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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 22, No. 3. April 13, 1959

[Introduction]

Repeatedly, in his journey around China, the traveller will be reminded that China is a multi-national state containing many peoples at many levels of culture. In any national exhibitions at Peking, he will see not only blue uniformed Chinese, but also tall, fur-capped Mongols, felt-hatted Tibetans and other minority groups among the crowds.

Certain of the restaurants of Peking will offer him the specialities of the cuisine of various minority groups; at the theatre, he can see performances of plays and opera based on minority folk tales.

In the far south, in Kwangsi, he will see Chinese and the new Chuang script in all public notices. On the platform of Yunnan in the southwest, he has only to move away from the level valley lands to find himself amongst peoples whose costumes, facial appearance, and languages mark them off clearly from the Han people of the lowlands.

China, like the Soviet Union, is in fact a multi-national state. The five-barred flag of the old Republic symbolised this, for the five bars represented the five major peoples who made up the Chinese state—the Han, or Chinese in the narrower sense of the word; the Manchus; the Mongols; the Moslems and the Tibetans.

Between these groups there was, however, little equality; the dominant group was the Han group; the aspirations and the distinctive cultures of the other groups were ignored. All were exposed to a Han chauvinism which aimed at their absorption. Minority languages were ignored or discriminated against; the wearing of minority costumes forbidden.

It is not, therefore, surprising that little was known of the minority peoples of China—what proportion of China's population they represented, where they lived, or how they lived. By hiding one's group identity one might at least avoid discrimination. And, until 1953, all population statistics were little better than more or less enlightened guesses.

The coming to power of the Chinese People's Government altered this situation; a new minority policy was formulated and a full scale census of China's population was carried out.