Southwest Of The Republic Of China, "yi Miao" Political Recognition Of The Demands

Since 1990s, there has been a criticizing agitation among the western scholars against China's policies on ethnic minorities. It seems that analyzing China's ethnic identification and deconstructing China's policies on ethnic minorities has become a knowledge growth point. This thesis holds that the criticism can be reduced into such two viewpoints by classification and analysis as:(1) China's ethnic identification lacks respect for the ethnic minorities'subjectivity, and it is a "forced" process of construction by use of government power; (2) China is an authoritarian state, and the ethnic minorities in China have been created and invented by the government.To respond to the criticism, this thesis undergoes necessary classifying, summarizing and analyzing to the social and historical environment of China during the period of Republic of China, together with a careful study of a specific petition case. With all the work done, the author reaches the following conclusions:1. Politics of difference, taking a culture, a lineage/race difference as boundary which may be inconspicuous do not only exist in contemporary China, but also did in traditional China;2. China's ethnic minority issue is more a new one generating in the construction of a contemporary nation-state than an old historical problem left behind;3. Politics of recognition in the People's Republic of China is not a product of an authoritarian state, but a result from the continuous negotiation between the ethnic recognition petition and the state ever since the 1911 Revolution. Though the power status is asymmetry, the power relation is dynamic, not static. Instead of being constructed lethargically, China's ethnic minorities have been actively participating in the new selves' construction to cope with new state of affairs.This thesis consists of six chapters. Based on the reviewing of western scholars' criticism to China's ethnic politics and of China's scholars' responses, the first chapter emphasizes the significance of research on and rebut to the criticism. Studying of the social and historical background and reviewing of the crises in border areas lead the second chapter to proposing that the new nationalism ideology is the important reason that causes the crises in modern China. By studying her extraction and life experience, the third chapter finds the reason why Gao Yuzhu initiated the petition of ethnic recognition:the strong desire of ethnic minorities living in Southwest to be politically recognized resulted from their refusal of recognition by the Republic of China during the process of nation-state building in modern China. The fourth chapter expatiates upon the process of Gao Yuzhu's petition, and analyzes her petition and its results. Thus made is the conclusion that politicizing of ethnic identity is not the product of New China imitating the former Soviet Union since it existed even in the modern times. Instead of being negatively arranged, recognized and constructed, people's suffrage has been striven for after continuous petitioning. The fifth chapter uses Michel Foucault's power theory to analyze the process of strategic game among different interest parties. After studying the process, this chapter draws the conclusion that Gao Yuzhu is disciplined by the action of power as a new subject which answered to a discourse of nation-state. At the same time, the discourse of national government is shaped in some degree by Gao Yuzhu's petition.Thus comes the conclusion in the sixth chapter in which the author also proposes his thinking on ethnic politics.