New Progress In Minority Nationalities’ Protection In China Since The Reform And Opening-up

Since the adoption of reform and opening-up policy in1978, our country has witnessed agreat change in many fields, such as the protection of rights of minority nationalities. Thosepeople have got more benefit in the past35years than in feudal society and times of the GreatCultural Revolution. Also, after the two world wars, there have been a series ofinternational conventions on human rights both at global and regional levels, which provide aguide and often restriction for most countries in the view of international law, when deal withthe question of ethnic minorities. Even though, national or ethnic problems are still there inboth developed countries declaring human rights come first, and those developing countrieswhere ethnic conflicts take place now and then. To deal with the relation between minoritynationality and majority nationality reasonably and effectively is of great importance to thepolitical stability especially for a multi-nationality country. Consisting of56nationalities, ourcountry is being faced with complex problems in this aspect, which prominently show up asthe incomplete protection of the minority nationalities. In order to solve these problems, anentire and systematic outstanding of the development of the cause of protection of minority isessential.However, most scholars in our country focus on only simple aspect in this field, such asthe definition of minority, the content of rights belong to the national or ethnic minorities, orwhy should those people be protected. Only a few writings describe the condition of ourdevelopment in such a cause in some areas or the whole country. These studies can helppeople know more about protection of minority nationalities, but cannot present an overallview of this cause, which is very important to step forward. And this paper is to provide sucha view with five parts.The first part elucidates the theory basis and principles to protect national or ethnicminorities, to lay down the foundation of the whole work. It is underlined that, rather thanspecial protection, to protect those people specially is the key to our great cause.The second part summarizes our achievements in protecting the minority nationalities inthe recent35years. In these years, our country has learned more from other countries andmade a progress, equal attention is being paid to collective and individuals to reach real equality.The third and forth part are the difficulty points of this article. In these two parts, thechallenge and countermeasure of our effort to protect the minority nationalities is discussed.Because of the imperfection of law system and other reasons, the country should improvespecific measures in this area under the circumstance of cooperation, stability anddevelopment.Finally, the fifth part makes a conclusion of this paper. In view of the above situation, thecountry should face up to the current problems, build up a complete law system and specialinstitutes to protect the minority nationalities, and be more active to exchange experience withother countries. Then the present state will be improved and a better future in sight.