ABSTRACT
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is often thought of as a culturally homogenous nation-state. Thus Eric Hobsbawm could assert in his seminal Nations and Nationalisms since 1780 that ‘China … was among the extremely rare examples of historic states composed of a population that is ethnically almost or entirely homogenous’ (Hobsbawm 1990: 66). This perception is no doubt due to the fact that the Han Chinese constitute, according to the 2010 census, some 91.51% of the country’s total population of 1,339,000 million (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2011b). Although China’s 55 officially recognized non-Han ethnic minority groups account for a seemingly insignificant 8.49% of China’s population, this none the less amounts to some 113.79 million people—more than the populations of many other nation-states. The importance of China’s ethnic minority populations can also be gauged by noting that they are concentrated in 64.3% of the country’s total land area and 90% of China’s border regions (Mackerras 2004a: 1). They thus have an importance beyond what basic demographic data would suggest. The issue of Han-ethnic minority relations and ethnic separatism, if not carefully managed, therefore holds the potential to generate domestic instability, complicate Beijing’s relations with its neighbours and even threaten the territorial integrity of the PRC.
