Thomas Mullaney 
Coming to Terms with the Nation 
Ethnic Classification in Modern China

China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or
minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation’s enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project (
minzu shibie). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently declassified material and extensive oral histories to describe how the communist government, in power less than a decade, launched this process in ethnically diverse Yunnan. Mullaney shows how the government drew on Republican-era scholarship for conceptual and methodological inspiration as it developed a strategy for identifying
minzu and how non-Party-member Chinese ethnologists produced a ’scientific’ survey that would become the basis for a policy on nationalities.

Innehållsförteckning

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Foreword

Acknowledgments


Introduction


1. Identity Crisis in Postimperial China

2. Ethnicity as Language

3. Plausible Communities

4. The Consent of the Categorized

5. Counting to Fifty-Six


Conclusion: A History of the Future


Appendix A: Ethnotaxonomy of Yunnan, 1951, According to the Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission

Appendix B: Ethnotaxonomy of Yunnan, 1953, According to the Yunnan Nationalities Affairs Commission

Appendix C: Minzu Entries, 1953–1954 Census, by Population

Appendix D: Classification Squads, Phases One and Two

Appendix E: Population Sizes of Groups Researched during Phase One and Phase Two


Notes

Character Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Om författaren

Thomas S. Mullaney is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.