Study Of Chinese Minority Groups, Events And Governance Mechanisms

In a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country with a population of 1.3 billion, it is of great importance to maintain social order and promote harmonious society while national economy and society is developing rapidly. Currently, our country is not only in the important period of strategic opportunities, but also in the period of increasing social contradictions. Complex social environment poses a major challenge to national affairs management. Ethnic work is one of the weak links of social management, for example, the social development in ethnic regions is relatively backward, while minority group incidents that occurred from time to time in recent years made deep influence on social stability and national unity. To enhance the research of minority group incidents is a major issue about national unity and social stability, which is of great theoretical and practical value. However, relevant researches have just started both in theory circle and in practice, lacking of deep and targeted works. In this paper, several in-depth researches are carried out in ethnic minority areas and coastal cities where there is more mobile minority population, combined with relevant information from State Ethnic Affairs Commission and local ethnic departments. The author strives to use the scientific methods to break through the traditional misunderstanding, explore the causes and laws of minority group incidents, and give policy suggestions to correctly handle these problems as well as promote national unity and social stability.At present, China's minority group incidents can be classified into five types. The first type is caused by economic, civil or criminal elements. The second arises from religious factors. The third one lies in the breach of minority feelings. The fourth type is Muslim-induced events. And the last type is resulted from historical events. These group incidents mainly focus on ethnic relations, ethnic customs, religions, social mobility and so on. It is worth noting that, with the laid-off, demolition, land acquisition, migrant workers, and unpaid wages and other issues affecting minority people, similar incidents may enter a peak period. Once these problems are intertwined with traditional factors, it will be much more complicated to cope with minority group incidents.Compared with other group incidents, minority group incidents, although happen in the same social background, have a more complex causal mechanism. The core point of this paper is that the group incident is the result of the interaction of willingness and capacity, namely, Incident= Perception * Capacity, i.e. I= F (P, C). The first variable, the formation of the perception, includes social transformation, economically poverty and relative deprivation and so on. Economically poverty cannot be simply regarded as a major reason. In fact, subjective feelings may be more important than objective facts on deciding people's reactions. "Relative deprivation "of minority people is the real willingness that triggered group struggle. Moreover, only the willingness to participate in the struggle will not necessarily lead to group incidents. Thus, another variable is brought in, that is, access to ability, including national culture, organizational resources, new media and ecological environment, etc. In the process of social transformation, the traditional and modern skills of minorities have improved. As a consequence, they are able to be involved in politics and social affairs better. Due to their proximal living space, similar cultural forces such as national culture, identity and religious, and the development of new media, the perception is more easily to transform into real action. So, in the absence of adequate and effective interest appeal channel, minority people are inclined to gather, group visit, besiege or smash, etc., which eventually brings about extreme behaviors such as group incidents. Meanwhile, inappropriate responses of government often make it worse, resulting in a vicious cycle. The lack of alternatives is a vivid reflection o f China's political management structure as well as state-social relations. This paper demonstrates the function I= F (P, C) from three perspectives, respectively urban ethnic management, religion and international factors.Minority group incidents cannot simply be equated as political events, criminal offense or ethnic problems. Instead, we ought to insist on a down-to-earth attitude and study the incidents in the dynamic social and historical background. We should try to find new ways to institutionalize group incidents. For example, we should realize the normalized prevention of group incidents, guide the institutionalization of most incidents, and marginalize extreme events. In Western countries, destructive riots and revolution aimed to overthrow the regime is also not allowed by those in power. But such political organization as trade unions and such political activities as strikes, demonstrations and sit-ins which were used not to be tolerated by the system almost have been legalized, fully or partially integrated into the system. Therefore, with the development of our society, the ability of government to institutionalize group behaviors should be improved, so as to resolutely forestall and fight against all sorts of separatist sabotages. Furthermore, it seems that an effective course of action by the government is to focus on keeping ethnic tensions below a certain acceptable threshold.