National-Minority Education in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

new Chinese constitution, like previous versions, contains a statement regarding China's national minorities: The People's Republic of China is a unitary multinational state. areas where regional autonomy is exercised are all inalienable parts of the People's Republic of China. All the nationalities are equal. Big-nationality chauvinsim and local-nationality chauvinism must be opposed. 1 statement also emphasizes the critical role of dictatorship and the class nature of intergroup relations. These two considerations, minorities as a special group and economic social class, have defined Chinese communist strategy toward national minorities over the past 30 years. Quantitatively it would appear that the magnitude of China's minority question is so slight as to hardly be a problem. About 94 percent of the population of China belong to the majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese; the remaining 6 percent are scattered over China's sparsely populated regions and traditionally were only marginally in contact with the Han Chinese majority. Yet it is precisely this frontier character of China's minorities which accounts for the qualitative strategic importance Peking has assigned to minority relations over the years. Especially in the spheres of education, language, and culture, the Chinese and the national minorities have struggled to develop policy and practice which will satisfy fundamental requirements in both the areas of minority needs and aspirations and the exigencies of state and national needs, all of this within the ideological framework of Marxism-Leninism and the thought of Mao Tse-tung. institution of education, both formal and nonformal, in China or any other nation can play a variety of roles. At the very least it serves as a