National Political Elite Dual Identity

The research of political elite has long been the hot issue in the academic circle, but the previous studies mainly focused on the type of elite, its position in the country's social power and its function from the political and historical perspective, that is, in the past theory domain, scholars mostly based their theory on the national cybernetics, emphasizing that the political elite are the foundation of power order, and the spokesperson of the interests of the nation as well, thus playing a role as lubricant to ease the relationship between the "up"(country) and the "down"(people) in the ecological environment of the national politics. This, to a certain extent, ignores the subjective consciousness of the political elite in the social cultural changes and the influence on their identity, in particular, ignoring the minority political elite's identity. In fact, the minority political elite has situational dilemma in making choices on their identity, which has the features of situationality and swaying.Thus, this dissertation is based on an autonomous county, the S county, of Qinghai Province. For this investigation of the Hui nationality cadres, the research object is placed in the political life and daily life and gets extended in multiple scenes from the two different fields. Through the double perspectives of synchronicity and historicality, the paper explores their inner anxiety and undeterminedness in the social changes, thus further analyzes how the political elite minority establish their self identification in between the nation and state, and how they construct their identity in sake of keeping a balance and maintaining the local social harmony in face of swinging. Diachronism mainly follows a vivid local background, which is the only existing one with the Hui Tusi (a system of appointing national minority hereditary headman)"central—local" management history in the northwest part of China.S county has a large population of Hui people, since the ancient times, the tradition and culture of Hui nationality have apparent effect on other local nationalities. Living in a multiethnic society with the Hui nationality as the majority, the Hui nationality cadres have to safeguard the interests of the state and express national (religion) appeal as well in the collision due to multicultural mingling and different national interests. Therefore, they are easy to be confronted with uncertainty and confusion about their identity. No matter as the government appointed local authorities--Hui nationality Ye Tusi in the Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty or Qing dynasty, or as modern and contemporary legitimate Hui nationality cadres, most of them will face a dilemma because of the duplicity of their identity. This kind of trouble not only comes from the identity of their own cognition, but also from how the others identify them, that is to say, the exception of others for the elite's role contributes to the formation of tension, conflict and coordination between "self view" and "others'view" in their identity.From the review of the long changing history of the only existing Hui Tusi in Northwest China, we can see a long process from intimacy to alienation in the above-mentioned three dynasties. In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, as a local political elite and under the rule of the empire, the Ye Tusi always kept a harmonious connection with the unified empire and had a strong recognition of "devotion to it". In the Qing Dynasty, because of all kinds of bans and suppress from the ruler, Ye Tusi also rebelled against the Qing Dynasty, which unified the national members, enhanced the national identification, far exceeding the affiliation they previously had been in to the central royal court.In the republic period, the local political elite, with the spur of May4th movement, used their own identity, status and power to actively pursue the interests of the local place and the state, the nation and the ethnic groups. After the establishment of new China, in the following sixty years, as a local political elite, the offspring of the Ye Tusi and the contemporary Hui nationality cadres, with30years of political movement and thirty years of economic construction, kept swinging between the ethic identity and national identity, especially when the third wave of nationalism coming, the confusion of "who am I" increased the dilemma of the Hui nationality cadres in their self identification.The Hui ethnic identity first is based on a common Islamic faith. Thus in the daily life the slogan of "Muslim is a family" properly expresses their national (religious) identity, whether in making friends and choosing spouse, in children education or in religious life, the expression exudes apparent national kindness and intimacy. But in addition to clear self identity internally,the determination of identity must have a corresponding external social definition as well, because to a person the self knowledge not totally depends on their own, otherwise mainly forms in their relations with others, that is, with the help of other people's assessment, a person can gain a real cognition and knowledge about himself, such as in the actual political life, they always face different discontent and criticism from different ethnic groups. So, objectively the comments from the public and collegues become the essential factors in the forming and converting of the identity of the Hui political elite. It is also the unavoidable tension between "self view" and "others'view" that make the minority political elite sway between the ethnic identity and national identity like a pendulum, seeking for the balance between them, in order to properly deal with the relationship between the ethnic members and the national cadres.