The wheel of history and minorities’ ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese nation

ABSTRACT

This article offers a theoretical intervention in new and emergent approaches to analysing China’s coercive nation-building policies under Xi Jinping. The author contends that the recent Western framing of CCP policies as genocidal or necropolitical, predicated on notions of settler colonialism and indigeneity, not only strips minority nationalities of their political agency but also prevents them from pursuing anti-colonial self-determination. By delving into the extensive scholarly work within Chinese anthropology, history, and philosophy that contributes to the reconstruction of a retrotopian Chinese nation with non-Han minority groups at its core, this article argues that the ongoing effort to build a revitalised Chinese national community requires more than merely overcoming obstacles related to minority cultures and identities. It entails actively reimagining the role and participation of minorities in ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese national community, implying their voluntary relinquishment of identities and rights in order to align with the Chinese nation.

针对习近平时代的中国，本文以理论干预的方式，为分析其强制性的国家/民族建设政策提供了全新的视角。作者认为，近来西方基于“定居殖民主义/土著性”的二元框架，将中国共产党的民族政策解释为种族灭绝或死亡政治的做法，不仅剥夺了少数民族的政治能动性，而且在不同程度妨碍了后者为反抗殖民主义而做出的自决努力。通过广泛而深入地研究中国的人类学、历史学和哲学著作 – – 这些研究在一定程度上重构了一种以少数民族为核心的、“怀旧乌托邦”式的中华民族 – – 作者认为，近年来中国为实现“中华民族伟大复兴”的努力不仅仅是需要超克少数民族文化和身份认同；还需要重新想象少数民族在中华民族构建过程中所做出的‘自我牺牲’。这种牺牲意味着少数民族在一定程度上放弃自身的身份认同和权利，以满足中华民族复兴的需求。

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese nation
• The wheel of history
• Retrotopia
• Genocide
• Necropolitics
• Settler colonialism
• Minority nationality
• Ethnicity
• Self-sacrifice

关键词:

• 中华民族
• 历史车轮
• 怀旧乌托邦
• 种族屠杀
• 死亡政治
• 定居殖民主义
• 少数民族
• 族群
• 自我牺牲

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Edward Vickers for his constructive comments which have proven essential for the shape and direction this article has taken. I am also grateful to Mark Selden and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A rare exception is the 1962 mass repatriation of French settlers in Algeria, the so-called ‘pieds noirs’, back to France. I am grateful to Edward Vickers for this information. The Algerian case differs from those in North America, Australasia, the Amazon or elsewhere where white settlers confronted predominantly hunter-gatherer communities and justified their occupation of the land by the principle of terra nullius in international law.

2 Zhao’s idea has certainly seduced some pliable minds who apply it as ‘a heuristic for worldwide relations in higher education and knowledge’ (Yang, Marginson, and Xu 2022).

3 As an attempt to legitimize Mandarin as the sole national language, this failed to explain why, after almost 3,000 years of stag hunting in the Central Plains, non-Chinese languages still persist and require eradication to make room for Mandarin.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Uradyn E. Bulag

Uradyn E. Bulag is Professor of social anthropology at University of Cambridge. He is the co-editor of the journal Inner Asia. Author of Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia (1998), The Mongols at China's Edge (2002), and Collaborative Nationalism (2010), his research interests include comparative settler colonialism and imperialism; ethnicity and nationalism; socialist/post-socialist political forms and imagination; international relations. His latest book is the co-authored A Chinese Rebel beyond the Great Wall: The Cultural Revolution and Ethnic Pogrom in Inner Mongolia (2023).