Inner Mongolia and China PT. 2
Examining the People's Republic of China’s Sinicization Policies in Inner Mongolia Through the Theoretical Framework of Realism
Following-up from Part 1 of my Inner Mongolia and China series, we are now examining the Chinese perspective of this topic and how their policies have developed through the lens of the theoretical framework of Realism.
If you have not read the first part of the series, I recommend doing so.
Again, I stress, following up from Part 1 the rest of this series is not advocating or dismissing what these policies are doing, but only examining them from a theoretical framework and perspective.
Introduction
During the summer of 2020, the People's Republic of China (PRC) announced an education policy in their autonomous region of Inner Mongolia that Mandarin would be taught as the primary language in their classrooms (Qin, A. 2020, September 4). This policy would effectively eliminate the traditional 800-year-old Mongol script of Hudum Mongol bichig from the autonomous region's educational programs and replace Mongolian history and politics textbooks with Chinese textbooks by 2023. This policy, also enacted by the People's Republic in 2017 in their autonomous regions of Tibet and Xianjing, is only the latest policy in more extensive efforts by the People's Republic to consolidate Han culture across the region.
In official statements, the PRC has stated this is part of an effort deemed necessary to ensure that students in Inner Mongolia can compete with Beijing's students. As a result of these measures, protests and civil unrest broke out across the autonomous region in fear that the Mongolian culture was facing cultural genocide through Sinicization by the People's Republic, producing wide-scale arrests, state-sponsored bounties, career terminations, and financial threats, state surveillance, as well as other harsh responses by China (Su, A., 2020, September 24).
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the underlying reasons for the People's Republic of China's (PRC) new education directives to crack down on Mongolian culture and forcefully assimilate its autonomous region of Inner Mongolia.
The first part of this paper will analyze the historical relationship between the Steppe Mongolians of Inner Mongolia and Han Chinese that has led to the current State of Inner Mongolia as an autonomous region within the People's Republic borders.
Second, this paper will provide the contextual background necessary when exploring China's 5,000-year-old culture, whose national identity is married to a collective community of civilizational history and shared historical narratives across different ethnic states, because "only when we know this Chinese history of the world can we understand China of today (SCHUMAN, MICHAEL, 2021)."
The third part of this paper will assess China's need for security, drawing upon realism's theoretical framework to best understand the Han majority's behavior towards the ethnic Mongol minority and subsequent Sinicization actions by the PRC towards regional hegemony. The PRC views regional minorities such as Inner Mongolia as "Others," which pose a potential threat to state order. Until these "Others" have become Sinicized, they represent an "enemy" outside the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) control and must assimilate into the broader Chinese culture.
The final and fourth section will summarize previous research and ultimately conclude by studying regional history and culture, in tandem with Realism, as the optimal analysis to finding the most accurate conclusion.
Historical Background: Over 8 Centuries Interaction, Historical Context of the Han Chinese and Steppe Mongolians Relationship
The following section will provide a historical background of the relationship and history of the Han Chinese and Steppe Mongols.
Throughout their history, the Han Chinese and Steppe Mongolians have shared a complicated relationship that is not uncommon in the region's history. The Mongolians, much like the Tibetans, the Turkic Uyghur of Xianjing, and the now culturally assimilated Manchurians, have all, at different points in their histories, enjoyed cultural and ethnic sovereignty over themself and, at one point or another, experienced rule under the Chinese state.
In some cases, particularly that of the Manchu and Mongolians, they have become the Chinese ruling class within China over the Han.
Much of the Mongolian's history with the Chinese dynasties has ranged from a mix of conflict and trade, peace and war, subjugation, rule, and vassal state. Early conflicts eventually turned to permanent interconnection.
In 1215, the Mongols under Genghis Khan forced the Jin Dynasty of China to become a Mongolian vassal state under the Steppe people's early empire that would later stretch across the Eurasian continent. In succession to Genghis, his grandson, Kublai Khan, would conquer China's remainder in 1279 when he defeated the last of the Song Dynasty. At this point, Kublai would establish the Yuan Dynasty; a Mongolian-ruled dynasty but with Chinese cultural influence. The Yuan Dynasty is controversial, with some Chinese not considering it part of the Chinese dynastic past because of its Mongolian affiliation (Wright, D. C., 2001).
It was not until 1368 that the Han Chinese under the Ming Dynasty could expel their foreign barbarian rulers in the Mongols of their control from China. Following the Mongol expulsion, the Han Chinese of the Ming Dynasty and Mongol horde engaged in repeated conflict. Preceding the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty sought to conquer further Chinese territories.
