ABSTRACT
Since the start of the reforms and the opening up of China, the state has mobilised ethnic minorities as a symbol of China’s multiculturalism. Minorities’ traditions, festivals, music and food have showcased China’s plurality and exoticism.1 Minority cultural sites have also become centrepieces of much of the PRC’s tourism and cultural celebration. While ethnographers and anthropologists have examined these functions of ethnic minorities in the framing of the Chinese nationstate, the state’s utilisation of ethnic arguments in China’s national modernisation project has not been studied to the same extent. Yet, the modernisation project goes hand in hand with redefinition of China’s cultural identities and symbolic boundaries, or, as Ong (1999) put it, with the ‘remoralisation’ of the nation. The PRC’s promotion of itself as a plural multiethnic nation-state in cultural terms shapes its implementation of the national modernisation project, and also affects how participation in the national modernisation project is formulated.2 Along with the discursive practices discussed in Chapter 4, how the prevailing policies of modernisation account for ethnic minorities reflects the articulation of their participation in the national project. Therefore, this chapter examines the role of China’s ethnic minorities in the country’s national modernisation project. Specifically, the chapter looks at how the notion of the ‘ethnic question’ changed since the start of the reforms. It also examines how the central government utilises the concept of ethnicity (minzu) in formulating and implementing its modernisation strategies, and the ways through which ethnic minority groups are included in the national modernisation project.
