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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/w...hnic-marriage-between-han-and-minorities.html
Officials in Xinjiang, in western China, are offering cash and other financial incentives to encourage marriages between minorities and Han, the country’s dominant ethnic group, in an apparent effort to soothe growing ethnic violence in the region.
The incentives are part of a new policy in Cherchen County, in southern Xinjiang, where violence between ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking mostly Muslim people, and Han has flared in recent years.
Last week, officials in Cherchen County, known as Qiemo in Chinese, began offering payments of 10,000 renminbi a year, or $1,600, for five years to newly married couples in which one member is Han and the other is from one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities. Official Chinese news reports this week said the payments were intended to help the couples invest in small businesses and to start families.
The policy, which was announced on the county’s official website, is similar to initiatives in Tibet. In the announcement, the county director, Yasen Nasi’er, said that interethnic marriages are “an important step in the harmonious integration and development of all ethnicities.”
He called such marriages “positive energy” and a means by which Xinjiang can realize the “Chinese Dream,” an amorphous term popularized by President Xi Jinping.
James A. Millward, a scholar of Xinjiang at Georgetown University, said Uighurs might perceive the policy differently. “There is a danger,” he said, “that state-sponsored efforts at ‘blending’ and ‘fusion’ will be seen by Uighurs in China or by China’s critics anywhere as really aimed at assimilating Uighurs into Han culture — in other words, as an attempt to Sinify the Uighurs.”
“This comes at a time when many Uighurs see such recent policies as the destruction of old Kashgar in the name of development, the elimination of Uighur-language education, and continuing Han migration into the Uighur traditional homelands in Xinjiang, as all threatening the preservation of a distinctive Uighur culture,” he added.
Cherchen County has a population of 10,000, of whom 73 percent are Uighur and 27 percent are Han, according to statistics from a government website.
In Xinjiang, a region of deserts and mountains that makes up one-sixth of China’s landmass, more than 43 percent of the population is Uighur and more than 40 percent is Han, according to a 2000 census, the most recent data available. The Han population in the region has surged since the Communist takeover of China in 1949, fueling anxiety among Uighurs. Kazakhs make up 8 percent of the population, and the rest are Hui, Kirghiz and Mongols, among others.
At a high-level policy meeting in Beijing in May, Communist Party leaders discussed how to better assimilate Uighurs into Chinese society and tamp down violence in Xinjiang.
Mr. Xi, the Chinese president and party leader, said at the meeting that more Uighurs should be moved to Han-dominated parts of China for education and employment. He said the party and the state should establish “correct views about the motherland and the nation” among all of China’s ethnic groups, so that people of every background will recognize the “great motherland” and “the socialist path with Chinese characteristics.”
The promotion of Han-Uighur marriages is one of the policies to emerge from that meeting, said James Leibold, a scholar of China’s ethnic policies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He noted that the most recent data available showed that only 1 percent of Uighurs are in an interethnic family, compared with nearly 8 percent of Tibetans. The average among all ethnicities was more than 3 percent, but the Han also had a low rate, 1.5 percent.
Communist officials have long promoted popular tales of mixed marriages to paper over ethnic conflicts, including the story of the Fragrant Concubine, a Uighur woman who was brought in the 18th century to the imperial court in Beijing to be the consort of the Qianlong Emperor, an ethnic Manchu.
Many Han talk of how the Manchus from the northeastern forests, who conquered China to establish the Qing dynasty, eventually adopted Han customs and intermarried, citing this as an example of how Han Chinese civilization inevitably absorbs and assimilates other ethnicities.
In June, Tibet Daily published a report saying that Chen Qianguo, the party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region, had met with 19 interethnic couples and heard stories of happy marriages. Mr. Chen said “favorable policies” for interethnic couples had resulted in an increase to 4,795 interethnic marriages in 2013 from 666 in 2008.
Promoting Han-Uighur unions is one of several trial policies being pursued by local governments in Xinjiang in an effort to prevent violence.
Eruptions of violence in Xinjiang have stunned the country in recent years. In July, a report by Xinhua, the state news agency, said “dozens of Uighur and Han civilians were killed or injured” during rioting in Yarkand County.
China’s campaign for mixed marriages spreads to troubled Xinjiang - The Washington Post
Indeed, research published by the China Academy of Social Sciences in 2012 showed low and falling levels of marriage between Han and Uighur people over recent decades, reflecting both rising mutual antagonism and growing efforts by Uighurs to preserve their religion and culture in the face of the mass migration of the Han people into Xinjiang.
According to the 2000 census, only 1.05 percent of Uighur marriages were with members of another ethnic group, the lowest ratio among all of China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities.
In Tibet in recent weeks, officials have ordered a run of stories in newspapers promoting mixed marriages. The government has also been offering favorable treatment to such couples and their children for years.
In a report published last month celebrating such policies, the Communist Party’s research office in Tibet said mixed marriages have increased annually by double-digit percentages for five years, from 666 couples in 2008 to 4,795 couples in 2013.
