The
vast majority of the Chinese population regard themselves as belonging
to the same race, a stark contrast to the multiracial composition of
other populous countries. What effect does this have on how China views
the world, ask Martin Jacques.
I was on a taxi journey in Shanghai with a very intelligent
young Chinese student, who was helping me with interviews and
interpreting. She was shortly to study for her doctorate at a top
American university. She casually mentioned that some Chinese students
who went to the US ended up marrying Americans.
I told her that I had recently seen such a mixed couple in
Hong Kong, a Chinese woman with a black American. This was clearly not
what she had in mind. Her reaction was a look of revulsion. I was
shocked. Why did she react that way to someone black, but not someone
white? This was over a decade ago, but I doubt much has changed. What
does her response tell us - if anything - about Chinese attitudes
towards ethnicity?
China's population is huge.
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- Martin Jacques is an economist and author of When China Rules the World
- A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST
What people aren't generally
aware of, though, is that more than nine out of 10 Chinese people think
of themselves as belonging to just one race, the Han. This is
remarkable. It is quite different from the world's other most populous
nations: India, United States, Indonesia and Brazil. All recognise
themselves to be, in varying degrees, multiracial and multicultural.
True, a country that is the size of a continent has obviously
been home to countless different races down the ages. But that is not
how the great majority of Chinese see themselves today.
Why is this?
The answer takes us back to the birth of modern China more
than 2,000 years ago. China is extremely old - the longest continuously
existing country in the world. The eastern half of China - where the
vast majority of Chinese live now and lived then - has been more or less
united ever since 211BC.
Over that extraordinarily long period - as a result of war,
occupation, absorption, assimilation, ethnic cleansing and government
resettlement - the sense of difference between the many races that lived
in the eastern half of China was slowly eroded.
Fundamental to this process was the gradual emergence of a shared cultural identity.
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Han Chinese
- Trace ancestry back to Huaxia people who lived along northern China's Yellow River
- Name comes from Han Dynasty that ruled a unified China from 206BC til 220
- Han have absorbed many ethnic groups, taking on aspects of their culture and language
- Speak a variety of dialects and even distinct languages, but share a common writing system based on Mandarin
- Traditional Han beliefs are Confucianism and Daoism
China, along with part of today's
Middle East, was home to the first settled agricultural communities in
the world. They gradually supplanted nomadic culture and ushered in the
beginnings of centralised governance.
Over the last two millennia, China has generally been one of
the most advanced, often the most advanced, civilisation in the world.
It is hardly surprising that, with a rich history like this, the Chinese
have a very powerful sense of their cultural identity.
Every country has its own unique story of ethnicity. Take the
US. It starts with arrival of the European settlers and the near
extermination of the native American population, to be followed later by
large-scale African slavery. Not surprisingly, these experiences have
profoundly influenced American attitudes and the country's behaviour as a
global power.
How did China evolve? It is essentially the story of the Han
and the way in which over a period of two millennia they came to absorb
the great majority of other ethnic groups.
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Ethnic minorities in China
Of the 55 recognised ethnic minority groups, the 10 largest are:
- Zhuang (16.9 million)
- Hui (10.59 million)
- Manchu (10.39 million)
- Uyghur (10.07 million)
- Miao (9.43 million)
- Yi (8.7 million)
- Tujia (8.35 million)
- Tibetan (6.28 million)
- Mongol (5.98 million)
- Buyei (2.87 million)
Source: 2010 China census
Before the victory of the Qin
dynasty in 221BC, China was divided into many different states. The
process of its subsequent unification was the creation of an empire. But
whereas all the other great empires of the world have long since broken
up, China remains united. Why? In one word - the Han. The Han identity
has served as the glue which has kept a geographically and
demographically vast country together. Without that shared identity,
China would long ago have fallen apart.
The China I have been talking about is the eastern half of
present-day China, where more than 90% of the population lives. What
then of the western half? This is a different story. It accounts for
over half the territory of China but contains only about 6% of its
population.
Whereas the eastern half of China dates back about two
millennia, the western part is far more recent, having only been
incorporated about 300 years ago.
From the mid-17th Century, large tracts of the western region
were conquered by the Qing dynasty in a series of brutal wars. The
inhabitants of these lands were not Han. With their different physical
appearance, darker skin, distinctive customs and lower level of
development, the Han saw them as the Other, as "barbarians".
Not surprisingly, the Chinese government, both imperial and
communist, has long had a troubled relationship with parts of the
western regions, notably Tibet and Xinjiang.
If the strength of the Han identity is that it has held China
together, its weakness, I would argue, has been its relative lack of
respect for difference, an underlying assumption that the non-Han should
become like the Han - indeed eventually be absorbed into the Han. This
attitude is not difficult to understand, it is how the Han became
almost, but not quite, synonymous with being Chinese, or, to put it
another way, how China was created.
Ethnicity is a powerful determinant of how societies perceive
others. So is China, as a global power, likely to view the rest of the
world?
Just as with the US, China will naturally tend to see the
world in its own image. An unusual feature of China, in this respect, is
that its history is so atypical: a huge population who overwhelmingly
consider themselves to share the same identity. This helps to explain
why the Chinese have tended to think of Africa as one, just like China,
rather than a complex mosaic of different ethnicities and cultures.
The fact that China has had little experience of, or exposure
to, the rest of the world until very recently - the past 30 years to be
exact - has served to reinforce a tendency to see other countries
through a Chinese prism.
Bear in mind, too, that the Chinese have a deep pride in their
own cultural achievements, many believing that, for understandable
reasons, their civilisation, and their history, is greater than all
others. Such an outlook also tends to accentuate a China-centric view of
the world.
When I first got to know the Chinese, one of the things I
most enjoyed about them was their powerful sense of who they were, their
confidence in who they were. They did not defer to white people. I
liked that and respected them for it. It was as if their remarkable
history resided in each and every one of them and made them walk tall.
Despite the fact that for the best part of two centuries
China came to suffer hugely at the hands of the West, and to lag badly
behind the West, the Chinese never stopped believing in themselves. Such
pride and confidence is to be admired. In my view, though, it can also
have a downside - a tendency to look down on others. If the Chinese have
always considered themselves to be at least the equal of white
Westerners, a common, though by no means universal, attitude has been to
regard those of darker skin as inferior.
My horrified student friend was a case in point.
But why is this? Its roots are deep. For many centuries,
white has had positive connotations in Chinese culture and black
negative ones. Perhaps the reason is that those who toiled all day in
the fields became dark while the aristocratic elite, protected from the
sun, remained pristine white. To this day, interestingly, skin whitening
products are enormously popular amongst Chinese women, as they also are
in Japan and Korea and elsewhere.
Didier Drogba now plays in Shanghai
Over the past two centuries, the Chinese have been hugely aware
of the fact that white societies around the globe have been dominant
while those of colour, especially African, have been poorer and much
less developed. Success breeds respect, failure can all too easily
attract scorn. Remember, those of African descent, until the past few
decades, have been remote and distant from the Chinese, far removed from
their knowledge and experience, a situation which can foster ignorance
and prejudice.
There are small signs of change.
Didier Drogba, the Ivory Coast footballer who now plays for
Shanghai Shenhua, has spoken in glowing terms about how the Chinese have
received him.
As China becomes increasingly familiar with the world - as is
now happening in such a dramatic way, from Africa to Latin America, and
South Asia to Central Asia - parochial if deep-seated prejudices will
come under growing pressure.
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