As part of the Digital Workshop Series "Digital Dialogues 數字對話", researchers will discuss various aspects and questions of the joint project.

China's Ethnic Minorities: Policies and Subjectivities

October 26, 2022, 12.15 - 1.45 PM

By the last count China's ethnic minorities make up less than nine percent of its population but still number 125 million. Moreover, their homelands occupy strategically important border regions often rich in resources. For these reasons, the Chinese government has long regarded minority policies as key to national security and development -- especially given trends toward separatism in some minority regions over the last decades. Under president Xi Jinping CCP minority policies have shifted from integration to assimilation. The stated policy goal now is to bring the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups (minzu 民族) "as close together as the seeds of a pomegranade" to form an overarching "Chinese nation" (Zhonghua minzu 中华民族). The speakers reflect on these policy changes, the debates behind them as well as the consequences for minority subjectivities.

Speakers:

Sinan Chu is a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). He obtained his PhD in Political Science from Syracuse University in 2019. His research interests include China’s ethnic policy, contemporary Chinese intellectual discourse, authoritarian politics, global international relations, and legitimacy in global governance.

Hannah Rosa Klepeis is a social anthropologist and research fellow on the project “Social worlds: China’s cities as spaces of worldmaking”. She is currently working on her book manuscript based on her PhD reseach which explores Tibetan identity and subjectivities through ideas of relational personhood, morality, mistrust in the context of state-led development and urbanization in post-reform China. Between October 2021 to July 2022, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University; since 2020, she is a research associate the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle), where she worked as a doctoral researcher from January 2015 to June 2018.

Convener:

Björn Alpermann is Professor and Chair of Contemporary Chinese Studies at Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg.

Access:

The participation at this event is open to everyone, who registers prior to the event: Registration