Han Father, Minzu Children Gender and Family in China’s Ethnic Governance

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China recognizes fifty-six distinct nationalities (minzu) including the Han, who constitute 90% of the population, as well as fifty-five ethnic minorities. Understanding this enumeration of minzu as a recent phenomenon designed to meet state goals, I argue that the Han-dominated Chinese state has posed ethnic relations in starkly gendered terms. As seen in state communications from the Mao era to the present, the Chinese government represents ethnic minority subjects in feminized and infantilized poses in relationship to a masculine Han state. As a result of this, the Chinese government has encouraged particular forms of state-compatible minority femininity while minimizing minority masculinities yet posing Han men as natural extensions of the state.