No monolithic Chinese nation

Vestnik Kavkaza together with Vesti FM starts the national question project.  Vladimir Averin and Gia Saralidze, the hosts of the program, are visited by the Head of the Department of Oriental Studies of the Higher School of Economics, Alexei Maslov.

Saralidze: Welcome. Today we are going to discuss the national question in China. In my opinion, it is a very interesting topic. Firstly, because we always perceive China as a monolith. If there are some problems, they are connected with the Uighurs and Tibet. In fact, this is not the case, am I right?

Averin: My apologies, just one illustration, this is what shocked me immediately when I arrived in China for the first and only time. I was struggling for a long time, but why! At first I thought, that they were taking care of the deaf people! Everything comes with  titles, just goes on the TV screen, say, and certainly there was a ticker line. Then I was told that they have different languages to such an extent that the residents of this great China do not comprehend Beijing speakers on hearing them. They understand the general content due to the ticker threads. And since there are so many languages, it is easy to assume that long before this there were different, in general, nationalities, who joined as Chinese people, so, probably, there was a way through which they united. There were some problems on this way. It becomes clear already after looking at this ticker thread on television.

Maslov: That's perfectly true, because if we talk a very scientific language, we would say that the process of ethnic education in China has not been finished yet. That is, the Chinese nation is not monolithic. Although the Chinese themselves are very fond of imagining that there is a central ethnicity, the Hans, those whom we call the Chinese. And there are minorities, 56 official minorities in China. In particular, there is such a national minority as Russians, along with Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs, Juans and so on. But in reality, of course, the situation is much more complicated. Because there are really different languages. And it's already literally a saying that a Beijing resident does not understand a resident of Shanghai, these are completely different languages, if you do not know the language of Shanghai, you just won’t understand what you are told about. There is the Cantonese dialect, there are dialects, for example, of the province of Fujian, it is the same dialect which is spoken in Taiwan. And if you ask what language you are speaking, they say, ‘Chinese.’ And a Shanghai resident would say that he speaks in Chinese, and the Beijing residents speaks in Chinese. And  psychologically it cannot fit our mentality. 

If, say, I can speak Russian and any resident, say, of Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk says that he speaks Russian, I am absolutely sure that I will understand it. I do not need any additional dictionary. And in the best case I will talk about speaking - emphasizing the letters a and o. And here it turns out that in China there is a language, which is called Chinese, but people do not understand each other speaking in the same language. And it is precisely the largely artificial fusion, because the most important question when you buy, say, Chinese language textbooks. What is the Chinese language? Or you say, "I want to learn Chinese." The right is question: "What is the Chinese language?" And for the specification, which everyone says is accepted as just the northern dialect, which is usually in English called ‘Mandarin’. In fact, it is the language, which went mainly from the area of ​​Beijing. And the normative language of Beijing, and the modern language spoken by TV anchors are different too.

Averin: How do they live there then?

Maslov: With extreme difficulty. So hieroglyphics is united, it is true, all over China. But the languages are different. And it says that in reality, under the name of Han, or Chinese, there is a mass of sub-groups, which once were separate ethnic groups. How is China arranged, if we look at a map? There is a mass of rivers, mountains and valleys. Some kind of separate ethnic group or subgroup lives in each valley. Gradually, they were merging, but this division that is currently presented in China led to the fact that the Chinese were merging slowly. And if in China a common culture was formed, this is true, a single language was not formed. And that's why there is a ticker thread.

First, indeed, many older people just do not catch what they say on the screen. But there is another point. In the past, say, in the 1970s-1980s, the Chinese had the same idea as was once in the Soviet Union, a new ethnic group, the Soviet people, that meant, that everyone should speak the same language. And it worked. Each Shanghai resident should be bilingual, speaking in the northern dialect, the normative, and in his own, which in itself is not a trivial thing for many. There is a question about what language to teach in in schools. And now, oddly enough, China has understood that there is no need to force the human mind, so they have let the people speak in their Shanghainese or Cantonese and Fujian languages, the so-called ‘Minani hua’, let them speak. If in the movie someone speaks for the people of Shanghai, it is not necessary to duplicate the normative Mandarin, this is a normative language, let him speak on Shanghainese. But there will be a ticker thread on the bottom of the screen. Remember how funny it turns out, for example, when in a film about the Nazis, the fascists speak the Russian literary language. And we have guessed that let him speak German, as in the movie ‘Liberation’, for example, but we'll duplicate his speech in Russian, this is very similar to the truth. And now in China it is the same, currently China is beginning to come back to the fact that there is ethnic diversity. But there is another side to this ethnic diversity, what you have mentioned, the Uighurs, the Tibetans. 

