ABSTRACT
Summary: Traditionally the Han Chinese have only occupied the eastern parts of China. The remaining 60 per cent of the country has been occupied by 54 ethnic minorities — or minority nationalities — ranging in size from several million to only a few hundred. Because of the strategic importance of these border regions — not only do they sometimes border hostile nations but they also contain precious oil and other mineral deposits — successive Chinese governments have taken great pains to win over the allegiance of the ethnic minorities. Education has been used as a weapon in this process. The Nationalists, in pursuing a policy of assimilation, began to develop a network of schools for the ‘border nationalities'. The Communists have built on this network, and while policies have vacillated according to the vagaries of China's political leadership, and while assimilation is not acknowledged as official policy, it would appear that this is still the ultimate goal of the Chinese Communist Party leadership. This chapter seeks to discuss the importance of the ethnic minorities in China's strategic thinking and shows how educational policies, in spite of differences of emphasis, have had a remarkable degree of similarity under both the Nationalists and the Communists.
