Intellectual Contestation over China’s Multiethnic Regime

The first objective (work package 1) is to understand the intellectual foundation of the recent assimilationist shift in the PRC multiethnic regime by systematically analyzing the constitution of subjects, objects, and interpretive dispositions in post-Mao Chinese intellectual discourse on ethnic politics. I will conduct a comprehensive survey of the literature on post-Mao Chinese ethnic policy change, official policy discourse, and policy debates, followed by a mixed-method analysis to identify the major trends in societal discourse concerning ethnic affairs and analyze the ideas of important texts and the intertextual links. Finally, I will situate our existing knowledge of post-Mao Chinese ethnic policy into my findings from the above step and discuss the implications of the sociocultural condition for understanding the recent policy change.

The second objective (work package 2) is to study the intellectual contestation of the assimilationist shift by documenting and examining writings within the post-Mao Chinese intellectual discourse that question, resist, or challenge the above development. I will examine the segments of the post-Mao societal discourse that question, resist, or challenge the above policy trend during the same period (i.e. 1980s–2010s).

The third objective (work package 3) is to critically appreciate the strategies of intellectual resistance against the assimilationist shift in the PRC multiethnic regime by examining the theoretical resources and methodological tools employed by Chinese intellectuals in expressing critical opinions about China’s ethnic policy. I will unpack the theoretical resources and methodological tools employed by participants in the Chinese ethnic policy debate through Comparative Political Theory-informed hermeneutics on representative texts selected based on the findings of the previous two work packages.