MIXIS NEWS YOU CAN USE: Money for Mixed-Race Love? Chinese Authorities Offer Cash to Promote Inter-ethnic Marriages Incentives Offered To Couples in Parts of Chinas troubled Xinjiang Region in effort to Assimilate Culturally Distinct Uighur Minority Parts of Chinas troubled north-west region of Xinjiang have begun offering cash to inter-ethnic couples as part of a drive to assimilate the culturally distinct Uighur minority I have always been intrigued by the Uyghur (pronounced wee-gher) people of China. This is a people group in the Northwestern part of China from a Turkic ethnic background. This area of China is unique for many reasons. It seems to have more in common with the “stans” (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan etc) than the rest of mainland China. The majority of the Uyghur are Muslims and speak the native Uyghur tongue. Qiemo county, part of the 460,000 sq km Bayinguoleng autonomous Mongolian prefecture, announced the policy in late August, calling it a big celebratory gift package for couples in which one member is an ethnic minority and the other is Han Chinese. The package includes annual cash payments of 10,000 yuan ($2000USD) for inter-ethnic couples during the first five years of their marriage, as well as housing, healthcare and education subsidies, according to a statement on the Qiemo county governments website. Ethnic groups are different only in that we have different languages and different customs, but we have the same blue sky above our heads, the same fertile ground beneath our feet, and the same love in our hearts! Yasen Nasier, deputy secretary of the Qiongkule township Communist party committee, told journalists during the announcement on 25 August. I believe that intermarriage between ethnic groups is a foundation of Chinese culture, and will strengthen the concrete expression of exchange, association, and mingling of all ethnic groups. A county official confirmed the policy when reached by phone. This is meant to promote ethnic unity – thats the main thing, he said. Xinjiang is Chinas largest province, a vast sweep of mountains, forests and deserts bordering seven central and south Asian countries, including Afghanistan and India. Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim ethnic group, make up the regions plurality. When Communist troops took control of Xinjiang in 1949, Han Chinese only made up 6% of its total population. Today they make up nearly half. While ethnic intermarriage is fairly common across China, it is rare between Uighurs and Han Chinese, underscoring the groups deep-rooted cultural, religious and linguistic differences. The regions cities are often clearly divided along ethnic lines, with Han residents frequenting separate shops and restaurants from their Uighur counterparts. State media reports consistently blame the violence on Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists and separatists, and point to economic growth and preferential ethnic policies as evidence of good regional governance. Yet the regions 8 million Uighurs complain that the economic growth has mainly benefited the Han Chinese, and that local authorities place severe restrictions on their religious and cultural freedom, including bans on veils, beards and worship at non-state-sanctioned mosques. Qiemo countys inter-ethnic marriage policy seems of a piece with general assumptions about Chinese policy in the region, in the sense that the party appears to believe that material incentives can overcome or mediate most political, economic and social problems, said Michael Clarke, an expert on Xinjiang at Griffith University in Australia. According to the US-based broadcaster Radio Free Asia, Qiemo county officials have counted 57 mixed-race couples within their jurisdiction , in a county with a total population of about 60,000. The policy is experimental, and subject to change. China also recently began promoting inter-ethnic marriages in Tibet, its other politically recalcitrant ethnic frontier, according to a slew of state media reports published this summer. The Communist partys highest official in the Tibetan region, Chen Quanguo, had himself photographed with a large group of Tibetan-Han mixed-marriage families in mid-June. Inter-ethnic marriages in the region grew from about 700 in 2008 to more than 4,700 last year, according to a report by the research office of the Communist party in Tibet. This seems to be part of a much larger effort by the government to essentially socially engineer support for a decidedly Beijing-centric perception of what a society should look like – or at least to minimize objections to the central governments policies, said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. It seems to presume that Han will be supportive of government policies – a reality which is manifestly not true – and somehow, that the construct of marriage will promote that political loyalty. She continued: It certainly strikes me as one of the perverse efforts by a government thats known to engineer its way out of human rights abuses rather than removing the abusive policies that lead to protests in the first place.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 22:07:49 +0000
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