Ethnic issues in China
Ethnic issues in China arise from Chinese history, nationalism, and other factors. They have driven historical movements such as the Red Turban Rebellion and the Xinhai Revolution, which overthrew the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Ethnic tensions have led to incidents in the country such as the July 2009 Ürümqi riots.
Background
China is a largely homogenous society; over 90% of its population has historically been Han Chinese. Some of the country's ethnic groups are distinguishable by physical appearance and relatively-low intermarriage rates. Others have married Han Chinese and resemble them. A growing number of ethnic minorities are fluent at a native level in Mandarin Chinese. Children sometimes receive ethnic-minority status at birth if one of their parents belongs to an ethnic minority, even if their ancestry is predominantly Han Chinese. Pockets of immigrants and foreign residents exist in some cities.A 100-day crackdown on illegal foreigners in Beijing began in May 2012, with Beijing residents wary of foreign nationals due to recent crimes. China Central Television host Yang Rui said, controversially, that "foreign trash" should be cleaned out of the capital.
China is the most populated country in the world and its national population density is similar to those of Switzerland and the Czech Republic. The overall population density of China conceals major regional variations, the western and northern part have a few million people, while eastern half has about 1.3 billion. The vast majority of China's population lives near the east in major cities.
In the 11 provinces, special municipalities, and autonomous regions along the southeast coast, population density was 320.6 people per km2.
Broadly speaking, the population was concentrated east of the mountains and south of the northern steppe. The most densely populated areas included the Yangtze River Valley, Sichuan Basin, North China Plain, Pearl River Delta, and the industrial area around the city of Shenyang in the northeast.
- China in the 12th century. The north of the Qinling Huaihe Line was under control of the Jin dynasty, while the south was under control of the Song dynasty.
Population is most sparse in the mountainous, desert, and grassland regions of the northwest and southwest. In Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, portions are completely uninhabited, and only a few sections have populations denser than ten people per km2. The Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet autonomous regions and Qinghai and Gansu comprise 55% of the country's land area but in 1985 contained only 5.7% of its population.
Language issues in China
There are several hundred languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on central Mandarin, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as Hanyu, that are spoken by 92% of the population. The Chinese languages are typically divided into seven major language groups, and their study is a distinct academic discipline. They differ as much from each other morphologically and phonetically as do English, German and Danish. There are in addition approximately 300 minority languages spoken by the remaining 8% of the population of China. The ones with greatest state support are Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang.Cantonese is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding area in southeastern China. It is the traditional prestige variety and standard form of Yue Chinese, one of the major subgroups of Chinese. Mandarin Chinese as their first language, accounting for 71% of the country's population.
Summary of varieties of Chinese
The number of speakers derived from statistics or estimates and were rounded:| Number | Branch | Native Speakers | Dialects |
| 1 | Mandarin | 850,000,000 | 51 |
| 2 | Wu | 95,000,000 | 37 |
| 3 | Yue | 80,000,000 | 52 |
| 4 | Jin | 70,000,000 | 6 |
| 5 | Min | 60,000,000 | 61 |
| 6 | Hakka | 55,000,000 | 10 |
| 7 | Xiang | 50,000,000 | 25 |
| 8 | Gan | 30,000,000 | 9 |
| 9 | Huizhou | 7,000,000 | 13 |
| 10 | Pinghua | 3,000,000 | 2 |
| Total | Chinese | 1,300,000,000 | 266 |
Mandarin
- 官话/官話
| Number | Branch | Native Speakers | Dialects |
| 1 | Beijing | 35,000,000 | 7 |
| 2 | Ji–Lu | 110,000,000 | 4 |
| 3 | Jianghuai | 80,000,000 | 6 |
| 4 | Jiao–Liao | 35,000,000 | 4 |
| 5 | Lan–Yin | 10,000,000 | 3 |
