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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Edward Friedman (1993), Emily Honig (1991), and their landlords. People now often praise Zhou Enlai by
others have demonstrated a new rising importance of stressing his southern Jiangnan linkages. And even
the politics of ethnic and cultural difference within Jiang Jieshi-Chiang Kai-shek-was praised as a
China proper. Not only have the "official" minorities Southerner who knew how to get money out of the
in China begun to more strongly assert their identities, United States.
pressing the government for further recognition,
autonomy, and special privileges, but also different Liao Ping-hui (1993), a Taiwanese sociologist, reports
groups from within the so-called "Han" majority have that Taiwan is also experiencing a dramatic reasser-
begun to rediscover, reinvent, and reassert their ethnic tion of the gaoshan "aboriginal" peoples to their
differences. indigenous rights and claims. Age-old Taiwanese/
Mainlander ethnic cleavages (Hill Gates 1981) have
In the south especially, there has been a recent rewrit- given way to a predominance of Taiwanese language
ing of history, illustrated by a newfound interest in the and political figures in everyday life as well as a host
southern Chu Kingdom as key to southern success. of other groups maneuvering along traditional cultural
Edward Friedman reports the establishment of muse- and linguistic grounds for political power.
ums throughout southern China dedicated to the glori-
ous history of the southern Kingdom of Chu, as The assertions of the politics of difference within the
manifested in both the Warring States period, majority Han society militate against traditional
475-221 BC and the Three Kingdoms 220-265 AD. assumptions about the "homogeneous" Chinese, the
Many Southerners now see the early Chu as essential monoculturalism of China, and the predominance of a
to Chinese culture and as distinct from the less impor- 91-percent Han majority nationality. Local differences
tant northern dynasties. In a significant departure from are now becoming recognized as "ethnic," (Honig
traditional Chinese historiography, southern scholars 1992), whereas previously most China scholars dis-
are beginning to argue that by the 6th century BC the missed them as merely "regional." This semantic
bronze cultures of the Chu spread north and influ- shift, from "regional" to "ethnic" reflects a new
enced the development of Chinese civilization, not the salience placed upon the politics of difference in the
other way around. This argument supports a reevalua- People's Republic.
tion of the importance of the south to China's past, as
well as economic and geopolitical future (Friedman Traditional China studies emphasized "China"as one
1993). civilization, one country, and one culture. Rarely was
there serious attention paid to cultural and political
Rising consciousness of the southern Chu, or Can- difference in China studies unless it concerned the
tonese, is paralleled by reassertions of identity among "exotic" minority border peoples, almost always
the Hakka people,.the southern Fujianese Min or Hok- regarded as marginal to power and politics in the Peo-
kien, the Swatow, and a host of other peoples empow- ple's Republic. Most studies dealt only with ethnic
ered by economic success and embittered at age-old differences as related to the 55 official minority
restraints placed on them from the north. Many people nationalities of China. While two recent collections in
are beginning to note the southern leanings and ori- Daedalus and two new edited volumes on Chinese
gins of central party political figures, and it is not national identity have begun to address this issue,
unusual to hear reports that so-and-so is a Hakka and most of them approach the issues of cultural identity
therefore has acted in a certain way. Leading figures from the other direction, that is, asking what binds the
considered to be Hakka or part Hakka include Deng Chinese together-Confucianism, Communism, state-
Xiaoping, Hu Yaobang, and Ye Jianning-father of authoritarianism, familism, or language-rather than
Guangdong's previous governor. It is now widely what might be pulling them apart. Conflicts with
known that all members of the Chinese Communist China's long divisiveness over cultural, linguistic, and
Party's (CCP) southern bases in the 1920s and 1930s
were Hakka, as were their leaders. Mao successfully
mobilized Hakka hatred against other Southerners and
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