MINORITIES: CHINA'S AND OURS

CHINESE ETHNIC MINORITIES

Compared to our treatment of them, China's behavior towards its 55 minorities is exemplary.  A sample of Western behavior will remind us to be humble:

• The US's ongoing theft of billions of dollars from despairing Native Americans.
• Australia's ongoing murders ("deaths in custody") of it Aborigines.
• Italy's ongoing ethnic cleansing--and murders--of its Romany minority
• Israel's daily genocide of its native Palestinian people
• Turkey's murderous suppression of its Kurdish minority

The Western media makes light of these ongoing atrocities while attacking China for its imagined offenses.  For example, we frequently see the phrase "China's brutal suppression of its Uighur/Tibetan demonstrations, " etc.  As though this was a matter of settled history.  But it's not. In fact, it's mostly imaginary.

China is composed of 56 ethnic groups identified and acknowledged by the central government. The 55 minority ethnic groups--Han Chinese not included--have a total population of 106.43 million, accounting for 8.41 percent of china's population.


OUTSIDE AGITATORS?
"Outside agitators!" is the first accusation all governments make when faced with riots and insurrections.  In the case of Tibet and Xinjiang provinces, it may be accurate. The CIA has openly supported Tibetan separatists for 60 years, arming and training them while providing cash and media exposure for the exiled Tibetan nobility and their leader the Dalai Lama.  A wealthy expatriate Uighur woman Rebiya Kadeer, is accused of sponsoring the riots in her former country.  She has certainly done a great deal to stir up trouble.  It is difficult to know where, if anywhere, the truth lies. Certainly the Chinese government has been much more attentive to the Uighur people since she began her campaign.  On the other hand, they were largely illiterate and extremely poor to begin with.


When we examine the tragic clashes that have occurred with a few of these minorities we find that often young Uighurs and Tibetans, with the encouragement and support of their wealthy overseas fellows, murdered Han and Hui Chinese during race riots.  Subsequently, the Chinese government asked the Han survivors to put up with these outrages for the sake of a "harmonious society", downplayed the news to avoid targeting the innocent majority, and then prosecuted a handful of perpetrators.  Despite the sensational claims made by expatriates, there was no Chinese 'brutality', and surprisingly little 'suppression' when compared to similar Western incidents. And local Han people suffered the loss of their loved ones in silence.


It is not difficult to understand the plight of those young rioters: they are the 'in-between generation'.  Too old, unskilled, and uneducated to find decent jobs, their feelings of injustice inflamed by their former masters who now live comfortably abroad on millions of dollars they took from their homeland.


ALL Tibetans, ALL Uighurs, ALL Aborigines, ALL American Indians, and ALL minorities everywhere want independence.  Some, like the Kurds, still struggle for it.  But ethnic minorities in China are treated, if anything, better than their Han cousins.  To ensure that their communities survive, they are exempt from China's one-child policy and may have as many children as they wish.  Their children are offered tailor-made bilingual education, usually free.  Free university scholarships await youngsters who wish to continue their schooling.


EDUCATION

According to the 1998 statistics, the number of ethnic students in schools of all levels was 18.5322 million--almost 20 million minority kids.  The number of teachers of ethnic backgrounds reached 888,400.  That's almost a million ethnic teachers...not bad when we consider that most ethnic groups (like the Tibetans) were over 90% illiterate before the CCP took over.


By 1998, of those accredited with administrative autonomy in the country, 241 counties achieved the "two basics": popularizing compulsory education and eliminating illiteracy. 

90,704 primary schools, 11,486 middle schools and 92 tertiary institutions have been built in ethnic regions. Throughout the country, 21,000 primary schools, 3,500 middle schools and 12 institutions of higher learning have been built specially for ethnic students.  This is an impressive achievement in a country whose average annual wage is $4,000.


"At boarding schools in Tibetan-inhabited areas in Qinghai, students have free education, food, clothing, accommodation as well as free school supplies," said a headmaster of a primary school in northwest China's Qinghai Province.  "The Central Government grants at least 2,000 yuan to each primary student and more to middle school students," said Kangbao, headmaster of a boarding school in Dawu County in Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai.  "All the subsidies added up can satisfy the basic needs for studying and living of a student for a whole year," added the headmaster.  Compulsory education in all Tibetan-inhabited areas is free. Living subsidies for primary school students were raised to 1,300 yuan a year from previous 300 yuan a year; for middle school students, it rose from 800 yuan to 1,500 yuan.


Boarding schools also provide students with subsidies for heating in winter. During compulsory education years, pupils receive 40 yuan for school supplies while middle school students can have 30 yuan each.  "The total for a primary school student exceeds 2,000 yuan if subsides from local governments are included, and for middles school students it's more than 3,000 yuan," said Bajiao. "As a matter of fact, free compulsory education in Tibetan-inhabited areas in Qinghai has been made universal. Parents don't need to pay anything if their kids go to school."

The state promote boarding schools in the vast rural and pastoral areas, and establish Tibetan junior high schools and Xinjiang senior high classes in the hinterland, it said.  


LANGUAGE AND MEDIA
The plan guarantees ethnic minorities' right to learn, use, and develop their own spoken and written languages. It trains people to be specialists in the spoken and written languages of ethnic minorities, and guarantees the use of such languages in the judicial, administrative and educational fields. It has increased financial aid to publications using ethnic languages and paid for the publishing of books and magazines in ethnic-minority languages.  


The state helps enhance the capabilities to produce and translate films, radio, and television programs in languages of ethnic minorities. It has raised the rate of coverage of radio and television broadcasting in languages of ethnic minorities in border regions, and promoted the standardization of their spoken and written languages.