ABSTRACT

This chapter provides some historical background on ethnic separatism in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It identifies the causes of ethnic separatism. The chapter also provides an assessment of the current separatist challenges to the PRC and their implications for China's domestic politics and foreign relations. It demonstrates that China's current issues with ethnic separatism are rooted in the 20th-century history of the Republic of China's and the PRC's attempts to incorporate the peoples and territories conquered by the Manchus. The subsequent history of the regions within the PRC has been defined by the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to overcome this historical legacy and bind the regions, and the non-Han peoples who inhabit them, ever closer to the 'multi-ethnic' and 'unitary' Chinese state. The PRC has, since its inception, confronted the spectre of ethnic separatism, particularly in Xinjiang and Tibet.