Through much of the twentieth and well into the twenty-first century, scholars in China and in the West debated the nature of Chinese nationhood. In the West, the once dominant view was promulgated by Joseph R. Levenson and like-minded scholars, who depicted Chinese identity in terms of “culturalism,” that is belonging to a universalizing and inclusive civilization, defined by a common Confucian culture. A concept of national identity conceived in ethnic or racial terms was considered a modern phenomenon, closely related to China’s entrance into the world of nation-states.1 In the last decades of the twentieth century, though, this view was criticized by scholars who demonstrated the existence of traits of exclusive ethnocentric Chinese identity back in the past. Some went as far as to postulate racism as pertinent to Chinese civilization from its earliest stages.2

This chapter examines writings from Bronze Age China that might at first glance seem to be hidden, asking about their audience and the intentions behind them. It begins at the late second millennium Anyang site with a pit deposit of inscribed oracle bones in the royal precinct. Arguing that the pit was part of a representation of sacrifice, it suggests that the buried writing was offered to the royal ancestors in thanks for their replies to the divination questions. Next it looks at inscriptions on bronze ritual vessels. These originated in the late second millennium as display texts addressed to deceased ancestors but early in the first millennium came to be consciously written for the living as well. A third case is stone tablets inscribed with covenant texts and buried in sacrificial pits at the fifth-century BCE Houma site. Here it seems that rulers seeking to enforce loyalty not only called the spirits to witness but also kept duplicate copies of the covenants as witnesses that could be called in evidence. The chapter concludes with some camouflaged writings from the latter part of the first millennium. These were designed to entertain highly literate readers by provoking mental gymnastics.

The chapter describes how the Chinese imperial urban civilization emerged. The urban system developed from a loosely linked collection of cities into an imperial network with the main capital, Chang’an, as the political, economic, and cultural centre. Roads and waterways allowed goods and people to move around the empire, and trading routes to the west linked China to central Asia and beyond. From their origins as small settlements with earthen walls, Chinese cities developed according to prescribed plans that linked imperial power on earth with divine power in heaven. These were set out in the Record of Investigation of Crafts (Kaogongji), an ancient Chinese text. Chinese cities became nodes in an imperial bureaucracy, and although there was no autonomous municipal government, in Chang’an and other capital cities, officials were responsible for urban management. Chinese cities had an urban culture. Kings and emperors lived in their palaces, only emerging to conduct rituals such as sacrifices to ancestors and gods. An imperial administrative elite ran the empire, and merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans traded goods and set up businesses in markets in Chang’an and other cities, which were described in poems that reflected on urban life.

This chapter traces the formation of the first imperial polities on Chinese soil — the Qin and Han dynasties. It starts with the exploration of how the disintegration of the Zhou dynasty (c.1046–255 BCE) triggered the quest for political unity of “All-under-Heaven” as the only means of stemming the ongoing bloodshed and turmoil. This common quest legitimated the unified empire with universalistic pretensions generations before the real unification occurred (in 221 BCE). The first imperial polity, Qin, was highly centralized and committed to territorial expansion. It turned out, however, that this model was unsustainable in the long term. The subsequent Han dynasty experimented with various degrees of expansion and retrenchment, in the process of which a new modus vivendi was reached: the universal superiority of China’s emperor had to be maintained primarily on a symbolic level, whereas in practice, the “inner” and “outer” realm became fully delineated.

