Sinicization
Sinicization, sinicisation, sinofication, or sinification, or sinonization is a process whereby non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture, particularly Han Chinese culture, language, societal norms, and ethnic identity. Areas of influence include diet, writing, industry, education, language, law, lifestyle, politics, philosophy, religion, science and technology, culture, and value systems. More broadly, "Sinicization" may refer to policies of acculturation, assimilation, or cultural imperialism imposed by China onto neighboring East Asian countries, and minority ethnic groups inside China. Evidence of this can be seen in the value systems, cuisine, architectural style, and lexicons. This is reflected in the histories of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, in the adoption of the Chinese writing system, which has long been a unifying feature in the Sinosphere as the vehicle for exporting Chinese culture to these Asian countries.
Integration
The integration or assimilation policy is a type of nationalism aimed at strengthening of the Chinese identity among the population. Proponents believe integration will help to develop shared values, pride in being the country's citizen, respect and acceptance towards cultural differences among citizens of China. Critics argue that integration destroys ethnic diversity, language diversity, and cultural diversity. Analogous to North America with approximately 300 Native American languages and distinct ethnic groups; in China there are 292 non-Mandarin languages spoken by native peoples of the region. There are also a number of immigrant languages, such as Khmer, Portuguese, English, etc.Historical examples of sinicization
Austronesian peoples
Before sinicization, non-Chinese indigenous peoples of Southern China, collectively termed by the Chinese as Baiyue inhabited the coastline of China from as far north as the Yangtze River to as far south as the Gulf of Tonkin. Analysis of DNA recovered from human remains shows high frequencies of Haplogroup O1 in Liangzhu culture linking this culture to modern Austronesian populations. It is believed that Liangzhu culture was the ancestral homeland of Proto-Austronesian populations before they spread to Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Over time, the southward spread of Han Chinese led to the sinicization of most of the Baiyue populations that remained in Southern China, whether in the Yangtze Valley or in coastal areas from the mouth of the Yangtze to the Gulf of Tonkin. The remnants of these peoples who were not fully sinicized are now recognized officially as the ethnic minorities of the PRC.Turkic peoples
Descendants of Uyghurs who migrated to Taoyuan County, Hunan have largely assimilated into the Han Chinese and Hui population and practice Chinese customs, speaking varieties of Chinese as their language.Tang dynasty
During the 8th and 9th centuries in the Tang dynasty, Chinese male soldiers moved into Guizhou and married native non-Chinese women, their descendants being known as Lao-han-jen, in contrast to new Chinese people who colonized Guizhou at later times. They still spoke an archaic dialect as of 1929. Many immigrants to Guizhou were descended from these soldiers in garrisons who married non-Chinese women.Yuan dynasty
The Mongol Yuan dynasty appointed a Muslim from Bukhara, Ajall Shams al-Din Omar, as governor of Yunnan after conquering the Bai Kingdom of Dali. Sayyid Ajjall then promoted Sinicization and Confucianization of the non-Han Chinese peoples in Yunnan during his reign. Sayyid Ajall founded a "Chinese style" city where modern Kunming is today, called Zhongjing Cheng. He ordered that a Buddhist temple, a Confucian temple, and two mosques be built in the city. Advocating Confucianism was part of his policy. The Confucian temple that Sayyid Ajall built in 1274, which also doubled as a school, was the first Confucian temple ever to be built in Yunnan.Both Confucianism and Islam were promoted by Sayyid Ajall in his "civilizing mission" during his time in Yunnan. Sayyid Ajall viewed Yunnan as "backward and barbarian" and utilized Confucianism, Islam, and Buddhism for "civilizing" the area.
In Yunnan, the widespread presence of Islam is credited to Sayyid Ajall's work.
Sayyid Ajall was first to bring Islam to Yunnan. He promoted Confucianism and Islam by ordering construction of mosques and temples of Confucianism. Sayyid Ajall also introduced Confucian education into Yunnan. He was described as making 'the orangutans and butcherbirds become unicorns and phoenixes and their felts and furs were exchanged for gowns and caps', and praised by the Regional Superintendent of Confucian studies, He Hongzuo.
Shams al-Din constructed numerous Confucian temples in Yunnan, and promoted Confucian education. He is best known among Chinese for helping sinicize Yunnan province. He also built multiple mosques in Yunnan. Sayyid Ajall also introduced Confucian rituals and traditions to Yunnan, including Chinese social structures, Chinese funeral rituals and Chinese marriage customs.
