ABSTRACT
This chapter looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted and defined by the cultural mainstream as inferior and less valuable for the modernization of China, and in consequent need of transformation in line with advanced cultures, particularly through education. In dichotomizing advanced cultures vis-à-vis backward ones, this process has ethnicized differences of minorities. However, within the process itself are internal contradictions that render any attempt at actual education self-contradictory and ultimately unproductive. Using three sources of data, government policy, academic discourse, and ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter provides corroborative evidence relating to the creation of particular images of minority cultures and subjects by the mainstream Han. Central to this creation is the idea of Chinese culturalism, in spite of its different vocabularies and strategies from the historically formulated culture discourse of imperial times.