Chapter 2 critically examines Uyghur inclusion through official Zhonghua Minzu narratives in mass education as an identity-security practice after the July 2009 violence. The chapter analyses how party-state historical narratives demarcate hierarchical boundaries between majority Han and ethnic minorities (shaoshu minzu少数民族), particularly in universal ‘ethnic unity’ (minzu tuanjie 民族团结) education. The first section shows the party-state narrates Zhonghua Minzu by unifying all peoples’ histories within China’s contemporary borders as timelessly constituted by the minzu category and hierarchical majority-minority relations. Section 2 shows how nation-building texts relationally constitute and normatively evaluate identities of the Han as a timeless, modernising “frontier-building culture” against ethnic minorities as passive, backward recipients. The final section analyses how 'bilingual education' (Mandarin-medium education) policy is presented as the means to 'fusion' and national unity within these hierarchical relations. Official texts deploy concepts of fusion (jiaorong 交融) and minzu extinction (minzu xiaowang 民族消亡) to narrate the disappearance of shaoshu minzu identities as teleological progression of Zhonghua Minzu. The chapter shows that official nation-building narratives produce a hierarchical and ethnocentric China by framing Uyghur identity as backward obstacles to China’s unity and security.

Chapter 1 analyses how historical contexts of empire, nationalism, and ethnic relations shape identity and security narratives in contemporary nation-building practices in Xinjiang. The chapter shows that China historically understood Xinjiang through imperial geopolitical prisms, which ambivalently shifted towards cultural nationalism and included Uyghur identity as a security concern. The first section builds on nationalism literature and analyses Chinese nation-building as historically contingent processes of cultural governance of relations between Han and non-Han on the frontier. It shows how mid-twentieth century articulation of territorially bounded nationhood matter co-exists with imperial, pre-modern framings of difference between civilisation and barbarians. The second section uses official Chinese sources and secondary literature on Xinjiang history to analyse how Xinjiang’s position shifted from imperial vassal to a central component in struggles to build a modern, multi-ethnic Chinese national identity. The final section uses official Chinese sources and secondary literature on ethnic relations to explore how nation-building conceptualises and organises ethnicity. Chinese nation-building produces ethnic boundaries in Xinjiang by articulating and securitising hierarchical relations between Han majority and ethnic minorities. The chapter shows how Xinjiang’s ambivalent inclusion as an exotic frontier and indivisible component of a territorial state reflects and produces tensions in China’s national narratives.

Chapter 5 analyses the inclusion of Uyghurs in public performances of ethnic unity (minzu tuanjie 民族团结) and celebrations of traditional ethnic festivals of Han (Zhongqiu jie 中秋节) and Uyghurs (Roza Heyti روزاھېيىت). The first section analyses inclusion of Uyghurs through performances of minzu tuanjie in songs and political slogans that saturated Xinjiang’s public discourse following the 2009 violence. Ethnic inclusion in these texts is mutually constituted against existential threats of Uyghur identities to China. The second section analyses the hierarchical relationship between nation and ethnicity and between Han and Uyghurs in representations of different traditional festivals. Minority festivals are officially framed as private and ethnic while majority Han festivals are celebrated as nationally significant events for all minzu. Minzu tuanjie is ethnocentric and hierarchical because it offers inclusion contingent upon identification with Hanzu as superior and Uyghur identity as marginal. This chapter shows how the inclusion offered by nation-building in Xinjiang produces and reproduces Uyghur marginality and exclusion in contemporary China. Inclusion of Uyghurs in Zhonghua Minzu demands identification with hierarchical boundaries between Hanzu and shaoshu minzu, with the Han nucleus guiding the direction of history towards 'fusion' and disappearance of Uyghur identity.

Chapter 4 analyses how official identity and security discourses were performed in public politics following the July 2009 violence. This chapter uses participant-observations and discourse analysis of everyday security practices and political slogans to examine how hierarchical ethnic boundaries were performed in everyday politics and explanations of the violence. The first section shows how violence in Shaoguan against Uyghurs, which sparked the July 2009 violence, was officially designated an 'ordinary public order incident', unrelated to security. However, failure to punish perpetrators produced widespread Uyghur insecurity. The second section shows how subsequent violence by Uyghurs in July 2009 was framed as an existential identity-security threat. Violent ‘revenge’ by Han was conversely framed as 'operations' by 'comrades' for national security. The binarised, ethnocentric meanings attributed to violence ethnicise daily security practices of surveillance and patrols that target Uyghurs and produce insecurity. The final section shows how small-scale syringe attacks in July’s aftermath were officially represented as continuing existential threats. This narrative heightened Han insecurity, sparking protests for increased security and violence against Uyghurs. The chapter shows that the party-state exacerbates insecurity by securitising ethnocentric narratives of a Han-led nation under threat, excluding Uyghurs as sources of insecurity and activating ethnic stereotypes amongst Han.