| 6 | Northeastern | 100,000,000 | 4 |
| 7 | Southwestern | 280,000,000 | 11 |
| 8 | Zhongyuan | 200,000,000 | 11 |
| Total | Mandarin | 850,000,000 | 50 |
Summary of Han Chinese
The number of speakers derived from statistics or estimates and were rounded:| Number | People | Subgroups | Main Area | Population |
| 1 | Cantonese People | Taishanese people, Hongkongers, Macau people, Macanese people | Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong, Macau | 120,000,000 |
| 2 | Hakka People | Ngái people | Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan | 120,000,000 |
| 3 | Min People | Fuzhou people, Hoklo people, Hoklo Taiwanese, Putian people, Teochew people | Fujian, Hainan, Southern Zhejiang, Guangdong | 115,000,000 |
| 4 | Shandong People | Shandong Province | 100,000,000 | |
| 5 | Sichuanese People | Sichuan Province, Chongqing Municipality | 100,000,000 | |
| 6 | Wu People | Shanghainese people, Ningbonese people, Wenzhou people | Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian | 90,000,000 |
| 7 | Hebei People | Hebei Province | 75,000,000 | |
| 8 | Jianghuai People | Subei people | Jiangsu Province, Anhui Province | 75,000,000 |
| 9 | Gan People | Jiangxi, Eastern Hunan | 60,000,000 | |
| 10 | Hunanese People | Hunan, Northeastern Guangxi | 40,000,000 | |
| 11 | Taiwanese People | Taiwan, Southeast Asia | 23,000,000 | |
| 12 | Tanka People | Fuzhou Tanka | Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan | 5,000,000 |
| 13 | Hainan People | Hainan, Southeast Asia | 5,000,000 | |
| 14 | Chuanqing People | Guizhou | 700,000 | |
| 15 | Gaoshan People | Yunnan, Guizhou | 400,000 | |
| 16 | Waxiang People | Hunan | 400,000 | |
| 17 | Tunbao People | Guizhou, Anshun | 300,000 | |
| 18 | Hui'an People | Quanzhou, Fujian, China | 50,000 | |
| Total | Han Chinese Groups | China | 930,000,000 |
History
Racial and Ethnic Conflicts in Imperial China
by the ruling Han Chinese in imperial China has been documented in historical texts such as Yan Shigu's commentary on the Book of Han, in which the Wusun people were called "barbarians who have green eyes and red hair" and compared to macaques.Some ethnic conflicts were violent. During the 350 AD Wei–Jie war, the Han Chinese leader Ran Min massacred non-Chinese Wu Hu in retaliation for abuses against the Chinese population; the Jie people were particularly affected. Rebels slaughtered Arab and Persian merchants in the Yangzhou massacre. According to Arab historian Abu Zayd Hasan of Siraf, the rebel Huang Chao's army killed Arab, Jewish, Christian, and Parsi merchants in the Guangzhou massacre when he captured Guang Prefecture. Arabs and Persians living in Quanzhou were massacred in the Ispah rebellion.
Widespread violence against the Manchu people by Han Chinese rebels occurred during the Xinhai Revolution, most notably in Xi'an and Wuhan. Some scholars claim that the Manchus were seen as uncivilized and lacking culture, adopting Han Chinese and Tibetan culture instead.
Race, Class, and Ethnic Conflicts
The Mongols divided groups into a four-class caste system during the Yuan dynasty. Merchants and non-Mongol overseers were usually immigrants or local ethnic groups: Turkestani and Persian Muslims and Christians. Foreigners from outside the Mongol Empire, such as the Polo family, were welcomed.Despite the Muslims' high position, the Yuan Mongols discriminated against them: restricting halal slaughter and other Islamic practices, such as circumcision. Genghis Khan called Muslims "slaves". Muslim generals eventually joined the Han Chinese in rebelling against the Mongols. Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang had Muslim generals who rebelled against the Mongols and defeated them in battle. Semu-caste Muslims revolted against the Yuan dynasty in the Ispah rebellion, although the rebellion was crushed and the Muslims massacred by Yuan commander Chen Youding. Uyghur leader Sabit Damulla Abdulbaki said about the Han Chinese and Tungans :
An American telegram reported that Uyghur groups in parts of Xinjiang demanded the expulsion of White Russians and Han Chinese from Xinjiang during the Ili Rebellion. The Uyghurs reportedly said, "We freed ourselves from the yellow men, now we must destroy the white". According to the telegram, "Serious native attacks on people of other races frequent. White Russians in terror of uprising."
