Minority Education in China: Balancing Unity and Diversity in an Era of Critical Pluralism

1. Education and Cultural Diversity in Multiethnic China

Thirty-five years after Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 policy of economic reform and opening to the outside world, China inches closer to becoming the largest economy in the world, already with the largest system of higher education and more scientific publications than any other country except the USA (Bloomberg 2010). Students of China’s largest city even outperformed those in other countries in a major international assessment of mathematics and science achievement (OECD 2010; Royal Society 2011). Yet, domestic economic disparities are becoming a major concern. The Gini coefficient rose from 0.41 in 2000 to 0.61 in 2010 (Kao 2012). Such inequality could derail gains in education, dampen economic growth, lead to a waste of human capital, and reduce social cohesion (ADB 2012). If social inequalities are compounded by intercultural misunderstandings , they could fuel ethnic conflicts and weaken national integration. This is especially relevant in the Tibetan and Uyghur regions of western China where uprisings since 2008 caused many Han Chinese to become less sympathetic and more frustrated with ethnic minority demands. Government officials and scholars respond in different ways. One official asserted that ethnic conflicts are a normal aspect of life in many countries and China’s 1.3 billion people enjoy relative harmony, another advocated doing away with the current format of national identity cards indicating a Chinese citizen’s ethnic group (Zhu 2012). A prominent scholar of ethnic minority relations highlighted the politicizing of ethnic issues in earlier decades and the establishment of ethnic autonomous regions, including Xinjiang and Tibet (Ma 2009). In short, ethnic unity and national integration remain matters of national urgency. Despite the debates about how to best achieve it, both government and 1 Education and Cultural Diversity in Multiethnic China Gerard Postiglione 28 Gerard Postiglione academia agree that education in a multiethnic society has a major responsibility to moderate ethnic conflicts, promote interethnic trust, and ensure national unity. This essay raises three questions about education and national integration: How has the Chinese concept of ethnicity been affected by market reforms? How is education responding to the challenge of ethnic unity? Can a more multicultural form of education promote educational equality and national integration? Multiculturalism, Cultural Assimilation, and Education The concept of multicultural education has made little headway in China. The idea that multicultural education can promote national integration is often met with skepticism by political leaders, not only in China but elsewhere in the world. One European leader stated unequivocally that attempts to build a multicultural society have “utterly failed” (Guardian 2010). German Chancellor Angela Merkel scoffed at the so-called multikulti concept—where people would “live side-by-side” happily. For Merkel, immigrants need to do more to integrate. Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has criticized multiculturalism saying that under the “doctrine of state multiculturalism” different cultures have been encouraged to live separate lives (BBC 2011). Kymlicka (2004a: xiv) scoffs at such critics of multiculturalism who subscribe to a “zero-sum conception of identity.” Ladson-Billings (2004: 112) adds that: “People move back and forth across many identities, and the way society responds to these identities either binds people to or alienates them from the civic culture.” Banks (2008, 2010b), whose book on multicultural education was translated and published in China, is more specific: “Nationalists and assimilationists around the world worry that if citizens are allowed to retain identifications with their cultural communities they will not acquire sufficiently strong attachments to their nation-states.” He further adds that, “identity is multiple, changing, overlapping, and contextual, rather than fixed and static—and that thoughtful and clarified cultural identifications will enable people to be better citizens of the nation-state” (2008: 133). China’s ruling ideology does not deny its multiethnic reality. The esteemed Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong (1980, 1989, 1991) put forward a notion of China as an “ethnic plurality within the organic unity of the Chinese nation” Education and Cultural Diversity in Multiethnic China 29 (Zhonghua minzu duoyuan yiti geju 中華民族多元一體格局). This guiding concept of Chinese ethnicity, simply stated as “plurality within unity,” sets out how nationalities (minzu 民族) (or the increasingly used term zuqun 族群, ethnic groups) operate within the scope of China’s long history in which Chinese were formed by the assimilation of hundreds of ethnic groups throughout the thousands of years of Chinese civilization (Bilik 2000). This is the extent of Fei’s notion of multiculturalism. The process for China is more akin to straight-line...