HOW THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA COPES WITH HER 55 MINORITY NATIONALITIES

Abstract

Over centuries, China has had her history of pacifying a large number of minority nationalities on her border lands: the north, the west, and the south. Occasionally, she had to play both roles of the offensive and the defensive. Quite offen, she was the defensive when Emperor Shi Huang Ti had the Great Wall of China built and when China was conquered respectively by the Mongol and the Manchu. Over the vast areas. China in the past solved the minority disturbances by sending the Han officials to rule them. Moreover, the Chinese government used the policy of “Divide and Rule” to extend the area by using one minority against the other, and finally, the Kuomintang took a severe policy of national assimilation, bringing the direct rule by forces to the minority nationalities. Such policy was fiercely opposes especially by the Tibetan and the Mongolian. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years, these nationalities were regarded outcastes and unequal in status.