ABSTRACT

The minority regions possess the most precious commodity of all in China—virgin land— which has been used for numerous resettlement projects to ease population pressures in the eastern provinces. The stated goals of the Great Leap Forward—increase production, eliminate bureaucratism and red tape, and achieve pure communism—were, according to state discourses, ill served by the proliferation of special accommodations for minority groups. Some minority groups have been criticized by the state, even denounced, for being more primitive in their cultural practices than is the norm for China in its modernizing phase, and they have been encouraged to abandon what the state defines as "feudal" practices. During the Great Leap Forward the state emphasized class and class consciousness over all other issues, including ethnicity. Ethnicity—in China as in most other places—is something that evolves and is reinforced through constant negotiation and renegotiation between the people and the state.