Tensions erupted between Muslim sects, ethnic groups, the Tibetans and Han Chinese during the late 19th century near Qinghai. According to volume eight of the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, the Muslim Dungan and Panthay revolts were ignited by racial antagonism and class warfare.
The Ush rebellion in 1765 by Uyghur Muslims against the Manchus occurred after Uyghur women were gang raped by the servants and son of Manchu official Su-cheng. It was said that Ush Muslims had long wanted to sleep on hides and eat their flesh. because of the rape of Uyghur Muslim women for months by the Manchu official Sucheng and his son. The Manchu Emperor ordered that the Uyghur rebel town be massacred, the Qing forces enslaved all the Uyghur children and women and slaughtered the Uyghur men. Manchu soldiers and Manchu officials regularly having sex with or raping Uyghur women caused massive hatred and anger by Uyghur Muslims to Manchu rule. The invasion by Jahangir Khoja was preceded by another Manchu official, Binjing who raped a Muslim daughter of the Kokan aqsaqal from 1818–1820. The Qing sought to cover up the rape of Uyghur women by Manchus to prevent anger against their rule from spreading among the Uyghurs.
The Manchu official Shuxing'a started an anti-Muslim massacre which led to the Panthay Rebellion. Shuxing'a developed a deep hatred of Muslims after an incident where he was stripped naked and nearly lynched by a mob of Muslims. He ordered several Hui Muslim rebels to be slow sliced to death.
The Hui Muslim community was divided in its support for the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. The Hui Muslims of Shaanxi supported the revolutionaries and the Hui Muslims of Gansu supported the Qing. The native Hui Muslims of Xi'an joined the Han Chinese revolutionaries in slaughtering the entire 20,000 Manchu population of Xi'an. The native Hui Muslims of Gansu province led by general Ma Anliang sided with the Qing and prepared to attack the anti-Qing revolutionaries of Xi'an city. Only some wealthy Manchus who were ransomed and Manchu females survived. Wealthy Han Chinese seized Manchu girls to become their slaves and poor Han Chinese troops seized young Manchu women to be their wives. Young pretty Manchu girls were also seized by Hui Muslims of Xi'an during the massacre and brought up as Muslims.
Modern China
Anti-Japanese sentiment
Anti-Japanese sentiment primarily stems from Japanese war crimes which were committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. History-textbook revisionism in Japan and the denial of events such as the Nanking Massacre by the Japanese far-right has continued to inflame anti-Japanese feeling in China. It has been alleged that anti-Japanese sentiment is also partially the result of political manipulation by the Communist Party. According to a BBC report, anti-Japanese demonstrations received tacit approval from Chinese authorities.Conflict with Uyghurs
A Uyghur proverb says, "Protect religion, Kill the Han and destroy the Hui", and anti-Hui poetry was written by Uyghurs:
In Bayanday there is a brick factory,
it had been built by the Chinese.
If the Chinese are killed by soldiers,
the Tungans take over the plundering.
A Uyghur would reportedly not enter a Hui mosque, and Hui and Han households were built together in a town; Uyghurs would live farther away. Uyghurs have been known to view Hui Muslims from other provinces of China as hostile and threatening. Mixed Han and Uyghur children are known as erzhuanzi ; Uyghurs call them piryotki, and shun them.
