A US/India Model for China’s Ethnic Policies: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?

Some scholars in China argue that minority rights inscribed in law, such as ethnic regional autonomy and preferential policies, must be reformed along liberal lines: minorities should be “depoliticized” -- treated as cultural groups whose members have only individual, not collective, rights. They propose a “second generation of ethnic policies” for China that they argue would resemble policies in the United States and India. This article shows, however, that the United States and India do not have the features of ethnic equity and peace that they are supposed to exemplify, as their minorities have subordinate, deteriorating social positions and are generally disaffected. The choice for China’s minorities need not be a binary of individual rights only or no change in the present system. An expansion, rather than contraction, of minority rights may instead create greater ethnic equality and stability in China

Affirmative Action, Ethnic Minorities and China\u27s Universities

China greatly expanded its longstanding set of preferential policies for ethnic minorities in the 1980s and 1990s. Affirmative action in higher education annually allows for the admission of tens of thousands of ethnic minority students who, based on their national entrance examination scores alone, would be unable to gain a much sought-after place in one of the country\u27s thousand universities. The variety of ways in which the admission and retention of PRC minority students are facilitated by laws, regulations and policies are examined, as are attitudes toward affirmative action on the part of Han majority and ethnic minority students. In contrast to claims made by some Western scholars of affirmative action, who assert that affirmative action is universally problematic, higher educational preferences for Chinese minorities have not led to a high rate of academic failure, nor to tensions between Han and minority students. While ethnic minority people would like to see affirmative action in Chinese higher education strengthened further, the system is now threatened by marketization

A US/India Model for China’s Ethnic Policies: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?

Some scholars in China argue that minority rights inscribed in law, such as ethnic regional autonomy and preferential policies, must be reformed along liberal lines: minorities should be “depoliticized” -- treated as cultural groups whose members have only individual, not collective, rights. They propose a “second generation of ethnic policies” for China that they argue would resemble policies in the United States and India. This article shows, however, that the United States and India do not have the features of ethnic equity and peace that they are supposed to exemplify, as their minorities have subordinate, deteriorating social positions and are generally disaffected. The choice for China’s minorities need not be a binary of individual rights only or no change in the present system. An expansion, rather than contraction, of minority rights may instead create greater ethnic equality and stability in China

Localists and “Locusts” in Hong Kong: Creating a Yellow-Red Peril Discourse

Hong Kong’s “localists” depict mainlanders as locusts ruining the territory and bringing an end to a vaunted way of life. In this article, we first discuss anti-mainlander prejudice in Hong Kong and its resemblance to earlier biases by Shanghai people against Chinese from neighboring provinces. We then empirically test claims localists make about the mainlander presence in Hong Kong and show that mainland visitors and migrants are not working the harms attributed to them. There follows a review of “insect language” as integral to racial vilification in several settings, with Hong Kong’s anti-locust movement a recent example. We go on to elaborate on the vilifiers themselves and on the Hong Kong government’s obligations, under international and local law, to punish them. Hong Kong nativism, we contend, is significant beyond the SAR and its relations with the rest of China. Nativist “anti-locust” agitation exemplifies the global advancement of ethnic antagonism as a putative solution to problems that are actually rooted in gross and increasing inequality, not ethnicity per se. Vilification of ethnic groups and these underlying problems must be addressed politically and legally and, while the Hong Kong case is both structurally similar to others and highly specific, what is done in the SAR will have wider implications