Ethnicity and Ethnicities

Most anthropologists argue that ethnicity is a sense of individual identity with a larger group based on any combination of racial, religious, linguistic, and class similarities. The possible number of permutations on these five (sic!) factors can be further complicated by rates of acculturation and assimilation over time. At any given moment, ethnic loyalties tend to be dynamic rather than static, subject to infinite variety because of economic, demographic, political, and social change...

This is particularly true in the case of Chinese ethnohistory. Discussing linguistic groups in the People's Republic of China (PRC), for example, is particularly difficult because the government insists on maintaining the fiction that there is only one Chinese languag, and that it is divided into a series of dialects. To argue othewise would require government officials to recognize major ethnic divisions with the dominant Han people, something Chinese officials have been extremely reluctant to do. (pg vii)

So the "fact" that the PRC recognizes 56 nationalities is the result of a long and interesting history of research and development. It's convenient for government efforts like the census and the establishment of adminitrative units... and it reflects some sort of reality, or at least a mapping of reality. But the classification and definition schemes turn out to be fictions and oversimplifications when examined in detail (see Stevan Harrell's excellent Cultural encounters on China's ethnic frontiers [GN635 .C5 C85 1995] for plentiful examples).

Han (han ren, "Men of Han") is a term used for some 90% of the population of the PRC. Han consider that they are nei ren, "inner people", while others are wai ren, "outer people" or (in traditional terms) "barbarians". Olson summarizes:

Barbarians were given generic names in the Chinese classics and histories: the Yi barbarians to the east, the Man to the south, the Rong to the west, and the Di to the north... Until the 1930s, the names of outgroups were commonly written in characters with an animal radical: the Di, a northern tribe, were linked to the dog; the Man and the Min of the south were characterized with reptiles; and Qiang was written with a sheep radical. This reflected the Han Chinese conviction that civilization and culture were linked with humanity; alien groups living outside the pale of Chinese society were regarded as inhuman savages. The be labeled a barbarian was a cultural rather than a racial distinction.

The custom of sharply distinguishing between inside and outside went along with calling China the Middle Kingdom (zhong guo)... rather than using outright military conquest of outsiders, the theory of "using the Chinese ways to transform the barbarians" (yongxiabianyi) was promulgated. By Chinese cultural absorption or racial integration through intermarriage, a barbarian could become Han Chinese (hanhua). To be counted within China, groups accepted the rituals and cosmology that gave the Han dynastic state the Mandate of Heaven to rule over mankind. Nonacceptance of this politicized culture left one outside of Zhongguo or China. (pg 95)