China

Diversity in China

Officially, China recognizes fifty-six different minority groups, but the Han, or the dominant group, makes up about 91% of the population. The remaining fifty-five groups, representing about 106 million people, are sprinkled across the marginal boundaries of China's geography. Although China has only one official language, Mandarin, Han nationality members may speak many different regional dialects of Chinese. Almost all of the officially identified minority nationalities must learn to speak Chinese, and many also speak another unrelated language. Religious diversity in China includes a variety of Buddhist forms (including Tibetan Buddhism and Mongolian Lamaism), Islam, and Christianity, as well as more limited traditions like Dongba of the Naxi or the ancestor worship of the Dong nationality.

While some minority nationalities reside in autonomous homeland regions, other groups, such as the Hui and Manchu, are spread throughout the country. Most of China's border regions to the north and west, such as the provinces of Xinjiang, Xizang, Nei Monggu, and Yunnan, are home to most identified nationalities, most notably Uygurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Bai, and Yi. In recent years, given the push to develop the borderland areas because they contain a large percentage of China's water and mineral resources, Han Chinese from coastal regions are entering in such large numbers in search of economic opportunities that they are beginning to outnumber minority nationalities in many of the autonomous minority regions.

At this time, minority nationalities recognized officially by the CCP include the Manchus, Koreans, Hezhe, Mongolians, Daur, Ewenki, and Oreqens in northeastern China. Islamic nationalities, ten in number, are found mostly in northwestern China and include the Hui, Uygur, Kazaks, Tatar, Kirgiz, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Dongxiang, Salars, and Bonan. Other northwestern minorities include the Tu, Xibe, and Russians. Central and southeastern China are home to the Zhuang, Yao, Mulam, Maonan, Jing, Tujia, Li, She, and Gaoshan nationalities. Finally, southwestern China, the area that includes Yunnan, Sichuan, and Xizang provinces, is home to the Tibetans, Moinba, Lhoba, Qiang, Yi, Bai, Hani, Dai, Lisu, Va, Lahu, Naxi, Jingpo, Blang, Achang, Pumi, Nu, De'ang, Drung, Jino, Miao, Bouyei, Dong, Shui, and Gelo minorities. In addition are the Tibetans in Tibet, most of whom there and in exile view themselves as independent of China but whose homeland has been proclaimed by China as politically a part of that country, called the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” since 1959, and hence is shown that way in the accompanying map.

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