ABSTRACT
Territorial self-government arrangements are widely used to manage political tensions in many states where sub-state territorial communities claim distinct identities. Although the degree, scope, and institutional form of territorial self-government vary, autonomy arrangements have been used in states as diverse as Canada (for mainly francophone Quebec and First Nations communities), the Philippines (for parts of Muslim-claimed Mindanao), and post-communist Russia, Moldova, and Georgia. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the concern of the present volume, grants of formal territorial autonomy have been a state building and maintenance strategy aimed at securing and legitimating regime authority in minority nationality areas. In the Han heartland, they have more recently been deployed as a means of managing market reforms and China’s integration with global capitalism while also resolving territorial disputes. Following upon the “special economic zones” of the late 1970s, the authorities of the PRC proposed the “one country, two systems” policy to entice Taiwan back to the motherland. In the 1980s, they promised a version of this territorial autonomy regime to Hong Kong and Macau. The aim was to take back the territories, ending China’s humiliation at the hands of European imperialists, while legitimating and protecting Communist party rule and Hong Kong-style capitalism, the engine of China’s post-Mao market reforms.2
