By Colin Mackerras
China is a multicultural country.
That’s because, apart from the majority people called the Han, it has 55 ethnic minorities, all with their own cultures and languages.
Some of them are famous, like the Tibetans, Mongolians and Uighurs. Others are less so, such as the Zhuang, Dong and Yao.
Most live near the borders, in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and Guangxi.
Chinese policy allows some autonomy for the minorities. So the autonomous places determine such matters as population policy and minimum age of marriage. Also, the government head of the autonomous places belongs to the ethnic minority practising autonomy there. So the government head of the Tibet Autonomous Region must be a Tibetan (although the head of the Party can be Han).
The Chinese people have a long-standing tradition of putting great emphasis on national unity. This means that there is zero tolerance for separatist activities that try to split off parts of Chinese territory. From time to time, secessionist movements have occurred, such as that led from outside China by the Dalai Lama.
According to the census of November 2020, there are 125,470,000 people belonging to one of the 55 minorities, that is 8.89 per cent of China’s total population. By the way, their proportion has grown over the years. In the PRC’s first census of 1953, the minorities had 35,320,360 people, who were 6.06 per cent of the total population. So you can see both the absolute number and the proportion of China’s total have risen. That’s largely because, being able to devise their own population policy, they were mainly exempt from the restrictions that applied to the Han.
The most populous is the Zhuang, with about 18 million people. Most of the Zhuang live in Guangxi, which is in southern China, bordering on Vietnam.
Like other Chinese, they have experienced rapid economic growth and very significant improvements in living standards. Extreme poverty used to be common among the minorities, but, though they are still on the whole less prosperous than the Han, there is now no extreme poverty among them.
Various religions are followed among the 55 ethnic minorities. There are ten that follow Islam, including the Uighurs. The Hui are culturally similar to the majority Han, but are Muslims. Although the government allows religious freedom, and there are many functioning mosques all over China, it does not permit religious extremism and has taken many measures to stop Islamic fundamentalism or associated terrorism.
Both the Tibetans and the Mongolians follow Tibetan Buddhism, but the Tibetans are much more fervent in the practice of their religion than the Mongolians.
Modernization has gathered momentum among the minorities, as it has in China as a whole. As in other countries, this has tended to reduce cultural differences among peoples, such as their urban architecture, what they wear, and even the way they view the world. Older people tend to follow their old ways more than younger. Family relations still show the influence of the past, though less than before, and people still love their traditional diets.
Although there have been occasional ethnic disturbances, what is striking about China is how little race division there is, certainly by comparison with countries such as the United States. Overall, China has followed a good policy towards its minorities and, with some exceptions that get far more media coverage than they deserve, ethnic relations have been pretty harmonious.
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