"The rise of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, which had such profound effects on the fate of Mongolia, began long before 1644, the year a Manchu emperor was first seated on the throne in Beijing...To balance this dependence, they built up a network of alliances with their other neighbours, the easternmost Mongols, and Mongol troops took part in the Manchu conquest of China. Before the Manchu occupied Beijing, they established control of the southern fringe of Mongolia, which they organized as part of their military reserve for the domination of China. This organization is the origin of the institutional and administrative concept of "Inner" Mongolia. It took the Manchu about a century to add northern, or "Outer," Mongolia to their empire, resulting in two Mongolias markedly different from each other, Inner Mongolia being much more closely integrated with China (The ascendancy of the Manchu., n.d.)."
Under the Qing, both Inner and Outer Mongolia were fully incorporated into the Chinese empire in 1691. In 1911, the Qing Dynasty fell, and Mongolia declared its independence after over 200 years of Chinese rule. Despite this, the successor government to the Qing, the Republic of China, laid claim to Mongolia as Chinese territory but lacked the military power to control the region. With Russian and Soviet Union forces' help, Mongolia forced out Chinese troops and established the Mongolian People's Republic, also known today as Outer Mongolia.
During this period, China, which was also facing Japanese invasion and occupation and a burgeoning civil war, and was never able to reestablish control of the region.
In 1949, after the Communists gained control of mainland China and won the Chinese Civil War, they re-recognized Mongolia or Outer Mongolia's independent status. During the Japanese occupation of China during WWII, Manchuria became a puppet state under Japanese control in 1931, taking some Mongolian providences along with it in the process.
Then, in 1937 with Japanese occupation further entrenched in mainland China, a Mongolian prince declared independence for the remaining independent parts of Inner Mongolia in 1945. Short-lived, the Inner Mongolian People's Republic only existed from September 9, 1945, until November 6, 1945, before being reconquered by the Communist People's Republic of China, establishing the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1947, which it has remained since.
"At different times before 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Government considered granting Tibet and Outer Mongolia a status of "high-degree self-government" (gaodu zizhi) under Chinese sovereignty. The measure was devised to lure Outer Mongolia (before its official independence in August 1945) and Tibet, the two "particularized" areas, back to China. In the meantime, such a treatment was denied to Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia that had already been made into provinces for many years (Liu, X., 2010)."
Even after the Nationalists of the Chinese Republic's exile to Taiwan and the Communist Party's rise into power in mainland China, the frontier regions did not lose the desire for national sovereignty.
"In late 1957 and early 1958, CCP officials at the provincial and central levels launched attacks against "local nationalism" in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (Liu, X., 2010)." It was during this earlier period of Communist governance that the origination of current ethnic unrest. In a bid to pit the Inner Mongolians against the Nationalist exiles, the CCP "supported the Inner Mongols' claim to "high-degree self-government" within the Republic of China, the same right that the Nationalist regime had promised to the Tibetans and the Outer Mongols (Liu, X., 2010)," until it was no longer convenient. "During the "Cultural Revolution," the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region was dismembered, and the Inner Mongols suffered from the largest mass persecution of that period. In the meantime, political homogenization pushed forward ruthlessly (Liu, X., 2010)."
Underlying Factors: The Influence of the Chinese Culture and its Unbroken Cultural Impact
In the following section, it will provide the underlying factors of Chinese culture and how its historical legacy influences the current Chinese state.
When trying to understand modern China and the People's Republic's actions, one must first be aware that China is less of a nation-state and more resembles a civilization state or "historical civilizational community" whose people share a unique cultural tradition and a set of "customs, rites and laws" (xisu life). In essence, China, or the nation-state of the People's Republic, is "a civilization pretending to be a nation-state (Guanjun Wu., 2014)."
Making this distinction is vital in understanding China "is not just a country; it is a civilization, hence a civilization state...China is the only one of the ancient civilizations that has continued unbroken till this day (Hsiung, J. C., 2012)," better assists in exposing the overall state goals that China seeks and the motivations behind them.
As a civilization, China is one of the world's first and the oldest living, and in its earliest history of dynastic rule, China dates back to the Xia and Shang Dynasty, whose rules are historically marked from around 1760 to about 1122 B.C.
