Hu and Hu, "Nationalities Question"

Hu Lianhe and Hu An’gang, “How the Nationalities Question is Handled Outside of China”[1]
 
Introduction and translation by David Ownby
 
Although the text translated below was originally published in Chinese in 2011, we offer it here and now because of contemporary events in China:  the confinement of as many as 1.5 million Uighurs in “re-education centers” in China’s far northwest.[2]  The text itself says nothing about such centers, but is part of the longer-term rethinking of China’s “nationalities question” that is surely related to events on the ground that have drawn considerable commentary and condemnation in the West over the past few months.   One author of the text is Hu An’gang 胡鞍钢 (b. 1953), a well-known New Left economist at Tsinghua University who has collaborated with Wang Shaoguang 王绍光 (b. 1954) on topics such as state capacity, and who is the author of numerous texts on the “China model.”[3]  Hu’s co-author, Hu Lianhe 胡联合 (b. 1968), is also a researcher at Tsinghua University, but is better known as the “senior Communist Party official” who has become the public face of China’s defense of its Uighur policy in venues such as the United Nations.[4]
 
This short text is surely part of a much larger intellectual construct that I will not attempt to analyze here, but for those interested in the “arguments” behind China’s ethnic policy in Xinjiang, this text is a piece of the puzzle.  It explains how Chinese authorities—and Chinese intellectuals—may choose to see important changes to policy on the "nationalities question" in a positive light without falling back on anti-Islamic sentiments, or linking Muslims to terrorism.  The argument, in a nutshell, is that China has done a disservice to all nationalities in China by confining groups like the Uighurs (who are not mentioned by name) in autonomous regions that are the equivalent of ethnic ghettos (my term, not that of the authors).  Wealthy developed and developing countries—like the United States, Brazil, and India—have instead employed a “melting pot policy” that builds a common sense of identity and thus ensures national unity and citizen equality—regardless of his or her ethnic origin.  The argument is thus an implicit challenge to the autonomous regions that have been at the core of China’s ethnic policy since the 1950s; the authors lead us to believe that such regions have lost their relevance, or perhaps have been a mistake from the beginning.
 
The text was published in 2011, and it might be ungenerous to label it in “bad faith.”  I for one have no idea to what extent this text—or others composed at the same time—was directly linked to policy, although Hu Lianhe has been a contributing author to some of China’s White Papers--and in any event, a "melting pot" is surely preferable to "re-education camps."  Whether the text represents “bad faith” or not, it certainly represents “bad scholarship.”  The authors’ descriptions of the wonders of the melting pot in the United States and Brazil (to say nothing of India) read like passages from middle school civics textbooks, the sort of uncritical pablum many of us grew up on but which now is roundly condemned on university campuses as at best “partial truth.”  Chinese authors are of course free to celebrate the achievements of the melting pot—which are many—but by ignoring its flaws or partial truths they engage in what can only be called intellectual malpractice.  To ask the honest and open question “what might happen were the autonomous regions to be abolished?” is one thing.  To suggest that Tibetans and Uighurs will readily achieve equal citizenship as a result is at best wishful thinking.
 
My thanks to Vanessa Frangville, Chair in Chinese Studies at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, from whose work I learned of the Hus contribution to this discourse.  Professor Frangville presented a paper on "La 'dépoliticisation' des Ouighours en Chine" at the Université de Montréal on April 8, 2019.  She is currently working with members of the Uighur diaspora in Belgium to uncover their experience of the events of the recent months and years.
 
Translation
 
The nationalities question is a fundamental question that is crucial to a country’s unity, economic development and long-term national peace.  How to handle the nationalities question is thus an important matter in terms of governance and the protection and long-term security in all countries.  As for the methods used for handling the nationalities question (or the question of ethnic groups), states are not completely identical, and each has its own special features.  From a global perspective, states adopting the model of the “ethnic melting pot” are fairly common, especially in the case of economically developed or developing countries (those with large populations), and the most outstanding examples are the United States, Brazil, and India.
 
In the United States, although it is estimated that there are some 1,500 large and small ethnic groups, having come from all parts of the world and residing everywhere the United States, the government does not accord nationalities (ethnic groups) any status or mark possessing real legal or political meaning, nor does it accord legal recognition to national (ethnic) groups.  What are called “ethnic groups” are distinguished solely by their different national or regional origins, languages and religions.  Most important, it is not permitted for any ethnic group to inhabit territories that historically belonged to them [i.e., to have special rights to these territories].  All of this has produced a unified American nation and an American identity, not divided by place of origin, by ethnicity or by religion, constructed through common policies and laws such as international law, immigration law, English-language education, legislation, justice, administration and the media.  A member of any ethnic group in America (with the exception of Native Americans) is merely a citizen, and cannot for reasons of ethnic identity receive special treatment or suffer discrimination in matters of political appointments, elections, education, or employment opportunities, and “ethnic (nationalities’) self-rule” is absolutely not permitted.  An American citizen’s identity papers include no mention of “nationality” (ethnicity).  No matter what his original country or her original nationality, once granted American citizenship, she is and can only be an American or a member of the American people. 
 
