ABSTRACT
Provincial sentiments are rising rapidly in China. Chinese cultural historians are busy at work, turning out more and more works on local, provincial, and regional histories. The number of titles of local histories in Quanguo Zongshumu (National Bibliography) increased from 33 in 1980 to 305 in 1991 (Quanguo 1980, 1991). So far, scholars and journalists have offered widely divergent political interpretations of the rise of provincial consciousness in China. Damned and redeemed scenarios coexist. China is becoming another Yugoslavia exemplifies the first, and China is evolving toward federalism, the second school of thought. What is needed is fact finding. We need to know whether there are variations in provincial sentiments and, if there are, to identify their possible social, economic, or historical reasons. We need to know whether there are explicit or implicit political agendas in the recent provincial sentiments. If so, what accounts for the different political thoughts? These specific facts must be determined before one can indulge in generalizations. The chief aim of this chapter is to ascertain facts about the rise of provincial identities in post-Mao China.
