Governing China S Multiethnic Frontiers

Leading scholars examine the Chinese government’s administration of its ethnic minority regions, particularly border areas where ethnicity is at times a volatile issue and where separatist movements are feared. Chapters focus on the Muslim Hui, multiethnic southwest China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Together these studies provide an overview of government relations with key minority populations, against which one can view evolving dialogues and disputes. Contributors are Gardner Bovington, David Bachman, Uradyn E. Bulag, Melvyn C. Goldstein, Mette Halskov Hansen, Matthew T. Kapstein, and Jonathan Lipman.

Upon coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist government proclaimed that its stance toward ethnic minorities--who comprise approximatelyeight percent of China's population--differed from that of previous regimes and that it would help preserve the linguistic and cultural heritage of the fifty-five official "minority nationalities." However, minority culture suffered widespread destruction in the early decades of the People's Republic of China, and minority areas still lag far behind Han (majority) areas economically.Since the mid-1990s, both domestic and foreign developments have refocused government attention on the inhabitants of China's minority regions, their relationship to the Chinese state, and their foreign ties. Intense economic development of and Han settlement in China's remote minority regions threaten to displace indigenous populations, post-Soviet establishment of independent countries composed mainly of Muslim and Turkic-speaking peoples presents questions for related groups in China, freedom of Mongolia from Soviet control raises the specter of a pan-Mongolian movement encompassing Chinese Mongols, and international groups press for a more autonomous or even independent Tibet.In Governing China's Multiethnic Frontiers, leading scholars examine the Chinese government's administration of its ethnic minority regions, particularly border areas where ethnicity is at times a volatile issue and where separatist movements are feared. Seven essays focus on the Muslim Hui, multiethnic southwest China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Together these studies provide an overview of government relations with key minority populations, against which one can view evolving dialogues and disputes.

Leading scholars examine the Chinese government's administration of its ethnic minority regions

China has emerged as a dominant power in Eurasian affairs that not only exercises significant political and economic power, but increasingly, ideational power too. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, Chinese Communist Party leaders have sought to increase state capacity and exercise more effective control over their western frontier through a series of state-building initiatives. Although these initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, increasing globalization, and the party’s professed concerns about terrorism, separatism, and extremism have led to a region-building project in Eurasia. Garcia traces how domestic elite-led narratives about security and development generate state-building initiatives, and then region-building projects. He also assesses how region-building projects are promoted through narratives of the historicity of China’s engagement in Eurasia, the promotion of norms of non-interference, and appeals to mutual development. Finally, he traces the construction of regions through formal and informal institutions as well as integrative infrastructure. By presenting three phases of Chinese domestic state-building and region-building from 1988-present, Garcia shows how region-building projects have enabled China to increase state capacity, control, and development in its western frontier. Recommended for scholars of China’s international relations and development policy.

China’s unprecedented urbanization is underpinned by not only massive rural-urban migration but also a household registration system embedded in a territorial hierarchy that produces lingering urban-rural duality. The mid-1990s onwards witnessed increasing reliance on land revenues by municipal governments, causing repeated redrawing of city boundaries to incorporate surrounding countryside. The identification of real estate as a growth anchor further fueled urban expansion. Sprawling commodity housing estates proliferate on urban-rural fringes, juxtaposed with historical villages undergoing intense densification. The traditional urban core and work-unit compounds also undergo wholesale redevelopment. Alongside large influx of migrants, major reshuffling of population has taken place inside metropolitan areas. Chinese cities today are more differentiated than ever, with new communities superimposing and superseding older ones. The rise of the urban middle class, in particular, has facilitated the formation of homeowners’ associations, and poses major challenges to hitherto state dominated local governance. The present volume tries to more deeply unravel and delineate the intertwining forms and processes outlined above from a variety of angles: circulatory, mobility and precariousness; urbanization, diversity and segregation; and community and local governance. Contributors include scholars of Chinese cities from mainland China, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia and the United States. This volume was previously published as a special issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics.

China is growing in importance to the economies and governments of the world, and it has been run by men with very different ideas. How China copes with the pressures for good governance with the Asian economic model, treats its ethnic minorities under scrutiny, and gathers resources to fuel its dynamic economy, impacts us all.

"Provides an in-depth overview of how China is governed, how its domestic political system functions and the critical issues it faces in the coming decades. Discusses China's transition to a modern state and its rise within the international system"--

China's Last Imperial Frontier explores imperial China's frontier expansion in the Tibetan borderlands during the last decades of the Qing. The empire mounted a series of military attacks against indigenous chieftaincies and Buddhist monasteries in the east Tibetan region seeking to replace native authorities with state bureaucrats by redrawing the politically diverse frontier into a system of Chinese-style counties. Historically, at all the strategic frontier locations, the state had been for the most part outstripped by local institutions in political, military, and ideological strengths. With perceived threats from the Anglo-Russian “Great Game” accentuating Qing vulnerability in Tibet, the Sichuan government took advantage of the frontier crisis by encroaching upon local and Lhasa domains in Kham. Even though the Kham campaign was portrayed in Qing official discourse as a part of the nationwide reforms of “New Policies” (xinzheng) and administrative regularization (gaitu guiliu), its progress on the ground was influenced by the dynamics of interregional relations, including Sichuan’s competition with central Tibet, power struggles among Qing frontier officials, and varied Khampa responses to the new regime. The growing regionalism intensified the resistance of local forces to imperial authority. Despite the uneven results of the late Qing campaign, it had come to serve as an important source of sovereignty claims and policy inspirations for the subsequent governments.