The aim of Sayyid Ajall's policy of promoting Confucianism and education in Yunnan was to "civilize" the native "barbarians". Confucian rituals were taught to students in newly founded schools by Sichuanese scholars, and Confucian temples were built. The natives of Yunnan were instructed in Confucian ceremonies like weddings, matchmaking, funerals, ancestor worship, and kowtow by Sayyid Ajall. The native leaders has their "barbarian" clothing replaced by clothing given to them by Sayyid Ajall.
Both Marco Polo and Rashid al-Din Vatvat recorded that Yunnan was heavily populated by Muslims during the Yuan Dynasty, with Rashid naming a city with all Muslim inhabitants as the 'great city of Yachi'. It has been suggested that Yachi was Dali City. Dali had many Hui Muslim people.
Sayyid Ajall's son Nasir al-Din became Governor of Yunnan in 1279 after his death.
The historian Jacqueline Armijo-Hussein has written on Sayyid Ajall's Confucianization and Sinicization policies, in her dissertation Sayyid 'Ajall Shams al-Din: A Muslim from Central Asia, serving the Mongols in China, and bringing 'civilization' to Yunnan, the paper The Origins of Confucian and Islamic Education in Southwest China: Yunnan in the Yuan Period, and The Sinicization and Confucianization in Chinese and Western Historiography of a Muslim from Bukhara Serving Under the Mongols in China.
Ming dynasty
During the Ming conquest of Yunnan Chinese military soldiers were settled in Yunnan, and many married the native women.Qing dynasty
The rulers of the Qing dynasty were ethnic Manchus who adopted the norms of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rules. The "orthodox" historical view emphasized the power of Han Chinese to "sinicize" their conquerors, although more recent research such as the New Qing History school revealed Manchu rulers were savvy in their manipulation of their subjects and from the 1630s through at least the 18th century, the emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used Central Asian models of rule as much as Confucian ones. There is also evidence of sinicization, however. For example, Manchus originally had their own separate style of naming from the Han Chinese, but eventually adopted Han Chinese naming practices.Manchu names consisted of more than the two or one syllable Chinese names, and when phonetically transcribed into Chinese, they made no sense at all. The meaning of the names that Manchus used were also very different from the meanings of Chinese names. The Manchus also gave numbers as personal names.
Eventually, the Qing royal family gave their children Chinese names, which were separate from the Manchu names, and even adopted the Chinese practice of generation names, although its usage was inconsistent and error ridden. Eventually they stopped using Manchu names.
The Niohuru family of the Manchu changed their family name to Lang, which sounded like "wolf" in Chinese, since wolf in Manchu was Niohuru; thus forming a translation.
Although the Manchus replaced their Manchu names with Chinese personal names, the Manchu bannermen followed their traditional practice in typically used their first/personal name to address themselves and not their last name, while Han Chinese bannermen used their last name and first in normal Chinese style.
Usage of surnames was not traditional to the Manchu while it was to the Han Chinese.
Nguyen dynasty Vietnam
Vietnamese Nguyen Emperor Minh Mạng sinicized ethnic minorities such as Cambodians, Chams and Montagnards, claimed the legacy of Confucianism and China's Han dynasty for Vietnam, and used the term Han people to refer to the Vietnamese. Minh Mang declared that "We must hope that their barbarian habits will be subconsciously dissipated, and that they will daily become more infected by Han customs." These policies were directed at the Khmer and hill tribes. The Nguyen lord Nguyen Phuc Chu had referred to Vietnamese as "Han people" in 1712 when differentiating between Vietnamese and Chams.Minh Mang used the name "Trung Quốc" 中國 to refer to Vietnam.
Chinese clothing was adapted by the Vietnamese people under Nguyễn.
Modern examples of sinicization
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang pursued a sinicization policy, which foreign observers understood as "the time had come to set about the business of making all natives either turn Chinese or get out." It was noted that "Chinese colonization" of "Mongolia and Manchuria" led to the conclusion "to a conviction that the day of the barbarian was finally over."Ma Clique
Muslim General Ma Fuxiang created an assimilationist group and encouraged the integration of Muslims into Chinese society. Ma Fuxiang was a hardcore assimilationist and said that Hui should assimilate into Han.Xinjiang
The Hui Muslim 36th Division governed southern Xinjiang in 1934–1937. The administration that was set up was colonial in nature, putting up street signs and names in Chinese, which used to be in only Uighur language. They lived much like Han Chinese, importing Han cooks and baths. The Hui also switched carpet patterns from Uyghur to Han in state owned carpet factories.Strict surveillance and mass detentions of Uighurs in the re-education camps is a part of the ongoing sinicization policy by the Communist Party of China.
Since 2015, it has been estimated that over a million Uyghurs have been detained in Xinjiang re-education camps. The camps were established under General Secretary Xi Jinping's administration with the main goal of ensuring adherence to national ideology. Critics of China's treatment of Uyghurs have accused the Chinese government of propagating a policy of sinicization in Xinjiang in the 21st century, calling this policy an ethnocide or a cultural genocide of Uyghurs.