Even older than that, China's pre-history emerged with the oldest known hominins outside of Africa as "ancient humans appear to have reached northwestern China about 2.1 million years ago, and they lived there for hundreds of thousands of years (Meyer, R., 2018, July 12)." While the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations are older than China's, they no longer exist and have not passed along the same cultural legacy, hegemony, and direct, almost uninterrupted cultural chain as the Chinese have.
Throughout this 5,000-year-old existence, China has undergone regular and traumatic changes that have shaped Chinese identity.
"Only Chinese civilization has manifested an unbroken continuity, making it the longest innings in human history, having survived nomadic invasions and the long dynastic cycles, interspersed with periods of decay and foreign threats, in the nation's history. By contrast, other ancient civilizations and complex societies were cut short by foreign conquests or under the crushing burden of political corruption, declines in morals and values, inordinate military spending, etc. The world has witnessed the end of the Egyptian and the Greek civilizations (succumbing to Roman conquest); the fall of the Roman Empire itself following both internal decay and defeat on the battlefield and dismemberment that followed; the fall of Babylon to the Persians; and the demise of the Harappan (Indus) civilization as a result of Aryan conquest (Hsiung, J. C., 2012)."
The Chinese legacy of culture has sustained itself within a continuous history of destruction and rebirth. It has maintained itself with an uncanny ability to survive unlike any other in history, enduring foreign or barbarian rule of the Mongols and Jurchen or Manchurians of ancient China, modern occupation of Western powers during the Century of Humiliation by the British, Portuguese, and other colonial empires, Imperial Japanese occupation during World War 2, and most recently, Communist purges in the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.
This Sino or Chinese identity is unequivocal in its resiliency and shapes the current national character.
"The Chinese political system, at its core, has proven remarkably resilient. The age of imperial dynasties in China lasted an amazing 2,100 years...Yet the most incredible aspect of China's political history is how often the empire was reassembled. China could easily have gone the way of Europe—where a region with a common cultural and historical background eventually splintered into competing countries with their own languages, governments, and goals. But in China, the pieces were always put back together again. The idea of one "China," forged before the time of Christ, held firm. If China wasn't unified, its political elite, again and again and again, wished it to be (SCHUMAN, MICHAEL, 2021)."
China's consistent reunification or "reuniting of pieces" is best reflected in the fourteenth-century Chinese novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which opens with the following sentence, "The empire long united must divide, long divided must unite; this is how it has always been (SCHUMAN, MICHAEL, 2021) (Luo, G., 1959)" and is a poetic and cultural reflection of the Chinese state.
James Chieh Hsiung suggests a reason for this is a "sequentiality of certain developmental stages in history," such as the passing of the Mandate of Heaven to the next dynasty and state-sponsored Confucianism, as well as:
"If the rise of the Roman Empire resulted in the replacement of Greek culture by Roman culture, there was no such cultural destruction as a result of Chinese dynastic changes. Besides, following the universalistic transethnic notion of Tian and the inclusivist Chinese culture, it was possible for alien invaders to embrace Chinese civilization and become "Sinicized" after they physically overran the land. Twice in history, China was conquered by aliens, who founded a dynasty on Chinese soil, ruling the Chinese nation, but eventually became Sinified on their own accord, to establish their legitimacy, namely: the Mongolians led by Kublai Khan who founded the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368 A.D.), and the Manchurians, the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 A.D.). There was no replacement of Chinese civilization by a Mongolian or a Manchurian civilization. It was only natural that the all-inclusivist and transethnic nature of the Chinese culture was instrumental in easier Chinese acceptance of these initially alien rulers who later embraced Chinese culture. In a vice versa manner, the Mongolian and Manchurian rulers embraced the Han Chinese culture without qualms (Hsiung, J. C., 2012)."
In this civilizational culture that has thrived and maintained itself over time, one can observe and understand China's national identity and current state motivations. What China wants and why China is enacting its Sinicization policies towards Inner Mongolia stems from this unbreaking of China's continual civilizational hegemony, which plays a much larger role in Chinese affairs. This aspect of continuing a historical civilizational community, as stated earlier, is the key driving factor of State decision-making.
"China wants what it always had. China was a superpower for almost all of its history, and it wants to be a superpower again...In their view, the Chinese have a right to be a premier power in the world, and they want to return to their proper position at the apex of the global order. This perception is, to a degree, based in actual history. China for most of its existence was the biggest, baddest, richest, most advanced civilization in East Asia (SCHUMAN, MICHAEL, 2021)."
To be continued in Part 3.
"Preceding the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty" => You mean succeeding.
Also "providences" => provinces