FROM INEQUALITY TO DIFFERENCE: COLONIAL CONTRADICTIONS OF CLASS AND ETHNICITY IN 'SOCIALIST' CHINA

Abstract

Through an historical ethnography of the imbrication of class and ethnicity in socialist China, this paper studies socialism as another kind of colonialism with its peculiar, contradictory ramifications of universalism and particularism. The ‘colonial’ cultural politics of socialism is explored in Inner Mongolia, the northern frontier of China, where the historical formation of the social and ethnic relationship defies any clear-cut dichotomy of colonizer and colonized. In the first half of the twentieth century, Inner Mongolia was colonized by Chinese warlords. Yet, at the same time, the majority of the Chinese population in Inner Mongolia were poor peasants leasing Mongol land. Nonetheless, the Mongols won a limited ethnic autonomy within China in 1947 by applying Leninist colonial liberation ideology, defining the Mongols as a collective group colonized by the Chinese. However,the socialist ideology based on class analysis of the social relationship during the land reform, effectively enabled the Chinese to designate many Mongols as class enemies, thereby justifying the redistribution of Mongol land among the Chinese who constituted the majority in Inner Mongolia. The ensuing ethnic violence forced Mongol leaders, who were both agents of the Chinese Communist Party and representatives of the Mongolian nationality, to press for an explicit nationality policy to defend the nominal ethnic autonomy of Inner Mongolia. Yet, this deployment of ethnic priniciple amid China's class struggle campaign was interpreted as betrayal of the socialist principle, thus leading to a collective Chinese violence against the Mongols during the Cultural Revolution. The paper suggests that, instead of a sterile debate of subaltern representation, which often reflects the scholars' own ‘position’ devoid of social context, an historical ethnography may better illustrate the historical contingencies in the practice of subalternity in socialist China.