| Affirmative action of ethnic minorities in China | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 优惠政策 | ||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 優惠政策 | ||||||
| Literal meaning | Preferential policy | ||||||
| |||||||
In the People's Republic of China, the government had instated affirmative action policies for ethnic minorities called Youhui zhengce (simplified Chinese: 优惠政策; traditional Chinese: 優惠政策; pinyin: Yōuhuì zhèngcè; lit. 'preferential policy') or Shaoshu minzu jiafen (simplified Chinese: 少数民族加分; traditional Chinese: 少數民族加分; pinyin: Shǎoshù mínzú jiāfēn; lit. 'bonus point for minority ethnic groups' in College Entrance Examination) when it began in 1949 and still had impact until today.[1] The policies giving preferential treatment to ethnic minorities in China. For example, minority ethnic groups in China were not subjected to its well-publicized (former) one-child policy.[2][3] Three principles are the basis for the policy: equality for national minorities, territorial autonomy, and equality for all languages and cultures.[1]
No taxes in minority regions are required to be sent to the central government; all of it can be spent locally.[4] Minorities receive proportional representation in local government.[4] Higher-level jurisdictions ask lower-level minority areas to put forth "extensive efforts to support the country's construction by providing more natural resources" and in exchange gives them infrastructural subsidies such as personnel training, budgetary subventions, and disproportionate public works investments.[1][5] The Chinese government encourages business to hire minorities and offers no-interest loans to businesses operated by minorities.[1][4] Prominent government posts may be filled with "model" citizens who are also minorities.[6]
Minority students applying to universities receive bonus points on the National Higher Education Entrance Examination (gaokao).[1][6] In 2009 authorities in Chongqing uncovered 31 high school students pretending to be members of a minority group in order to gain test points, and in 2011 Inner Mongolia authorities uncovered about 800 students pretending to be members of a minority group.[citation needed] There is a system of universities exclusively for minority students.[4] The government established bilingual programs to help minorities learn Mandarin Chinese. Scholars are creating alphabets for minority languages that had not been previously written as a way of preserving those languages.[4]
The Chinese government officially allowed minority parents to have more than one child per family instead of the one demanded for Han people as part of the (former) one-child policy.[6] Ethnic minorities like Zhuang of Guangxi and Manchus of Liaoning and Heilongjiang were subjected to the same one child policy and rules as Han people. Manchus, Koreans, Russians, Hui and Mongols in Inner Mongolia were subjected to restrictions of two children unlike other ethnic minorities like Hezhe who were allowed more.[7] The one child policy was firmly implemented on Manchus in Fengning Manchu Autonomous County in Hebei where a rural Manchu farmer in 2009 reported he was only allowed to have one child.[8][9] A huge amount of Manchus are urbanites in China and therefore subjected to the one child policy.[10] Ethnic Manchu doctor Zed Zha said her family was subjected to one child policy and she was subjected to forced removal from her family for adoption before her mother took her back.[11][12][13][14] Manchu Doctor Aisin Gioro Wei, a descendant of the Qing imperial family, was an only child due to the one child policy.[15] One child policy is applied to Zhuang people since they are over 10 million and it applied to every ethnic minority in China that is over 10 million.[16]
Singer wrote that the policies are meant to encourage assimilation instead of empowering minority blocs and "The idea is to give the minorities just enough power, education or economic success to keep them quiet."[4] An article by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times describes that the affirmative action policy is quite effective. A Western diplomat in Beijing remarked that real effort was put in by the government to bring minorities into high-profile positions, which "has its own value because then they begin to serve as role models [for other minorities to follow]."[6]
Fuk'anggan, a Manchu military leader, recommended for an increase in the quota for Hui people in the civil and military suishi examinations during a 1785 memorial from the governor of Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. Li Zonghan (C: 李宗瀚, P: Lǐ Zōnghàn, W: Li Tsung-han), the Hunan provincial education commissioner, requested a quota for Miao people candidates for provincial examinations during an 1807 memorial. This is so the Han Chinese people, who had better preparation to take the examinations, would not crowd out Miao. Li Zonghan argued that local officials would need to have suspicion of Han pretending to be Miao in order to fit the quota criteria.[17] Taiwanese Plains Aborigines also had a quota under the Qing.
The affirmative action of the Chinese government has been called into question of late, especially from the ethnic group of Han Chinese. Unfair policies on Chinese College entrance exams as well as human rights considered to be favoring the national minority have both been believed to be causing reverse discrimination in the mainland. The Chinese government has been scaling back on affirmative action since 2019.[18]
Han chauvinism has been becoming more popular in mainland China since the 2000s, the cause of which has been attributed to the discontent toward Chinese affirmative action.[19][20]