The Chinese government and individual Han Chinese citizens have been accused of discrimination against the Uyghur minority. This was a reported cause of the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, which occurred largely along racial lines. A People's Daily essay referred to the events as "so-called racial conflict", and several Western media sources called them "race riots". Unofficial Chinese policy reportedly denies passports to Uyghurs until they reach retirement age, especially if they intend to leave the country for the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Tensions between Hui and Uyghurs arose because Qing and Republican Chinese authorities used Hui troops and officials to dominate the Uyghurs and suppress Uyghur revolts. The Uyghur population grew by 1.7 percent in Xinjiang between 1940 and 1982, and the Hui population increased by 4.4 percent. Tensions have increased between Uyghur and Hui Muslims due to the population-growth disparity. The massacre of Uyghurs by Ma Zhongying's Hui troops in the Battle of Kashgar caused unease as more Hui moved into the region from other parts of China.
Some Hui criticize Uyghur separatism. According to Dru C. Gladney, the Hui "don't tend to get too involved in international Islamic conflict. They don't want to be branded as radical Muslims." Hui and Uyghurs live and worship separately.
Han and Hui intermarry more than Uyghurs and Hui do, despite the latter's shared religion. Some Uyghurs believe that a marriage to a Hui is more likely to end in divorce.
The Sibe tend to believe negative stereotypes of Uyghurs and identify with the Han. According to David Eimer, one Han person had a negative view of Uyghurs but had a positive opinion of Tajiks in Tashkurgan.
Yengisar is known for the manufacture of Uyghur handcrafted knives—yingjisha in Chinese. Although the wearing of knives by Uyghur men is a significant part of Uyghur culture, it is seen as an aggressive gesture by others. The Uyghur word for knife is pichaq, and the plural is pichaqchiliq. Limitations were placed on knife vending due to terrorism and violent assaults where they were utilized. Robberies and assaults committed by groups of Uyghurs, including children sold to gangs, have increased tensions. China has been working on multilateral anti-terrorism since the September 11 attacks and, according to the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State, some Uyghur separatist movements have been identified as terrorist groups.
Tibet
Many residents of the frontier districts of Sichuan and other Tibetan areas in China are of Han-Tibetan ethnicity, and are looked down on by Tibetans. Tibetan Muslims, known as Kache in Tibetan, have lived peacefully with Tibetan Buddhists for over a thousand years because Buddhists are prohibited by their religion from killing animals but require meat to survive in their mountainous climate. However, Tibetans clash with the Hui. Tibetans and Mongols refused to allow other ethnic groups to participate in a ritual ceremony in Qinghai until Muslim general Ma Bufang reformed the practice.Tibetan-Muslim violence
Most Muslims in Tibet are Hui. Although hostility between Tibetans and Muslims stems from the Muslim warlord Ma Bufang's rule in Qinghai, in 1949 the Communists ended violence between Tibetans and Muslims. However, recent Tibetan-Muslim violence occurred. Riots broke out between Muslims and Tibetans over a bone in soups and the price of balloons; Tibetans accused Muslims of being cannibals who cooked humans, attacking Muslim restaurants. Fires set by Tibetans burned the apartments and shops of Muslims, and Muslims stopped wearing their traditional headwear and began to pray in secret. Chinese-speaking Hui also have problems with the Tibetan Hui.The main mosque in Lhasa was burned down by Tibetans, and Hui Muslims were assaulted by rioters in the 2008 Tibetan unrest. Tibetan exiles and foreign scholars overlook sectarian violence between Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims. Most Tibetans viewed the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks positively, and anti-Muslim attitudes resulted in boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. Some Tibetan Buddhists believe that Muslims cremate their imams and use the ashes to convert Tibetans to Islam by making Tibetans inhale the ashes, although they frequently oppose proposed Muslim cemeteries. Since the Chinese government supports the Hui Muslims, Tibetans attack the Hui to indicate anti-government sentiment and due to the background of hostility since Ma Bufang's rule; they resent perceived Hui economic domination.
In 1936, after Sheng Shicai expelled 20,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang to Qinghai, Hui troops led by Ma Bufang reduced the number of Kazakhs to 135. Over 7,000 Kazakhs fled northern Xinjiang to the Tibetan Qinghai plateau region, causing unrest. Ma Bufang relegated the Kazakhs to pastureland in Qinghai, but the Hui, Tibetans and Kazakhs in the region continued to clash.