Officials in Xinjiang, in western China, are offering cash and other financial incentives to encourage marriages between minorities and Han, the country’s dominant ethnic group, in an apparent effort to soothe growing ethnic violence in the region.
The incentives are part of a new policy in Cherchen County, in southern Xinjiang, where violence between ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking mostly Muslim people, and Han has flared in recent years.
Last week, officials in Cherchen County, known as Qiemo in Chinese, began offering payments of 10,000 renminbi a year, or $1,600, for five years to newly married couples in which one member is Han and the other is from one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities. Official Chinese news reports this week said the payments were intended to help the couples invest in small businesses and to start families.
The policy, which was announced on the county’s official website, is similar to initiatives in Tibet. In the announcement, the county director, Yasen Nasi’er, said that interethnic marriages are “an important step in the harmonious integration and development of all ethnicities.”
He called such marriages “positive energy” and a means by which Xinjiang can realize the “Chinese Dream,” an amorphous term popularized by President Xi Jinping.
James A. Millward, a scholar of Xinjiang at Georgetown University, said Uighurs might perceive the policy differently. “There is a danger,” he said, “that state-sponsored efforts at ‘blending’ and ‘fusion’ will be seen by Uighurs in China or by China’s critics anywhere as really aimed at assimilating Uighurs into Han culture — in other words, as an attempt to Sinify the Uighurs.”
“This comes at a time when many Uighurs see such recent policies as the destruction of old Kashgar in the name of development, the elimination of Uighur-language education, and continuing Han migration into the Uighur traditional homelands in Xinjiang, as all threatening the preservation of a distinctive Uighur culture,” he added.
Cherchen County has a population of 10,000, of whom 73 percent are Uighur and 27 percent are Han, according to statistics from a government website.
In Xinjiang, a region of deserts and mountains that makes up one-sixth of China’s landmass, more than 43 percent of the population is Uighur and more than 40 percent is Han, according to a 2000 census, the most recent data available. The Han population in the region has surged since the Communist takeover of China in 1949, fueling anxiety among Uighurs. Kazakhs make up 8 percent of the population, and the rest are Hui, Kirghiz and Mongols, among others.
At a high-level policy meeting in Beijing in May, Communist Party leaders discussed how to better assimilate Uighurs into Chinese society and tamp down violence in Xinjiang.
Mr. Xi, the Chinese president and party leader, said at the meeting that more Uighurs should be moved to Han-dominated parts of China for education and employment. He said the party and the state should establish “correct views about the motherland and the nation” among all of China’s ethnic groups, so that people of every background will recognize the “great motherland” and “the socialist path with Chinese characteristics.”
The promotion of Han-Uighur marriages is one of the policies to emerge from that meeting, said James Leibold, a scholar of China’s ethnic policies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He noted that the most recent data available showed that only 1 percent of Uighurs are in an interethnic family, compared with nearly 8 percent of Tibetans. The average among all ethnicities was more than 3 percent, but the Han also had a low rate, 1.5 percent.
Communist officials have long promoted popular tales of mixed marriages to paper over ethnic conflicts, including the story of the Fragrant Concubine, a Uighur woman who was brought in the 18th century to the imperial court in Beijing to be the consort of the Qianlong Emperor, an ethnic Manchu.
Many Han talk of how the Manchus from the northeastern forests, who conquered China to establish the Qing dynasty, eventually adopted Han customs and intermarried, citing this as an example of how Han Chinese civilization inevitably absorbs and assimilates other ethnicities.
In June, Tibet Daily published a report saying that Chen Qianguo, the party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region, had met with 19 interethnic couples and heard stories of happy marriages. Mr. Chen said “favorable policies” for interethnic couples had resulted in an increase to 4,795 interethnic marriages in 2013 from 666 in 2008.
Promoting Han-Uighur unions is one of several trial policies being pursued by local governments in Xinjiang in an effort to prevent violence.
Eruptions of violence in Xinjiang have stunned the country in recent years. In July, a report by Xinhua, the state news agency, said “dozens of Uighur and Han civilians were killed or injured” during rioting in Yarkand County.
China’s campaign for mixed marriages spreads to troubled Xinjiang - The Washington Post
Indeed, research published by the China Academy of Social Sciences in 2012 showed low and falling levels of marriage between Han and Uighur people over recent decades, reflecting both rising mutual antagonism and growing efforts by Uighurs to preserve their religion and culture in the face of the mass migration of the Han people into Xinjiang.
According to the 2000 census, only 1.05 percent of Uighur marriages were with members of another ethnic group, the lowest ratio among all of China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities.
In Tibet in recent weeks, officials have ordered a run of stories in newspapers promoting mixed marriages. The government has also been offering favorable treatment to such couples and their children for years.
In a report published last month celebrating such policies, the Communist Party’s research office in Tibet said mixed marriages have increased annually by double-digit percentages for five years, from 666 couples in 2008 to 4,795 couples in 2013.