Where was all this taken? China was expanding around the center, that is, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, a historic center. It was not the only one, it was not the only point that began to grow. There were many different points that gradually merged into one. And there were also peripheral areas, which were joined much later. Tibet, the Xinjiang part of the southern China were the last regions that to join the great Chinese empire. And psychologically chinesation did not happen. And that is why so many of the local people maintain their ethnic traditions, including the desire to be independent, to acquire autonomy. And notice how these regions are called - the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region, there are autonomous regions in southern China. That is, they have a large share of autonomy. They are allowed a great deal. Moreover,  these minorities in China, I would say, that many of them are living in communism. Today, probably many have heard, it is actively discussed that China has finally allowed the policy of ‘one family - two children’, rather than ‘one family - one child’.

All of China's ethnic minorities were allowed to give birth to as many children as they wanted. But they were not giving birth even in this case. After all, the problem is that, for example, if we look at a map of Tibet, look at the gigantic Tibetan landmass, but in reality only 3.5 million Tibetans are living there. China's population density is low in this area. Therefore, I believe that China is one of the few countries that has painlessly solved the national question, in contrast, for example, even to Europe. Remember the Basque movement. These are terrible, painful issues that, in my opinion, have no solution in today's reality. And the Chinese have decided the issue very simply. They covered the issue with money. So, any man who lives, say, in Tibet or Xinjiang, receives a grant from the state, even if he has never worked, just refused and that is all. He can enter any University of the country, even if there is no quota. Some talented guy from Beijing cannot do so, and a Tibetan can do it without the quota.

Averin: But for that he must be an ethnic Tibetan.

Maslov: Of course, ethnic. Because of that there was the same story in China  that once emerged in the United States, when suddenly there were a lot of ethnic Indians. They began to raise their metrics. Also in China, there was a mass of ethnic Manchus. Indeed, once their number was really great. I remind you that they were ruling in China from 17th century, the last dynasty was Manchurian. But the Manchus forgot their own language during their reign until 1911, many people simply spoke Chinese, they dressed like the Chinese. And in general, the Manchus as an ethnic group were simply drawn into Chinese culture. And while many Manchus remain, none of them speak Manchurian, and you would never distinguish a Manchurian from a Chinese. And suddenly in the 1990s a mass of Manchus appeared, that means, those people who just decided to receive benefits using their ethnicity.

Saralidze: That is, this policy of different benefits led to citations when they passed through this stage.

Averin: Alexey Alexandrovich, I would like to rewind a little bit, because you said that China has not been fully formed yet ethnically, the culture is common but the languages are different. And then I have a dissonance, because, looking around, for example, I understand that whether it was an empire or whether it was the Soviet Union, but still on the territory of our country the nations and peoples still retained their cultures and languages. Once I used to think that these things are so interconnected that it could not be otherwise, if the language is preserved, the culture is preserved. And accordingly, one cannot exist without the other. You said that Chinese culture has become universal, and at what level is self-identification? Only at the level of the language or has it too ceased today to play at least some role in this cultural diversity?

Maslov: It is an important question, because, strictly speaking, the Chinese policy was launched not under the Communists, and until today it has been being carried out for two thousand years, even three thousand years. It is, in general, I must say, successful, because if we look at the core of the Chinese civilization geographically, we will see that it is not very large, it is no more than the territory of France and certainly it is not comparable to Russia.

And China has grown. If we look at how many outskirts were conquered then by China, we will see that their number is really small, that means, the times when they were fighting actually. China acted quite differently. When it tried to conquer someone, most often it was losing. I remind you that China completely lost a lot of wars to the Syunnams, who later became the Huns. China lost to the Koreans, not a very large, but a very militant nation in the 4th century. That is, the Chinese were driven back to China’s territory in their campaigns. China sent its garrisons up to Fergana, but mostly not to seize territories but to capture long-legged horses that they could ride.

