Ethnicity, education and empowerment (Con't)

Pp23:

Shortly after the founding of the PRC in 1949, the Chinese government launched a huge classification project to determine which of the 400 groups claiming to be "minority nationalities" actually were. About 700 scholars, officials and college students fanned out across the countryside. Many had little prior ethnological or linguistic training other than the crash course they were given before being sent into the field (Wu David Y.H, 1990, Chinese minority policy and the meaning of minority culture: the example of Bai in Yunnan, China, in Human organization 49, 1-13). They used criteria, developed by Joseph Stalin to describe a nation, to decide which groups qualified as minority nationalities. According to Stalin's definition, a nation has a common language, territory, economic life and psychological disposition (psychological disposition is understood to mean customs and habits). Using these criteria, the CHinese government had officially recognized 20 minority nationalities by 1957; Since then the number has increased, up to the current 55 recoginzed groups. In this book, the author wrote that, according to Fei Xiaotong, the ethnic identification is a continuous and difficult task, and political considerations may carry more weight than scientific criteria in deciding whether a group qualifies as a minority nationality. Once it is officially recognized, delegates can be chosen from the group to sit in representatives bodies at all levels of government. In addition, the minority in question is given the chance to set up an autonomous nationality region, prefecture or county. Some local governments even stipulate that a given amount of their budgets be spent on mnority affairs, making it easier for ethnic entrepreneurs to secure business loans. In short, political and material benefits accrue to minority nationality groups, in other words, groups that meet Stalin's criteria.

However, western-trained anthropologists like David Wu feel that it is simply both theoretically and technically impossible to apply at one time all four criteria to all the ethnic groups. Wu explains that the recent trend in western social sciences is to regard ethnicity as fluid, situational and changeable.

Pp 29:
Today a huge tourist industry is being developed around minority cultures. Ethnic tourism plays an important part in stimulating foreign trade and investment. Ethnic costumes, handcrafts, festivals and architecture are being promoted as "exotic and different from that of the Han" (Wu, 1990), thus especially worthy of tourists' attention.

Pp 33 Minority Education in communist China and reformed China
When the communists overthrew the Nationalists in 1949, a dramatic shift in minority policy occurred. The emphasis shifted from assimilation to pluralism. The first constitution of the PRC, written in 1952, granted equal rights to all ethnic groups to all ethnic groups, minority and Han. The constitution also contained promises to develop minority languages and writing systems and implement political, economic, cultural and educational reconstruction. In practice, over the past 50 years, this has meant the development of written languages, the elimination of illiteracy and the provision of schools.

Since many minority areas had no schools whatsoever in the early 1950s, the first step was to expand primary education, usually to a length of about 6 years. Subjects offered in minority and Han areas were quite similar: reading, writing and arithmetic. In minority areas, additional instruction was provided in nationality languages. All teaching was to be done in local languages. Han teachers were expected to master the indigenous languages of their particular areas.

By 1956 the focus had shifted to secondary education. The new goal was to train enough teachers to staff the primary schools. To this end, normal schools were founded.

Ethnic minorities and Higher education in the PRC