') total more than 730,000 people. These groups include Geija, Khmu, Kucong, Mang, Deng, Sherpas, Bajia and Youtai (Jewish).