Representation of ethnic minorities in socialist China.

This study examines the fact of representation of ethnicity in the People’s Republic of China. The present ethnic configuration, centred on a re-categorization of the population, came to be accepted by ordinary people in Chinese society as the result of the multiple projects in association with state-making and nation-building. This paper delineates how the projects in question came about, especially the one focused on the investigation of ethnic minority social history. It examines the way in which narrating and representing ethnic minorities officially took place and how the representation of ethnic minorities functions in the construction of the Chinese nation. It argues that representation for ethnicities focused on how to locate each of them at a certain stage of social development, conceptualizing the Chinese nation in a framework of brotherhood in order to include those excluded by the mainstream throughout history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]