1995-10-01a- CIA Conference Report: THE CHALLENGE OF ETHNIC CONFLICT TO NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER IN THE 1990S GEOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVES 01-Oct-95

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Ethnicity Theory and Ethnic Conflict seems to me, when we examine China in this regard,
in China: The New Politics of is "which seams."
Difference
With the rise of a unipolar world led by the United
States, the question of China's domestic integrity
Dru Gladney becomes paramount (Garver 1992). However, geopo-
Research Fellow, litical strategists and scholars may be tempted to aban-
Program for Cultural Studies don their interest in the minorities of China-key
East-West Center players in the border disputes between the two former
neighboring adversaries-who were often only of
The Chinese people have shown the greatest loyalty to interest as potential irritants to Sino-Soviet relations.
family and clan with the result that in China there China now shares a much reduced border with Russia
have been familyism and clanism but no realnational- and is instead faced with several new nations with
ism. Foreignobservers say that the Chinese are like a much less political clout. This may lead scholars to
sheet of loose sand.. . . The unity of the Chinese peo- disregard the ethnics within and without China as no
ple has stopped short at the clan and has not extended longer of strategic or political interest.
to the nation ...
What are the pressures within China for ethnic con-
Sun Yat-sen, Three People's Principles(1924:2,5) flict, and why have they changed with the demise of
the USSR? How do we begin to conceive of China as
something more than a monocultural society with a
Shenzhen is Hong Kongized, Guangdong is Shenzhen- 6,000-year writien history? Do the politics of differ-
ized, and the whole country is Guangdongized. ence make a difference for the average Chinese citi-
zen? This paper will seek to address these questions as
Popularsaying in southern China I outline what I see to be some of the ethnic "contours
of power" (Yang 1989) within Chinese society.
Although Sovietologists could never have predicted
Introduction: The Disuniting of China the rapid events that dismantled the USSR at the
beginning of this decade, and I do not envision the
In his recent statement to the United Nations, the Rus- immediate dissolution of China, attention to the preex-
sian Foreign Minister Andrey V. Kozyrev declared isting faultlines within these superpowers might yield
that the threat of ethnic violence today is "no less seri- significant insight into the political maps that charac-
ous than the threat of nuclear war was yesterday." terize their present and possible futures. (See figure 8.)
Although most people would agree that this is cer-
tainly true for the troubled regions of the former
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle Ethnic Faultlines
East, and much of the Americas, few would acknowl-
edge that China is also faced with such a threat. While The Rise of Southern Nationalisms
the former Soviet Union, in particular, is seen to be There is a new feeling in China, reflected by the
riddled with ethnic and nationalist strife, China is still popular saying: "Northerners love (ai) the nation;
regarded as a relatively peaceful monolith that is dom- Southerners sell (mat) the nation." Accompanying
inated by a militaristic centralized power structure the dramatic economic explosion in southern China,
intent on maintaining its control at all costs. This Southerners and others have begun to assert their
paper will not dispute that received wisdom. Rather, it cultural and political differences. Recent studies by
will seek to demonstrate why we continue to see
China in this way and to attempt to illustrate some of
the potential faultlines in the system, should it ever
begin to come apart at the seams. The real subject, it
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