From Empire to Nation State
Ethnic Politics in China

A historical-political perspective on China's contemporary ethnic strife caused by its incomplete transition from empire to nation state.

Yan Sun (Author)

9781108794411, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 September 2020

250 pages, 2 b/w illus. 1 map 30 tables
23 x 15.3 x 2.5 cm, 0.6 kg

'… highly innovative and excellently researched.' Colin Mackerras, Pacific Affairs

Many scholars perceive ethnic politics in China as an untouchable topic due to lack of data and contentious, even prohibitive, politics. This book fills a gap in the literature, offering a historical-political perspective on China's contemporary ethnic conflict. Yan Sun accumulates research via field trips, local reports, and policy debates to reveal rare knowledge and findings. Her long-time causal chain of explanation reveals the roots of China's contemporary ethnic strife in the centralizing and ethnicizing strategies of its incomplete transition to a nation state—strategies that depart sharply from its historical patterns of diverse and indirect rule. This departure created the institutional dynamics for politicized identities and ethnic mobilization, particularly in the outer regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. In the 21st century, such factors as the demise of socialist tenets and institutions that upheld interethnic solidarity, and the rise of identity politics and developmentalism, have intensified these built-in tensions.

Introduction: What is Destabilizing about China's Ethnic Regions?
1. Changing Approaches to Identity: From Maintenance to Transformation
2. Changing Approaches to Ethnic Governance: From Loose Rein to Ethno-territorial Units
3. Changing Approaches to Policy Instruments: From Elite Cooptation to Egalitarian Strategies
4. The Rise of Identity Politics in Post-Mao China
5. Ethnic Autonomy and Its Discontents
6. Religious Revival and Its Discontents
7. Economic Modernization and Its Discontents
8. Educational Expansion and Its Discontents
Conclusion: From Empire to Nation State: Lessons and Reforms.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies [JFSL1], Asian history [HBJF]