China quickly realized that the way to win the war was very difficult, centers of resistance remained. So what did it begin to do? It is, indeed, a strange, sly, the tributary Chenese system. If some people, the prince or the local area recognizes the power of the Chinese emperor, China not only begins to rob this area, but on the contrary it starts, as we would say today, to sponsor, giving money, gifts, benefits, governance. How, for example, it was with the Syunnams. The Syunnams were divided among many princes, rather leaders, that among themselves, of course, fought, but were united against the Chinese. Then the Chinese just started to support one of them, Ma Hayde, who acknowledged the power of the Chinese emperor. They told him that they recognized he was the prince of the Syunnams, that they would give him weapons, money, the best concubines, so they started to press their own people. They got a deal. In general, the policy is familiar and, by the way, is very effective. And gradually, what did China export first? Gifts, then its administrative system. 

The Chinese had a perfectly formed matrix management, we would say today, a franchising political culture. And then what happened? Remember that saying that history is written by the victors? This means that those are writing who have writing. So they are making documents, they are making historical records, they make all the administrative, economic documents. The Chinese were one of the few nations in this area that had formed their own writing. And the writing was exported, well, we know it. Look at the Japanese characters, which are the Chinese characters. There was no Korean script, I mean in ancient times, there was the Chinese writing system. The Vietnamese had hieroglyphics. Then they were replaced by the alphabet. Likewise, many peoples who have simply disappeared from the map today: The Daejees, the Tabagach and others who are known only to historians for the title, started to use the Chinese script. Yes, there were other nations with writing, the Bertanguts, who were also drawn to China because the Chinese exported their hieroglyphics, and with it exported teachers who taught other nations Chinese culture. Therefore, the Chinese did not forced nations to speak Chinese, they began to read them. And to read, in fact to understand, it was necessary to learn a second language. This was happening for centuries. That story I told about the Syunnans, it occurred at the beginning of our era. That is, it took thousands of years to cultivate, as the Chinese would say, these people. Why do we say that the process of ethnic education has not been completed? Many speak in their own languages. But writing is in single Chinese characters. In this sense, China is continuing its purely Asian policy. It is not necessary to win, you must, simply to say, bribe the leadership of the region.

Saralidze: Alexey Alexandrovich, has there been a constant policy over three thousand years? Or were there periods when someone tried to win? Or has this time been constant?

Maslov: this is constant, of course, a constant, but has been made up in a very difficult way. Because when we say that China has been existing for over three thousand years, or the Chinese would say, over five thousand years, then the main question what Chinese have existed? Were those Chinese the same in 3000 years BC? We do not see those Chinese. There is a certain protoethnos which is called Huaxia, not accidentally we call them the Hans. This is the title of the Han Dynasty, which was at the turn of our era. That is the reality of the Chinese people in the form we know today for two thousand years. That is not five thousand years.

But the most important is another thing. Surely everyone knows, or at least has seen the photographs of the famous terracotta army. Look closely at their faces and on their physique. They are different. You can identify them as the Turks, you can identify the members of other ethnic groups. That is a mixture. This is the Chinese army, the Guard, which was guarded by China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang. That is, we see that there was a change of the Chinese people, whom we are talking about. Plus, there is another interesting point. All the dynasties that were in China are considered to be Chinese. We are so used to it that we do not notice whether they are Chinese or not, because they ruled in China. But the Yuan Dynasty (1368-1644), was Mongolian, this was the Mongol dynasty. Kublai Khan was Genghis Khan's cousin. This dynasty was literally dragged into Chinese culture and was made Chinese.

Averin: That's strange. Is the management matrix so effective that no one could offer anything better and it subjugates everyone, it turns out?

Maslov: One of the great historians, the French historian of Russian origin, Eliseeff, said well that the Chinese always had two choices – either to fight and die or succumb and win. The Chinese always succumbed and won. In 1644, China came to the Manchus, who were formally subordinated to China, they were vassals of China, people who lived on the territory of Manchuria.

They came, took Beijing and established a new dynasty. Within 200 years the Manchus stopped talking in the Manchu language, the only thing that was preserved is shown in the movies now – the Manchurian pigtail and shaved head. If we go further back, the most famous Chinese dynasty, when the poetry, culture, Chinese monochrome painting were flourishing, was the Tang Dynasty, in the 4th-6th centuries AD. This dynasty had two capitals, the city of Kaifeng and Layan. But who was the founder of this very great Chinese dynasty? The Tabagaches. They were not Chinese, they were rather Turks, and it is still being debated, but they were probably Turkic peoples.

