Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T19:23:32.985Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Chinese Unitary Multinational State: A Normative Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2019

Hugo El Kholi
Hugo El Kholi*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai Campus, Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article provides a normative analysis of the rationale behind the creation of the Chinese unitary multinational state. Far from being irrelevant in the face of the well-known aversion of scientific socialism for normative thinking, such analysis illuminates the Chinese Communist Party’s long-standing commitment to the unitary multinational state as the best response to the national question. It shows that the Party’s leadership, in a conscious effort to adapt Stalin’s theory of nationality to Chinese revolutionary praxis, substantially revised the standard conception of national self-determination. Relying on its own materialist logic, it made participation in the struggle against alienation the normative basis to justify granting ethnic minorities special rights of regional autonomy under a common state. The creation of the Chinese unitary multinational state appears in this light as a normatively coherent attempt to guarantee that all ethnic groups that contributed to national liberation benefit equally from their imprescriptible right to collective self-determination.

Keywords

national self-determinationtheory of nationalityrevolutionary praxisMarxism with Chinese characteristicsminzuethnopolitics
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2019 , pp. 1067 - 1082
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brennan, Geoffrey, and Hamlin, Alan. 2009. “Positive Constraints on Normative Political Theory.” In The Economics of Ethics and the Ethics of Economics, edited by Brennan, Geoffrey and Eusepi, Giuseppe, 106–128. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Chen, Jianyue. 2014. “Establishing a Multi-National Harmonious Society and Resolving National Issues—‘Depoliticizing’ and ‘Culturizing’ National Issues.” In De-Politicization of Ethnic Questions in China, edited by Xie, Lizhong, 61–84. Singapore: World Scientific.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1982. “Reply to Elster on Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory.” Theory and Society 11 (4): 483–495.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1994. “Equality as Fact and as Norm: Reflections on the (Partial) Demise of Marxism.” Theoria 83–84: 1–11.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 1995. Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 2000. If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich ? London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A. 2010. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
“The Common Program of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.” 1949. In The Important Documents of the First Plenary Session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Peking: Foreign Languages Press.Google Scholar
Connor, Walker. 1984. The National Question in Marxist–Leninist Theory and Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. 1982. Peking: Foreign Language Press.Google Scholar
Crick, Bernard. 2013. In Defence of Politics. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Douzinas, Costas. 2010. “Adikia: On Communism and Rights.” In The Idea of Communism, edited by Douzinas, Costas and Žižek, Slavoj, 81–100. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Dreyer, June. 1970. “China’s Minority Nationalities: Traditional and Party Elites.” Pacific Affairs 43 (4): 506–530.Google Scholar
Dreyer, June. 1976. China’s Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the PRC. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Engels, Friedrich. 1910 [1876]. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company.Google Scholar
Gladney, Dru. 1991. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Han, Enze. 2013. Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in China. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hao, Shiyuan. 2016. How the Communist Party of China Manages the Issue of Nationality: An Evolving Topic. London: Springer.Google Scholar
Hoston, Germaine. 1994. The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Howland, Douglas. 2010. “The Dialectics of Chauvinism: Minority Nationalities and Territorial Sovereignty in Mao Zedong’s New Democracy.” Modern China 37 (2): 170–211.Google Scholar
Kaup, Katherine Palmer. 2000. Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Knight, Nick. 2002. “Mao Zedong’s ‘Sinification of Marxism.’” In Mao Zedong and China’s Revolutions, edited by Cheek, Timothy, 197–203. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Kryukov, Michael. 1996. “Self-Determination from Marx to Mao.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 19 (2): 352–378.Google Scholar
Leibold, James. 2007. Reconfiguring Chinese Nationalism: How the Qing Frontier and Its Indigenes Became Chinese. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. 2002. “Marxism and the Continuing Irrelevance of Normative Theory.” Stanford Law Review 54: 1129–1151.Google Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. 1972 [1916]. “The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up.” In Collected Works, vol. 22, 320–360. Moscow: Progress Publishers.Google Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. 1996 [1917]. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Chicago: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Liu, Xiaoyun. 2004. Frontier Passage: Ethnopolitics and the Rise of Chinese Communism, 1921–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Liu, Xiaoyuan. 2010. Recast All Under Heaven: Revolution, War, Diplomacy, and Frontier China in the 20th Century. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1965a. “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire (January 5, 1930).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 1, 117–120. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1965b. “On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing (July 1937).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 1, 295–309. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1965c. “The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War (October 1938).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 2, 195–211. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1965d. “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (December 1939).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 2, 305–334. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1965e. “On New Democracy (January 1940).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 2, 339–384. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1965f. “On Coalition Government (April 24, 1945).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 3, 205–270. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong. 1977. “On the Ten Major Relationships (April 25, 1956).” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. 5, 284–307. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1971 [1859]. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. London: Lawrence & Wishart.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1988 [1844]. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. 1998 [1946]. German Ideology. New York: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Mehta, Jal. 2010. “The Varied Roles of Ideas in Politics: From ‘Whether’ to ‘How.’” In Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, edited by Béland, Daniel and Cox, Robert Henry, 23–46. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mullaney, Thomas. 2010. Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. London: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pfeffer, Richard. 1976. “Mao and Marx in the Marxist-Leninist Tradition.” Modern China 2 (4): 421–460.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rueschemeyer, Dietrich. 2006. “Why and How Ideas Matter.” In The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, edited by Goodin, Robert and Tilly, Charles, 229–251. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 2002. Rationality and Freedom. London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Stalin, Joseph. 1953a [1913]. “Marxism and the National Question.” In Works, vol. 2, 207–240. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.Google Scholar
Stalin, Joseph. 1953b [1918]. “The October Revolution and the National Question.” In Works, vol. 4, 158–170. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.Google Scholar
Wang, Xien. 2014. “On ‘Afterthoughts’ of China’s National Issues and ‘Being Practical’—Debating Ma Rong.” In De-Politicization of Ethnic Questions in China, edited by Xie, Lizhong, 91–136. Singapore: World Scientific.Google Scholar
Wang, Xien (Ed.). 2012. Ershi Shiji De Zhongguo Minzu Wenti [Chinese Ethno-National Questions in the 20th Century]. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press.Google Scholar
Wylie, Raymond. 1979. “Mao Tse-tung, Ch’en Po-ta and the ‘Sinification of Marxism,’ 1936–38.” The China Quarterly 79: 447–480.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen. 2004c [1981]. Karl Marx. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
“Zhong Hua Suweiai Gongheguo Xianfa Dagang [Outline Constitution of the Chinese Soviet Republic].” 1991 [1931]. In Minzu Wenti Wenxian Huibian [A Collection of Documents on the Problem of Nationalities], 165–166. Beijing: Central Party School Press.Google Scholar
Zhou, Enlai. 1981. “Characteristics of the Draft Common Programme of the People’s Political Consultative Conference (September 22, 1949).” In Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, vol. 1, 404–409. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Zhou, Enlai. 1989. “Questions Relating to our Policies Towards China’s Nationalities (August 4, 1957).” In Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, vol. 2, 253–278. Peking: Foreign Language Press.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. 2007. On Practice and Contradiction. London: Verso.Google Scholar