(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
preoccupation with order and ‘harmony in a society
held tenuously together by proper relationships may
be one reason why these categories have never been
challenged. The very Confucian practice of the “recti-
fication of names” (zheng ming) is of primary concern
to the Chinese ethnographers; once the Han and all the
minority nationalities have been identified or named,
order is restored, and all is well in the world. I would
argue that it is the anxiety about differences within
Chinese society, not the affection shared within, that
has managed to hold China together.
The notion of “Han ren” (Han person) has existed for
many centuries as those descendants of the Han
dynasty, which had its beginnings in the Wei River
valley. However, I submit that the notion of “Han zu”
or “Han min” (Han nationality) is an entirely modern
phenomenon—it arises with the shift from empire to
nation, as argued above. While the concept of a Han
person certainly existed, the notion of a unified Han
nationality that makes up 94 percent of China’s popu-
lation gained its greatest popularity under Dr. Sun Yat-
sen. Dr. Sun was most certainly influenced by strong
currents of Japanese nationalisrn during his long-term
stay in Japan. Sun argued that the ruler-subject rela-
tion that had persisted throughput China’s dynastic
history would need to be fundamentally transformed if
a true nationalist movement were to sweep China and
engender support among all its peoples. More practi-
cally, Dr. Sun needed a way tolmobilize all Chinese
against the imperial rule of the Qing, a dynasty
founded by a northeastern people who became known
as the Manchu. By invoking the argument that the
majority of the people in China were Han, Sun effec-
tively found a symbolic metaphorical opposition to
the Manchu to which the vast majority of peoples in
China would easily rally.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen advocated the idea that there were
“Five Peoples of China” (wuzu‘ gonghe): the Han, the
Man (Manchu), the Meng (Mongolian), the Zang
(Tibetan), and the Hui—a term" that included all Mus-
lims in China who are now divided into the Uighur,
Kazakh, Hui, and so forth. This recognition of the
Five Peoples of China served as the main platform for
his Nationalist revolution, which overthrew the Qing
empire and established the first “People’s Republic.”
One must have peoples if there is to be a people’s
revolution. The critical link between Sun Yat-sen’s
Five Peoples policy and his desire to unify all of
China is made crystal clear from his discussion of
nationa1ism—the first of his Three People’s Principles
(Sanmin Zhuyi). It is here that Sun argued the Chinese
were a disconnected, loose sheet of sand, with no .
sense of the nation.
Z
It is also not at all surprising that Dr. Sun should tum
to the use of the all-embracing idea of the Han as the
national group, which included all the regional peo-
ples and Sino-linguistic speech communities. Sun Yat-
sen was Cantonese, raised as an overseas Chinese in
Hawaii. As one who spoke little Mandarin, and with
few connections in northem China, he would have
easily aroused traditional northem suspicions of
southem radical movements extending back to the
Song dynasty (10th century) that were, of course, well
known to him. This recurring historical pattern and the
traditional antipathy between the Cantonese and
northem peoples would have posed an enormous bar-
rier to his promotion of a nationalist movement. Dr.
Sun found a way to rise above deeply embedded
north-south ethnocentrisms. The use and perhaps
invention of the term “Han minzu” was a brilliant
attempt to mobilize other non-Cantonese, especially
northem Mandarin speakers, and the powerful Zhe-
jiang and Shanghainese merchants into one overarch-
ing national group against the Manchu and other
foreigners during the unstable period following the
Unequal Treaties. The Han were seen to stand in
opposition to the “Others” on their borders—the Man-
chu, Tibetan, Mongol, and Hui, as well as the Westem
imperialists. By distinguishing these “Others” in their
midst, the nationalists cultivated the imagined identity
of the “we” Han, as opposed to the “they” minorities
and foreigners. In Ben Anderson’s terms, Dr. Sun was
engaged in “stretching the short, tight skin of the
nation over the gigantic body of the empire.”
The Communists stretched this skin even further, fol-
lowing the Soviet model and identifying not five, but
55, nationality groups, with the Han in the 9l—percent
majority. My argument is that both for the nationalists
and the Communists, it was not only the political
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Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268