Chapter 6 uses detailed, semi-structured interviews with Han and Uyghurs in Ürümchi on tuanjie narratives to analyse the effects of nation-building. The first section analyses how Uyghurs and getihu Han dismiss tuanjie as propaganda but deploy it to re-perform minzu as fixed identity boundaries. Han intellectuals conceptualised Zhonghua Minzu through ethnocentric culturalism that includes Xinjiang as a frontier. The second section explores how Han deploy official narratives of Xinjiang’s 'liberation', defining Hanzu through lineage and language. Han nationalists re-perform officially articulated boundaries between ‘Inner-China’ and ‘frontier’ as timeless while culturalists framed Han ethno-nationalists as impediments to nation-building. Nation-building narratives are challenged by different Han identities arguing for more or less inclusion of non-Han. The final section shows how Uyghurs re-perform ethnic boundaries demarcated by Chinese nation-building, articulating their identity as a Turkic group living in a Hanzu nation. Uyghurs refer to their inferiority in official discourse and daily experiences of ethnic discrimination to locate their Turkic and Islamic identities outside Zhonghua Minzu. The chapter shows that nation-building in Xinjiang is failing because its model of inclusion runs counter to daily experiences of ethnic boundaries and perpetuates tensions between Xinjiang’s inclusion as Chinese territory and cultural exclusion as a frontier.

The final chapter uses semi-structured interviews with Han and Uyghurs in Ürümchi to analyse their responses to official security narratives. The first section analyses how Han use official discourses of danger to securitise their own identities, defined through ethnicity, lineage, and language. Working-class and getihu Han deployed party-state discourses to articulate China as an ethnic Han nation under threat from Turkic-Islamic Uyghurs. Han intellectuals emphasise Uyghur inclusion in Chinese civilisation represents the real Zhonghua Minzu but without addressing the Han-centrism of this inclusion. The second section analyses how Uyghurs securitise identities and articulate China as an existential threat by re-performing official and unofficial Chinese narratives on Uyghur-ness. Uyghurs invert party-state discourses, articulating Han as part of a state-led cultural assimilation project through demographic and linguistic transformation. The Han-Uyghur ethnic boundary is redirected inwards between Uyghurs educated in Uyghur (minkaomin 民考民) and those ‘Sinicised’ by Mandarin-medium education (minkaohan 民考汉). Han and Uyghurs use tensions between inclusion and exclusion in official Zhonghua Minzu narratives to understand daily experiences of ethnic boundaries and articulate competing identity-security narratives. The chapter shows the party-state’s attempt to increase security by identifying China’s friends and eliminating enemies produces perpetual insecurity.

This chapter examines depictions of violence in the early period of Chinese history up to the second century BCE. Violence is widely present in works of history, literature and intellectual history from the period. What is distinctive about the Chinese case is the negative tone of most of these depictions. Early sources show violence, including martial violence, in at best equivocal and often unfavourable ways. This chapter explores depictions in classic texts such as the Book of Songs, which contains poems that pass over battle to deplore the loss and separation that war entailed. Prose descriptions of violence, whether in the Book of Documents or in bronze vessel inscriptions, tend to record fighting, its aftermath and the victors’ rewards without much celebration. Thinkers including Confucius and Mozi explicitly criticise violence, especially warfare. Sunzi, famous for his Art of War, considers the strategy and tactics of its topic, yet decries fighting as inferior to other methods of achieving victory. Even the proposals of Shang Yang, who is commonly seen as a proponent of government through force, have considerable non-coercive elements to them. Just one form of violence, namely revenge, gets much positive attention, and that comes relatively late.