Looking at the evolution of American ethnic policies historically, the early melting pot policy (the first generation melting pot model) was a policy of forced Anglo-Saxonization, and consisted essentially of a process of changing the identities of other ethnic groups to that of English Protestantism.  From the beginning of the twentieth century, following the continued flood of great numbers of new immigrants arriving from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Japan and elsewhere, American ethnic policy became a classic melting pot (the second generation melting pot model), which encouraged those from other countries and regions having different ethnic or cultural backgrounds to blend together to become Americans who shared core American values.  Since the 1950s or 1960s, following the rise of multi-culturalism, American ethnic policy evolved into the third melting pot model, in which even as people were encouraged to continue to consolidate and develop the American people and American unity, the “multicultural nature” of ethnic groups was acknowledged and accommodated, which allowed different ethnic groups to maintain their ethnic cultural traditions.  We should nonetheless note that “even if in recent years the principle of (cultural) pluralism has become very strong, in fact, ethnic differences have continued to shrink.  Consequently, even if ethnic groups uphold the necessity of maintaining ethnic culture, social trends continue in the direction of diminishing cultural differences.”[5]  In sum, regardless of the generation of the melting pot under examination, America’s continual policy of the ethnic melting pot, maintained for more than two centuries, has made a great contribution to the construction of the American people and the American identity, and America’s contemporary ethnic melting pot “is closer to reality than in the past.” This method, which stresses national identity and unity, emphasizes the equal rights of individual citizens (and not the equal rights of collective ethnic groups), avoids linking differences in citizens’wealth, power, prestige, profession, employment and education to ethnic identity and ethnic groups, and hence both effectively guarantees national unity while also stimulating equal competition between individual citizens, which in turn contributes to the development and prosperity of the national economy, politics, society and culture, and at the same time actively works against contradictions and conflicts between individual citizens turning into contradictions and conflicts among ethnic groups.  Naturally, because differences between individuals and ethnic groups exist in reality, in contemporary life, individual contradictions and conflicts are inevitable, and sometimes evolve into ethnic contradictions and conflicts.  But because the law does not allow ethnic identity or ethnic groups to possess special rights that go beyond the constitution or the law, and especially does not grant any ethnic group special rights concerning its own historical territory, even in the event of ethnic contradictions and conflicts there is no danger of national division.  We should nonetheless point out that America’s ethnic policy in its early period gravely infringed on human rights, especially in massacres of Native Americans and the segregation and systemic exclusion imposed on African Americans.  In today’s America, while the occasional ethnic problem continues to exist, broadly speaking American ethnic policy is largely successful, and contributes to maintaining national unity, developing its dynamism and social order.
 
Another example is Brazil, the populous Latin American country held up as a “paradise” of mutual ethnic assimilation, which has also promoted a melting pot policy similar to that of the United States.  In Brazil, although the population was originally made up of indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Africans “whose ethnic and racial features are quite clear, in today’s Brazil, these features have completely merged, to the point that it is difficult to correctly determine the ethnic origin of most Brazilians.”  This is because while Brazil has a good many ethnic groups and regional disparities, the Brazilian government has worked hard to construct “Brazilians” or the “Brazilian people” as a common identity, has emphasized equality of rights of individual citizens and individual upward mobility, and has actively promoted ethnic assimilation.  Having made ethnic assimilation a priority, Brazil is a rare example in modern society, “a society that most clearly promotes assimilation.”  In addition, ethnic differences in Brazil are not set in stone, and ethnic divisions are often the product of physical features (skin, hair, facial features) or even social aspects (such as their economic situation), and are not based on race (as in the well-known Brazilian expression—“rich black people are white and poor white people are black”—which in fact encourages people to change their ethnic status through class mobility).  The government has historically encouraged the assimilation of different ethnic groups, including the assimilation of blacks and whites, and interracial marriage is quite widespread.  There is no doubt that mixing, or assimilation, of different ethnic groups has gone farther in Brazil than in almost any other country in the world.  The degree of corporal and cultural assimilation in Brazil has clearly surpassed that of most multi-ethnic societies.  Of course, we should also note that Brazil’s ethnic integration has not meant the diminution of cultural pluralism, and at the same time, that a certain ethnic discrimination continues to exist in this “paradise” of ethnic integration, as suggested by the relatively lower status of black Brazilians, and other ethnic problems.
 
Another example is India.  Since achieving independence in 1947, the Indian central government has actively pursued a melting pot ethnic policy similar to those of the United and Brazil, and a basic mission of the central government is to focus on building a unified “Indian nation” and “Indians” out of the hundreds of traditional tribes and regional kingdoms.  To build the “Indian people” and its “Indians,” the Indian government does not engage in ethnic distinctions, and stresses that the country has only one “people” (the “Indian nation”), and statutes affirm that all citizens are completely equal before the law.  The government has also taken any number of other measures and policies, such as language policy (making Hindi the language of the federal government and the national language), history textbooks, music, movies, etc., all with the aim of building and strengthening Indians’ political and cultural identification with the “Indian people.”  For this reason, while objectively speaking there still exist some tribal and religious contradictions, India has nonetheless in the short space of a few decades fairly well completed the construction of status and identity of the “Indian people,” a great contribution to the protection of Indian unity and peaceful stability.


[1] 胡联合 胡鞍钢, “国外是如何处理民族问题的,” available online at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/46493.html , online edition published 2011-11-14.

[2] See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/satellite-images-expose-chinas-network-of-re-education-camps/10432924?fbclid=IwAR18sOOLta8kdiCncf_LkkEMXKwY0Ib3IG2cmTTg_hEm5LB9V9ju4u1ikt8.

​[3] Hu’s Tsinghua University website is available here :  http://www.iccs.tsinghua.edu.cn/ServerSt/246.html .

[4] See https://jamestown.org/program/hu-the-uniter-hu-lianhe-and-the-radical-turn-in-chinas-xinjiang-policy/ .

[5] The sources of the citations used in the text are not given.  This may be the result of internet “recycling” of texts, which in China (and elsewhere, I suppose) often results in the omission of reference matter, but none of the several versions of the text that I was able to locate online provided sources.