In northern Tibet, Kazakhs clashed with Tibetan soldiers before being sent to Ladakh. Tibetan troops robbed and killed Kazakhs at Chamdo, east of Lhasa, when the Kazakhs entered Tibet. In 1934, 1935 and 1936–1938, an estimated 18,000 Kazakhs entered Gansu and Qinghai. In 2017, the Dalai Lama compared the peacefulness of China's Muslims unfavorably to that of their Indian counterparts.
Other ethnic groups
Scholars have noted that the People's Republic of China largely portrays racism as a Western phenomenon which has led to a lack of acknowledgement of racism in its own society. For example, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported in 2018 that Chinese law does not define "racial discrimination." In modern times, this has manifested frequently as discrimination against Africans such as the Nanjing anti-African protests and intensified police action against Africans in Guangzhou. Reports of racism against Africans in China grew during the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China.A Hui soldier from the 36th Division called Swedish explorer Sven Hedin a "foreign devil",
and Tungans were reportedly "strongly anti-Japanese". During the 1930s, a White Russian driver for Nazi agent Georg Vasel in Xinjiang was afraid to meet Hui general Ma Zhongying, saying: "You know how the Tungans hate the Russians." Vasel passed the Russian driver off as a German.
A Chinese Muslim general encountered by writer Peter Fleming thought that his visitor was a foreign "barbarian" until he learned that Fleming's outlook was Chinese. Fleming saw a Uyghur grovel at the general's feet, and other Uyghurs were treated contemptuously by his soldiers. Racial slurs were allegedly used by the Chinese Muslim troops against Uyghurs. Ma Qi's Muslim forces ravaged the Labrang Monastery over an eight-year period.
Ethnic slurs
- 鬼子 – "Guizi", devils, refers to foreigners
- * 日本鬼子 – literally "Japanese devil", used to refer to Japanese, can be translated as Jap. In 2010 Japanese internet users on 2channel created the fictional moe character Hinomoto Oniko which refers to the ethnic term, with Hinomoto Oniko being the Japanese kun'yomi reading of the Han characters "日本鬼子".
- * 二鬼子 – literally "second devil", used to refer to Korean soldiers who were a part of the Japanese army during the Sino-Japanese war in World War II.
- 毛子 – literally "body hair" – a derogatory term for Caucasians. However, because most white people in contact with China were Russians before the 19th century, 毛子 became a derogatory term for Russians.
A common historical response to serious threats directed towards a symbolic universe is "nihilation", or the conceptual liquidation of everything inconsistent with official doctrine. Foreigners were labelled "barbarians" or "devils", to be conceptually eliminated. The official rhetoric reduced the Westerner to a devil, a ghost, an evil and unreal goblin hovering on the border of humanity. Many texts of the first half of the nineteenth century referred to the English as "foreign devils", "devil slaves", "barbarian devils", "island barbarians", "blue-eyed barbarian slaves", or "red-haired barbarians".
- Xiao Riben
- 鬼佬 – Gweilo, literally "ghostly man"
- 黑鬼 – "Black devil".
- 妖精 – "Demons", used against Manchu people by the Taipings
- 阿三 or 紅頭阿三 - Originally a Shanghainese term used against Indians, it is also used in Mandarin.
- chán-tóu – used during the Republican period against Uyghurs
- nǎozǐ jiǎndān – also used during the Republican period against Uyghurs
- Erzhuanzi – children who are mixed Uyghur and Han The term was said by European explorers in the 19th century to refer to a people descended from Chinese, Taghliks, and Mongols living in the area from Ku-ch'eng-tze to Barköl in Xinjiang.
- lǜlǜ – used to disparage Muslims as green is considered a holy colour in the Muslim faith.
- Gaoli bangzi - Used against Koreans, both North Koreans and South Koreans.
Etymology and Ethnic Biases