Or the Song dynasty. After the Tang Dynasty, the country was divided into two parts: the Northern Song Dynasty, located on the upper part of the map. They are not the Chinese. They are the very Xiongnu, who Chinese argued with. But if we open the textbook of the Chinese history, we can see there that all dynasties were ruled not by the Chinese. And psychologically we need to understand such an interesting thing. Formally, from the viewpoint of European historians, we would say that it was a seizure: the Mongols, Manchus, Xiongnu, Tabagach seize the Chinese. And the Chinese had to resist. It was capture and enslavement. But the Chinese don’t inform about it anywhere. It is not a matter of principle for them. It was the only matter of principle, when Europeans reached China.

It was bad when Europeans invaded China in the 19th century and turned China into a semi-colonial country. At the beginning there were Asian showdowns, and only then wars with the Manchus and the Mongols. But it was a shame when China was invaded by the barbarians, who did not know anything about the Chinese culture, but managed to split China into different spheres of influence: French, Russian and German. It gave rise to Chinese nationalism. In this regard the Chinese were not nationalists before the beginning of the 19th century, before the invasion of Europeans, before the war in 1830-1832. They were just the Chinese, who were ready to be under control. The main condition was the observance of their culture.

Saralidze: But what is the Chinese nationalism? What attitude do small nations have towards the Chinese nationalism? Or they feel that they are also Chinese?

Maslov: There is an interesting expression in the Russian language. It is almost untranslatable, but I will try to explain. When we say the Chinese culture, there are two expressions in Chinese an they mean different things. One means ‘‘the culture of the Chinese people" and the other as a "culture of China." All the peoples, who live in the territory of China, foe example, the Tibetans are also a part of the Chinese culture. Those Chinese, who moved to California during the second, or third generation, or those, who live in Hawaii also belong to the culture of China. In this respect, written culture is the Chinese culture, then the recognition of common values, common norms of their behavior. For example, no matter how different the Uighurs and the Chinese. In fact, their appearance and ethnicity are very different. But at the same time they behave quite similarly. It is the Chinese influence. In this sense, the Chinese nationalism is not nationalism of the Chinese people, but their culture. No matter that the Chinese people argue with each other (they do it in a very strong way). Northerners don’t like southerners, not everyones like residents of Shanghai, because they are very sly and evil traders. Residents of Shanghai l don’t others, considering that they are idlers. This is a standard situation. Everybody doesn’t like residents of Beijing, due to the fact that they live in the capital. Although it is clear that there are a small number of indigenous residents of Beijing. But when these people, who don’t like each other start uniting against the common threat, or a challenge, for example, from Europe they stop swearing among themselves. Moreover, there are at least six ethnic Chinese communities even in Moscow. They argue among themselves, but they always come together for a common purpose.

Averin: Alexey Alexandrovich, I would like to speak about the most painful moments. They speak more about Tibet, rather than about the Uighurs, who organize unpleasant terrorist acts.

Saralidze: There is Lama in Tibet.

Averin: Does it mean that the policy in these two areas failed, or it is simply not enough time has passed?

Maslov: Both this and that. I’d better remind of the situation with Tibet. There are a lot of rumors. As you know, this is a very sensitive issue. Certainly, Tibet is not a country, it is a region which, unfortunately for many people is divided between the two countries. The most part of the territory lies in China, but Tibet is also a part of the territory of India, and Nepal. Even on the territory of China Tibet is also divided between two large regions at least. It is, in fact, the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Sichuan Province, which western par is located in Tibet in fact. A piece of Tibet you can see in other national Province, the Yunnan Province. In fact, it was done in order to divide the Tibetans.

There are two versions, and none of them is completely correct. One version is the movement of liberation of Tibet. According to it, the Chinese occupied Tibet and suppressed it. According to another version,  there is no Chinese version:  they wanted to be a part of our country and we received them. Naturally, this is a very long and complicated matter.

But I remind you that the Tibetans had a fighting spirit, and many Tibetan troops, especially in the Tang era reached the city of Luoyang, which was the capital those times, and attacked it. They were not like today: thoughtful, wise, philosophizing, and mystic Tibetans. These were real soldiers. It is no coincidence that there are a lot of fake and real helmets, spearheads, and a lot of old sticks for swords and so on.

