ABSTRACT
Approximately 110 million persons, counting for 8.4 per cent of the total population, belong to the 55 officially recognised ‘national minorities’ in the People’s Republic of China (National Bureau of Statistics PRC 2001).3 Considering that the vast number of the minorities, estimated to number 150 million by 2010, cover more than 60 per cent of the Chinese territory, scholars argue that China in general has experienced considerable success in dealing with the relations between the national minorities and the majority Han ethnic group (Ghai 2000:92; Zhu and Yu 2000:41; Mackerras 1998:42). This does not mean that unrest and serious challenges to the Beijing authority in the form of selfdetermination claims do not exist and continue, beyond the more commonly known situations in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Historical conflicts forming part of collective memory include the bloody suppression of the Miao and Hui uprisings in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the uprisings of mainly the Yi and Yao in the 1950s and 1960s; the dismantling of the autonomous areas with significant losses of territory to neighbouring non-autonomous provinces and other events during the Cultural Revolution; and the ethnic conflict involving the Utsat Muslim minority on Hainan Island (Heberer 2000:5; Kaup 2000:111; Pang 1998:142-162). Applying this volume’s editors’ definition of a ‘self-determination conflict’ (‘a self-defined segment of an existing state’s population, inhabiting solely or with others a specific territory, seeks to increase the level of, and resources for, self-governance’) demands from ethnic leaders in various areas aiming at increased self-governance and improvements of the existing autonomy system would also be included.