Taiwan
After the Republic of China took control of Taiwan in 1945 and relocated its capital to Taipei in 1949, the intention of Chiang Kai-shek was to eventually go back to mainland China and retake control of it. Chiang believed that to retake mainland China, it would be necessary to re-Sinicize Taiwan's inhabitants who had undergone assimilation under Japanese rule. Examples of this policy included the renaming of streets with mainland geographical names, use of Mandarin Chinese in schools and punishments for using other regional languages, and teaching students to revere traditional ethics, develop pan-Chinese nationalism, and view Taiwan from the perspective of China. Other reasons for the policy were to combat the Japanese influences on the culture that had occurred in the previous 50 years, and to help unite the recent immigrants from mainland China that had come to Taiwan with the KMT and among whom there was a tendency to be more loyal to one's city, country or province than to China as a nation.The process of re-asserting non-Chinese identity, as in the case of ethnic groups in Taiwan, is sometimes known as desinicization. This is an issue in, for example, the Taiwan independence movement and Taiwan localization movements.
Tibet
The sinicization of Tibet is the change of Tibetan society to Han Chinese standards by means of state propaganda, police presence, cultural assimilation, religious persecution, immigration, population transfer and political reform. It has been underway since the Chinese invasion of Tibet by the Tibetan Government in Exile, in 1951. In present-day Tibet traditional Tibetan festivals have "been turned into a platform for propaganda and political theater” where "government workers and retirees are barred from engaging in religious activities, and government workers and students in Tibetan schools are forbidden from visiting local monasteries.” According to president of the Central Tibetan Administration, Lobsang Sangay, with the ongoing expulsion of monks and nuns from monasteries and nunneries, and destruction of the Larung Gar monastery, Tibet's largest Buddhist institution, "unfortunately what is happening is that the Chinese government is reviving something akin to cultural revolution in Tibet."Religion
In April 2016, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping declared that in order to “actively guide the adaptation of religions to socialist society, an important task is supporting China’s religions’ persistence in the direction of sinicization.” He later reiterated this plan to the 19th Communist Party Congress saying “We will fully implement the Party’s basic policy on religious affairs, insist on the sinicization of Chinese religions, and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist.”Protestantism
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement of Protestant churches in China has described the Boxer Rebellion and the anti-Christian movement of 1922-27 as early efforts to sinicize Christianity.The TSPM and China Christian Council arranged a conference in Shanghai on August 4–6, 2014, commemorating the anniversary of the TSPM. This conference included a seminar on the sinicizaton of Christianity, with Fu Xianwei, chairman of the TSPM, saying “churches in China will continue to explore the sinicization of Christianity ensure Christianity takes root in the soil of Chinese culture, ethnicity, and society... To advance the sinicization of Christianity, churches will need guidance and support from government agencies in charge of religious affairs.”
In 2019, TSPM chairman Xu Xiaohong made a pledge to eliminate any Western "imprint" from Chinese faith saying " must recognise that Chinese churches are surnamed ‘China’, not ‘the West’" and "No matter how much effort or time it takes, our resolution in upholding the Sinicisation of Protestantism will never change, and our determination to walk a path that is adapted to a socialist society will never waver."
Catholicism
In December 2016, the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Catholic Representatives reaffirmed their plan for the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association to uphold the principle of independence and self-governance, along with the promotion of sinicization.In March 2018, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States within the Holy See's Secretariat of State, said that "two expressions or, more precisely, two principles stand out, which should interact with each other, namely “Sinicization” and “inculturation”. I am convinced that an important intellectual and pastoral challenge arises in an almost natural way from the bringing together of these two terms, which indicate two real visions of the world."
In June 2018, the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association ) issued a "Five-Year Plan on Carrying Forward the Catholic Church's Adherence to the Direction of Sinicization in Our Country". This document includes provisions forbidding worship outside of designated church structures and government-authorized times, as well as participation of minors under the age of 18 in any religious services. Churches in Hebei province and the Yibin Diocese of Sichuan province began holding training seminars immediately.
Islam
In 2015, paramount leader Xi Jinping first raised the issue of "Sinicization of Islam". In 2018, a confidential directive was issued ordering local officials to "prevent Islam from interfering with secular life and the state’s functions".Yang Faming, leader of the Islamic Association of China, said in a 2018 speech that "We must allow traditional Chinese culture to permeate Islam and jointly guard the spiritual homeland of the Chinese people." He encouraged Chinese characteristics to be present in religious ceremony, culture, and architecture.