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China Minority Nationalities
Demographic Overview
Approximately 93 percent of China's population is considered
Han. Sharp regional and cultural differences, including major
variations in spoken Chinese, exist among the Han, who are a
mingling of many peoples. All the Han nonetheless use a common
written form of Chinese and share the social organization, values,
and cultural characteristics universally recognized as Chinese
(see Han Diversity and Unity
, ch. 3).
Officially, China has fifty-six "nationality" groups, including
the Han. The Chinese define a nationality as a group of people of
common origin living in a common area, using a common language, and
having a sense of group identity in economic and social
organization and behavior. Altogether, China has fifteen major
linguistic regions generally coinciding with the geographic
distribution of the major minority nationalities
(see
fig. 6).
Members of non-Han groups, referred to as the "minority
nationalities," constitute only about 7 percent of the total
population but number more than 70 million people and are
distributed over 60 percent of the land.
Some minority nationalities can be found only in a single
region; others may have settlements in two or more. In general,
however, the minorities are concentrated in the provinces and
autonomous regions of the northwest and the southwest. In Xizang,
Xinjiang, and Nei Monggol autonomous regions, minorities occupy
large frontier areas; many are traditionally nomadic and engage
primarily in agriculture or pastoral pursuits. Minority groups in
Yunnan and Guizhou provinces and in the Guangxi-Zhuang Autonomous
Region are more fragmented and inhabit smaller areas.
According to the 1982 census, approximately 95 percent of
Xizang's civilian population of 1.9 million are Tibetan (Zang
nationality). An internally cohesive group, the Tibetans have
proven the most resistant of the minority groups to the
government's integration efforts. Xinjiang, which is as vast and
distant from Beijing as Xizang, is the minority area next in
demographic and political significance. Despite a large-scale
immigration of Han since the 1950s, in 1985 around 60 percent of
Xinjiang's 13.4 million population belonged to minority
nationalities. Of these, the most important were 6.1 million Uygurs
and more than 900,000 Kazaks, both Turkic-speaking Central Asian
peoples (see
table 9, Appendix A).
Provinces with large concentrations of minorities include
Yunnan, where the Yi and other minority groups comprised an
estimated 32 percent of the population in 1985; Guizhou, home of
more than half of the approximately 4 million Miao; and sparsely
populated Qinghai, which except for the area around the provincial
capital of Xining is inhabited primarily by Tibetans and other
minority nationality members, amounting in 1986 to approximately 37
percent of the total provincial population. Additionally, in 1986
minority nationalities constituted approximately 16 percent of the
population of Nei Monggol Autonomous Region. The Guangxi-Zhuang
Autonomous Region contains almost all of the approximately 13.5
million members of what is China's largest minority nationality,
the Zhuang; most of them, however, are highly assimilated.
Because many of the minority nationalities are located in
politically sensitive frontier areas, they have acquired an
importance greater than their numbers. Some groups have common
ancestry with peoples in neighboring countries. For example,
members of the Shan, Korean, Mongol, Uygur and Kazak, and Yao
nationalities are found not only in China but also in Burma, Korea,
the Mongolian People's Republic, the Soviet Union, and Thailand,
respectively. If the central government failed to maintain good
relations with these groups, China's border security could be
jeopardized
(see Perception of Threat
, ch. 14). Since 1949 Chinese
officials have declared that the minorities are politically equal
to the Han majority and in fact should be accorded preferential
treatment because of their small numbers and poor economic
circumstances. The government has tried to ensure that the
minorities are well represented at national conferences and has
relaxed certain policies that might have impeded their
socioeconomic development.
The minority areas are economically as well as politically
important. China's leaders have suggested that by the turn of the
century the focus of economic development should shift to the
northwest. The area is rich in natural resources, with uranium
deposits and abundant oil reserves in Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous
Region. Much of China's forestland is located in the border regions
of the northeast and southwest, and large numbers of livestock are
raised in the arid and semiarid northwest. Also, the vast amount of
virgin land in minority areas can be used for resettlement to
relieve population pressures in the densely populated regions of
the country.
In the early 1980s, the central government adopted various
measures to provide financial and economic assistance to the
minority areas. The government allotted subsidies totaling
approximately -Y6,000 million (for value of the
yuan, see Glossary)
in 1984 to balance any deficits experienced in autonomous areas
inhabited by minority nationalities. After 1980 the autonomous
regions of Nei Monggol, Xinjiang, Xizang, Guangxi, and Ningxia and
the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Qinghai were permitted to
keep all revenues for themselves. The draft state budget written in
April 1986 allocated a special grant of -Y800 million to the
underdeveloped minority nationality areas over and above the
regular state subsidies. The standard of living in the minority
areas improved dramatically from the early to the mid-1980s. In
Xizang Autonomous Region, annual per capita income increased from
-
Y216 in 1983 to -Y317 in 1984 (national per capita income was -Y663
in 1983 and -Y721 in 1984). The per capita net income of the
minority areas in Yunnan Province increased from -Y118 in 1980 to
-
Y263 in 1984, for an increase of 81.3 percent. Overall, however,
the minority areas remained relatively undeveloped in 1986.
Data as of July 1987
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