Loosening central control is never an appealing prospect for China’s leaders. But in the country’s short history under the Communist Party of China (CPC), the tactic of trading local control for social stability has been used fairly freely. The pursuit of national unity has been a long and complicated process for the Party, since China’s many diverse regions have never fitted perfectly under a central authority. So from the grand “one state, two systems” approach to Hong Kong down to the autonomous counties created for little-known ethnic groups like the Yi and Va, Beijing’s solution has been a compromise of partial autonomy.
Back in 1990, the sinologist Lucian Pye wrote: “…the miracle of China has been its astonishing unity. In western terms the China of today is as if the Europe of the Roman Empire and of Charlemagne had lasted until this day and were now trying to function as a single nation-state.” But in 2014, a concurrence of violence and anti-Beijing demonstrations across most of China’s major autonomous territories raised questions about the durability of this compromise and the limits of Chinese unity.
Last year, China fought through a number of crises including attacks from Xinjiang separatists, the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and Hong Kong’s back-to-back Tiananmen Square memorial and Occupy Central movement. But even as Beijing raced from province to province doing damage control, few have ventured to ask whether these events, taken together, are signs of an unstable system. While the Party continues to blame unrest on terrorists and political radicals, the real problem facing China may be the larger system of semi-autonomous regions. As these territories continue to develop individual identities (ethnic, political or otherwise), they are becoming harder and harder to integrate into Chinese society.
In Xinjiang province, which was effectively a self-governing nation before CPC nationalisation, a tapestry of different ethnic groups have contributed to a distinctly non-Chinese identity overall. More recently, it has helped fuel an increasingly desperate form of extremism and violence. Officially a semi-autonomous territory for Uyghurs (the mainly Muslim, Turkic people of China’s north-west), the province has been an incubator for anti-Chinese terror cells for some time. But things escalated last year after two knife attacks against ethnic Han Chinese in March and April left 36 dead and 220 injured. Despite promises from President Xi Jinping to pre-empt further violence, a bomb attack followed in Xinjiang’s capital, killing another 31. Then, in a stunning encore two months later, dozens of enraged Uyghurs wielding knives and axes were gunned down by police, but not before leaving 37 civilians dead in their wake.
After each attack, Beijing redoubled its increasingly draconian security presence in Xinjiang. Besides constant drone surveillance and patrols by the People’s Armed Police, new rules have begun to encroach on Muslim life and culture as well. Head coverings, long beards and Islamic symbols have been banned. Shocking reports of Muslims being forced to eat during Ramadan have also come to light.
In a region with so many concentrated pockets of marginalised minorities, this systematic suppression is one of Beijing's few remaining options for maintaining control. Ironically, some experts argue that Beijing also relies on these ethnic divisions within the region as a source of stability. Nick Holdstock, a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book China's Forgotten People, has studied this dynamic. "When the Communists took over Xinjiang, they also split up the region into multiple administrative areas, many of which recognised an ethnic group as being the major (and thus titular) ethnicity for that area. The result was that areas were designated as being Tajik, Hui, Mongol and Kazakh, even when they weren't the majority ethnic group," Holdstock explains. "Promoting these different ethnic identities has arguably worked as a kind of divide and rule tactic – the Communist Party has been able to prevent any form of regional identity arising, which might transcend ethnic boundaries – and in doing so has perhaps managed to prevent even more serious dissent than exists at present." Yet the longer the tense climate in Xinjiang persists, the easier it is to imagine such a regional identity beginning to form.
While ethnic and religious tension has been the flashpoint in Xinjiang, purely political tensions have caused similar challenges off China’s coast. In both Taiwan and Hong Kong, which have each struggled to preserve their own political ideology, anti-Beijing sentiment boiled over as well. Unlike in Xinjiang, the institutions at stake for these provinces are at most a few hundred years old. But even in Taiwan’s brief 65-year history as the Republic of China (ROC) and Hong Kong’s 155-year stint as a British colony, unique identities developed that were on display in the protests that rocked each region last year.
Before this point, Taiwan was widely thought to be falling in line with the CPC even while it still claims sovereignty from the mainland. With economic cooperation eclipsing the erstwhile political rivalry, Taiwan appeared to be proof that the autonomous territory strategy could work. Its government looked capable of keeping up cordial relations with Beijing even with independent elections and a capitalist economy; just one month before protests broke out, the two held the highest-level meeting since their rift in 1949.
However, the massive demonstrations of last March and April that became known as the Sunflower Movement dashed any hope of stable cross-strait relations. Six years of President Ma Ying-jeou, widely viewed as an apologist for strong mainland ties, had loaded the powder kegs. And with Ma’s approval ratings already down to single digits, popular pushback exploded once he rammed through a trade deal that many considered overly servile to Beijing.
The ensuing backlash was well covered. Western media hailed the protests as an exercise in freedom of assembly that may have drawn north of 200,000 participants on some days. The Sunflower Movement showed that even the economic ties once thought to be bringing the two closer could reach a tipping point. But more importantly, it also demonstrated that many young Taiwanese are deeply suspicious of any form of central control over the island. In a poll conducted by the Taiwan Braintrust in February, 89.5 per cent of respondents self-identified as distinctly Taiwanese, while only 6 per cent embraced a “Chinese” identity.
