The People’s Republic of China (PRC) faces a crisis in its borderlands. Xinjiang province in the West of the country has surfaced numerous times in recent months for authorities’ ill treatment of ethnic minorities, particularly the Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs. In Tibet, 2018 saw aggravated religious and political oppression, land seizures, and government education programmes rolled out in places of worship. Hong Kong has seen months of rallies in the streets against the tightening of Beijing’s grip around the region’s supposed special status.

Though Hong Kong nominally enjoys more freedoms and a separate status than the mainland autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, all three entites are beleaguered with their ties to national government on the one hand, and their interest in autonomy, independence, and representation on the other. International attention variously focuses on each of these simmering conflicts as individual cases, but here I aim to draw together these instances and examine the underlying historical and policy forces that have created the societal tension we see today in the People’s Republic.

Referring to China as a country is sometimes likened to thinking of Europe as one nation, since both are highly diverse along dimensions of language, culture, religion, ethnicity, and geography. The single word “China” wrongly implies homogeneity. The PRC is as vast and as varied as a continent, and therein lies the problem for a strongly centralised government: how to maintain national unity while acknowledging and respecting difference?

It helps to understand that historically, imperial Chinese governments operated under a tributary system, whereby smaller states and peoples in the borderlands paid tribute to the emperor at the centre of power. China is sometimes referred to as the “Middle Kingdom”, as I have done in the title above, but a more accurate rendering of the Chinese is the “Central Kingdom”. The centre is the concentration of power, authority, morality, and civilisation. By extension, further from the centre is increasingly illegitimate, immoral, barbarian, and backward. Deference, wealth, and service flow to the centre. It is against this implicit worldview that the Chinese government maintains its mandate over the various entities on her periphery.

To manage the tension between unity and difference, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employs a system that recognises 55 ethnic minorities in China in addition to the Han ethnic majority. Unlike in other countries such as the UK, there is no option for hybrid identities or a category for “other”. Individuals can only belong to one of 56 ethnic labels.

While party rhetoric espouses values of acknowledging and respecting difference, the reality of the systems of categorisations and regional autonomy establishes a means for the state to control and contain ethnic difference. Ethnic identities are not permitted to stray beyond the acceptable bounds that have been set for them, for example, in the Lunar New Year televised celebration. China’s minorities parade in traditional garb, dance to the tune of their own ethnic music, and present themselves as representatives of Chinese diversity and reflections of policies of respect. But in reality “the People’s Republic’s minorities are commonly depicted in government-produced media as harmless entertainers,” as Clarissa Sebag Montofiore wrote on the BBC with regard to the ways in which the Chinese government disseminates propaganda about minority ethnicities. For minority groups themselves, the “song-and-dance troupes” are a source of disdain, as they are seen to be narrow, backward, and stereotypical displays of their culture. Minority groups do not control their own cultural representation in China, at least not at an official level.

In this exoticised framework of government media representations, minority groups such as the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Kazakhs are relegated to the position of performers, and not considered serious political actors in their own right. Not only are depictions of minorities in the media highly distorted, but their civil rights are severely limited. In Xinjiang province, mass detention of Muslim minorities for the purposes of “re-education” has sparked a human rights controversy. It has even emerged that Muslim detainees have been forced to eat pork and shave their beards in the move by authorities to rid the region of so-called violent religious extremism. Invasive surveillance of populations in both Xinjiang and Tibet number among the many violations that become more and more common in China’s border regions. Authorities in Tibet have also failed to prevent land grabs and exploitative property purchases by local officials, according to the 2018 Human Rights Watch report on China. Freedom of speech, movement, and religion have all been restricted. HRW reports that last year, several hundred Tibetans travelling abroad to receive teaching from the exiled Dalai Lama were forced to return to China after they and their families at home received threats from local authorities.

The tensions in these border regions are felt acutely by minorities themselves. Many exiled Uyghurs living abroad in Central Asia, Europe, and North America await news of detained relatives back in the homeland, after the government claimed to have released 90% of those incarcerated in the education camps. Artists and musicians regularly disappear for expressing vaguely political sentiments in their work, such as Ablajan Awut Ayup, who recorded the song “Motherland” and disappeared in February 2018, presumably to a detention centre. In the build up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, an annual Tibetan celebration broke out into rioting between minority Tibetans and the Han ethnic minority in Lhasa, and Tibetan Buddhists have continued to self-immolate in protest of Beijing’s policies in the region. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, has himself accused the Chinese of colonising Tibet and violating Tibetan sovereignty.

Hong Kong, while currently facing troubles of a different kind, is also subject to the demands of the Central Kingdom. Pro-democracy demonstrations have made international headlines over the summer as students protested a controversial extradition bill that would allow criminal suspects to be transferred from Hong Kong to the mainland. The bill, which has now been withdrawn by governor Carrie Lam, was seen by protesters as a violation of the One Country Two Systems model, which provides certain freedoms in Hong Kong that are not enjoyed on the mainland, such as freedom of assembly and speech and self-governance in matters of borders and legal system. Though the bill has been withdrawn, the protests have seen a number of violent confrontations between police and demonstrators, and have since become a broader call for democratic changes in the Hong Kong government. The government in Hong Kong, seen as aligned to Beijing, has consistently vetoed the participation of pro-democracy and independence parties in Hong Kong’s legislative council, a policy that has intensified the sense that the mainland government is attempting to strip the special rights enjoyed by citizens.

The contradictions between policy and practice are beginning to show. On the one hand the government promises political representation, civil liberties, and a harmonious society. On the other hand, Beijing consistently undermines a vision of equality with arbitrary detention, oppression, surveillance, and restriction of civil and democratic rights. Pei Minxin, writing for National Interest, identified the ways in which the Chinese government has managed to assimilate the regions of Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong with the political Centre through economic infrastructure and by co-opting local elites to align with Beijing’s interests. So while there may be regional autonomy in Xinjiang and Tibet and a separate system governing in Hong Kong, these positions are filled with actors sympathetic to Beijing, and not true representatives of citizens in those areas.

Currently we are witnessing a hotbed of conflict in China’s border regions. There have already been violent protests in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, in July 2009, as well as the above-mentioned riots in Lhasa, 2008, not to mention the clashes that are taking place in Hong Kong at the moment. Unfortunately, the People’s Republic of China has become economically and politically powerful to the point of immunity, it would seem. At the UN, China has blocked the participation of its critics and drawn attention for reprisals against human rights defenders. As reported by HRW, “few governments spoke forcefully against these developments, even in the face of Chinese government harassment of people in their own countries or pressure on foreign companies to publicly support Chinese government positions.” As international coverage of the barbaric treatment of Chinese citizens grows, governments have a responsibility not to kowtow to the might of China, and must advocate for those who at present enjoy very little or no representation in the existing systems of regional autonomy.