Ethnic Minority Conflicts under Authoritarian Regime in Chinese Sphere

• Main Authors: Julie Couderc, 季茱莉
• Other Authors: 張志銘
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/4kxb9w

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國家發展研究所 === 105 === This thesis investigates the phenomenon of ethnic minority conflict in China and explores the possibility and utility of applying consociational power-sharing solutions to resolve the situation. We focus on the Uyghur conflict through the lens of ethnic mobilization theory and discuss the feasibility of a consociational power-sharing political model being tested at the regional, sub-state level in Xinjiang, before being applied to the rest of China. The theoretical framework employed draws from the concepts of ethnic mobilization, ethnic conflict, and authoritarian regime in Chinese societies, with the help of ethnic mobilization and conflict theories. We propose that China could use consociational power-sharing as a strategic route that prepares it for eventual democratization, and that the introduction of consociationalism can help China to offset or temper the risk of ethnic conflict that might otherwise result from a sudden transition to democracy. We show the link between the ideology of the Chinese government and party-state that emerge from Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping’s discourses, the localized contemporary ethnic policies in Xinjiang, and the rise of ethnic minority conflict and ethnic movements in the region. Chapter Four examines the result of the party-state regime on the Uyghur ethnic situation. We ask what kind of political discourse is produced by the party-state, how the Chinese government views and manages its ethnic minorities, and through what political framework? The findings of this research demonstrate that the party-state’s project of one big Chinese nation is unintentionally producing tension between the government and the minorities. Ethnic policies which mirror the nationalist ideology of the CCP encourage conflict and protest instead of unifying the various ethnic groups. We show that state repression, surveillance and social policies increase internal contestation. The consequence of Chinese policies over minorities in the case of Xinjiang can only be understood in relation with the societal changes that have been affecting the region since the mid-1990s. In Chapter Five, we focus on the contemporary conflict in Xinjiang based on recent data from 2000 to 2017. This chapter uses, for the most part, recent data to analyze the Uyghur conflict through a historical and quantitative approach. We cover the evolution and the transformation of the Uyghur movement since the 1990s. We focus more on the contemporary period to demonstrate that the violent incidents in Xinjiang have dramatically increased under the presidency of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping. Finally, in Chapter Six, we show that consociationalism could be the key to finding stability in deeply divided China and could help to resolve, manage or mitigate the ethnic minority conflict that has plagued the Uyghur people and the region of Xinjiang.