But a contract was concluded between China and Tibet about the so-called exchange of protection. China defended Tibet from external enemies, raids. Tibet, defended Chinese emperor against evil spirits in particular. Certainly, I am trying to simplify this information, but in reality of Tibet became a part of China in this regard.The joining was on the same level when many other areas joined China, maintaining their ethnic autonomy, retaining its management, and certainly maintaining a system of financing and so on.

In the 14th century China actively supported one of Dalai Lama from the sect gelugpa, or the Yellow Hat sect. Although formally Dalai Lama may be from any group and beyond the Tibet boundaries, but according to historical facts, almost all Dalai Lama were from the sect gelugpa and the same district.

The largest Tibetan uprising was in 1958 when China really brought its troops into Tibet, the Dalai Lama escaped according to the memoirs. China kill him it, but it was decided (probably by Mao Zedong) not to touch it at all, because the murder of Dalai Lama could lead to very negative results. But it turned out that in fact that not Tibetans, but Americans intended to play the ‘Tibetan card.’ They even tried to destabilize the pro-Soviet and communist China from the territory of Pakistan. And this negativity, appeared in those years, is still very strong. Frankly speaking, Tibetans do not like the Chinese. The Tibetans also don’t like when tourists consider them as exhibits in the museum. But at the same time, the Tibetans work a little on the territory of Tibet.

China invests huge money in Tibet. The Tibetans even may not work, and all the staff in the Chinese territory of Tibet are mainly Chinese and Han. Uprisings, these pockets of resistance  arise constantly. Certainly, there are small, domestic discontent. There was the biggest rally when Chinese citizen and policemen were beaten on the streets, all shops with Chinese products were broken and Chinese signs were plucked. The most interesting thing is that I was in China I learned about it from western messages and foreign companies. I was absolutely convinced that the Chinese will never show this show on TV. But the Chinese leadership are wise and sly people. They decided to show it on the contrary. They showed records from external surveillance cameras how Tibetans break shops and beat police. And then (I was then in Beijing) an ordinary resident of Beijing said: "We have good attitude towards them, but they commit such acts." And China has done an excellent anti-propaganda. Even today they have very cautious attitude towards the Tibetans. Tibet is a great area, which has its culture and religious traditions. But, unfortunately, it is  a small coin in this tug of war between America and China. Now the Americans have almost refused from this idea. According to published information, they invested billions of dollars there. Now I may be mistaken, about $ 4 billion they invested in order to support of the Tibetan movement. Certainly, it was a purely political game, which was not related to the Tibetans.

But if we take the Uighurs, so there is another situation. The Uighur nationalism is mainly Islamic and Muslim in many ways. The Chinese are afraid of all the Muslim factor. At the same time Syntszyan has an outstanding region from the cultural and tourist point of view, as Tibet. But because many of many problems some areas of Tibet and Syntszyane are forbidden to visit.

Today, if we consider the classic terrorism. Certainly, it exists only the territory of Syntszyan: it is the Liberation Movement of Turkestan. Moreover, I met with some of its leaders. Frankly speaking, I was struck by the senselessness of what they say after the first question: "You have separated. What are you going to do? You're between Kazakhstan and China, who will support you? What will become the basis for your economy?" They didn’t care about it. The main goal was to separate. This was the worst situation, it had no sense, and they as they did’t intend to hold any nrgotiations. On the other hand, if you look how much money China invested there ... I remember an anecdote when was in 1989 in Syntszyan for the first time I saw how they installed electrical equipment. Uighurs tried to light a cigarette with the help of a light bulb, not knowing what it was. Today they have a lot of money and investments. The most important benefit of the region is that the Chinese move to Syntszyan, as it is cheaper to organize business there.

I think that in the end difficult issues will be resolved in the near future firstly in Syntszyan. A struggle for independence is to last for a long time in Tibet because there is a very powerful external ‘feeding’: both financial, and most importantly ideological. Frankly speaking, I am not a representative of any travel company, but I recommend traveling to Tibet and see this region. Then everything will become clear. When it is said that China pressure the Tibetans. It is not right, as China feeds the Tibetans and they support them in every way. The Tibetans do not like them, this was determined by history. So you’d better travel there and see for yourself. If I am not mistaken the permission to travel to Tibet is given for week, or 10 days. The Chinese visa won’t allow you to travel there.