The Sunflower Movement’s warnings that Chinese influence is a slippery slope seemed to be vindicated in Hong Kong. After almost two decades of deepening trade, signs emerged last summer that Beijing was preparing to assert more control over the region and its relatively independent elections. In anticipation, Hong Kong’s active civil society responded defiantly.
On top of its usual role as a safe house for anti-CPC activists, Hong Kong stoked Beijing by playing host to the 25th anniversary memorial of Tiananmen Square, which drew six-figure crowds. Meanwhile, the city’s independent media got involved in its own quiet but contentious standoff with the mainland as well. Prominent journalists with a record of criticising the CPC suffered assaults and stabbings, ostensibly as political retaliation. Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai was also browbeaten with threats, slander and a corruption investigation. Finally, after the central government’s decision to screen candidates in future Hong Kong elections, protests crescendoed into the giant Occupy Central/Umbrella movement, which dominated headlines worldwide.
Constitutionally, Hong Kong’s special status is only guaranteed until 2047. But it is already clear that many residents have a different vision that extends beyond the next 32 years, in which the CPC accepts the city’s ideological rift from the rest of China. If anything, the fact that Beijing is announcing this decision now reflects a real concern that if Hong Kong continues to adjust to the status quo for another three decades, reincorporating it might become impossible.
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The issue of national unity comes up in Party documents as early as the 1920s, as does the challenge of incorporating shaoshu minzu, or minority nations. Mao Zedong was adamant that China not follow the Soviet Union’s example in this area, as Stalin’s cruel manipulation of ethnic groups (including forced resettlement and mass deportation) struck Mao as an undesirable model. Instead, he insisted that some degree of self-determination in the various ethnic heartlands was crucial for China’s long-term social harmony.
In theory, the system Mao envisioned for China was not unlike the network of reservations the US created for Native Americans. The scale of Mao’s system, however, was far more ambitious, and in practice it has been much harder to pull off. To reframe Pye’s comparison in this context, the China of today is almost as if the United States had made Utah an autonomous Mormon zone, Hawaii a self-governing ethnic territory, and the 1845 Republic of Texas a semi-sovereign enclave. Beijing officially recognises 56 ethnic and religious minorities, and regions like Taiwan and Hong Kong that are almost entirely Han but have unique political histories have been granted special status.
However, by extending superficial sovereignty to so many groups, Mao wound up creating quite a few hotbeds of dissent. This constellation of special territories now poses a unique structural challenge. While the nightmare of a breakaway province or a civil war that has haunted every generation of leaders since Mao has never transpired, the difficult questions of identity and governance have gone unaddressed. China has remained a unified country, but one with built-in divisions.
Modern history is replete with examples of concentrated minority groups rejecting outright control by a more powerful “other”. The Irish in the United Kingdom, the Kosovo Albanians in Yugoslavia, and the Kurds in Iraq all share common traits with many of China’s minority groups today. It rarely matters what mix of ethnic, religious and political differences is at play. Even minor but persistent differences can cause significant schisms, as recently demonstrated in Scotland, Catalonia and many other regions.
However, despite its romantic charm, total independence for any of these regions in China would probably be the worst option for all involved. Not only is Beijing committed to resisting any independence effort with full force, at least in the regions where public opinion polls can be conducted, a majority of the population opposes independence as well. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, corporate ties to the mainland have produced a powerful business lobby that supports the status quo. And in the more underdeveloped provinces inland, independence would sever critical funding from the central government, which is still the only reliable force lifting millions out of poverty.
Realistically, the CPC will probably continue to work toward consolidating its influence over these territories. By doing so, however, it is banking on an outcome that seems increasingly improbable – that in time, economic integration and the frailty of human memory will blur the lines of identity across the country. Especially as the economy begins to slow, Beijing will be also able to offer less economic assistance, even as it continues to use heavy-handed tactics. While authoritarian rule has historically been a small price to pay for a rising standard of living, it has also alienated communities that will be no fonder of strict central control during harder times. “It is harsh policies that have, in part, driven those living in the country’s territorial margins to utilise more extreme methods to defend themselves against perceived threats from the Chinese government,” explains Allen Carlson, a China expert and associate professor at Cornell University. “This means that Beijing now finds itself in a position where moving forward will be difficult, but moving back is also impossible.”
The resounding message from last year is that many of China’s minority groups feel a pronounced detachment from the rest of the country. In addition, a large proportion of their members are politically conscious and alert to any threat to their unity. For example, while Beijing has invested billions in railways to bring more Han Chinese into remote parts of the west, there has been heavy opposition from Tibetans and Uyghurs, who rightly see this as an attempt to dilute their communities. And any evidence of tighter control is enough to bring hundreds of thousands into the streets in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. “It is highly unlikely that [Beijing] will lose control over any of these places, but it will find it increasingly difficult to gain more authority and legitimacy,” says Carlson.
China is at the crux of a difficult phase in which leaders and citizens alike are reimagining their country’s role in the future. Even as Beijing has tightened its grasp over regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet, frank discussions between citizens and leaders about the balance of power have taken place in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The common hope is that China is so large, and so historically diverse, that there is room for many regions governed by disparate ideologies to coexist within a single political system. However, as long as both sides continue to view central authority and local identity as fundamentally opposed, the Party’s long-cherished dream of Chinese unity will remain elusive.
Zach Montague is a writer and research analyst at the Delma Institute, specialising in China and East Asian affairs.