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Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the in 39

Chelegeer

Contents Introduction ...... 696 MINZU in China at a Glance ...... 696 Mongolian Elites Before 1949 ...... 699 The Old Nobility ...... 700 From Old House to New Elite ...... 702 Mongol MINZU from 1949 to 1979 ...... 704 Economic and Cultural Reforming ...... 705 MINZU as Social Transformation ...... 707 Ongoing Generations from the 1980s ...... 709 Conclusion ...... 711 References ...... 712

Abstract Whether an ethnicity or a nationality is a natural and historical entity with clear self-consciousness, or a constructed identity as one of the consequences of modernity, there are always academic debates in sociology. By concerning Mongolian elites, this chapter argues their essential role in interacting with Han, the dominant population of China, through history and informing their modern concept of MINZU. Indeed, this research is not taking Mongol as a group-in-itself but as a dynamic identity with constant changing.

Keywords Mongolian elites · Inner · MINZU · China · Ethnic identity

Chelegeer (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Pte Ltd. 2019 695 S. Ratuva (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_51 696 Chelegeer

Introduction

The intention of this chapter is to sketch how Mongolian elites had been and are now interacting with the majority Han of China through the history and in the context of today’s sovereignty. Mongol was once a federal community with conflicting , who were widely believed as barbarians and invaders to the Confucian culture. However, the recent elite politics reformed the pan-Mongol society into two major regimes: one republic state while the other one a province in China. Thereafter, the “Mongolians in China” had been constructed as an official notion of the Chinese MINZU category whose ethnic identity was classified and inherited restrict to law, and their history was a part of the for its own sake. Scholars like Bulag (2002) believed the Mongolians in China could be a subject of postcolonial criticism, while this chapter would take a more neutral view to see the changes of Mongolian elites. Indeed, the departure point of this research is not taking Mongo- lians in China as a consistent group-in-itself but as choices made by certain people in the view of Brubaker (2006) and Song (2003), which may touch the debate on nationality being a historical and cultural entity or a modern creation. Dillon (2016) introduces that a popular stereotype in the West is that China is a single monoculture, populated entirely by a homogeneous Chinese population who all speak the same and have a more or less uniform . The fact is that the People’s Republic of China today is founded by combining , , , and other ethnic areas together. Indeed, there are 55 national minorities with state-certificated communities of people and distinct languages, customs, economic lives, and psychological makeups in culture, whose autonomous habitats account for 64% of the country’s total land territory (Yi 2008). In other words, China is not and had never been a monoculture society. The various peoples of the MINZU category are believed that have been weaving intricate networks of conflict, interconnection, and influence over the entire Chinese history (Dreyer 1976; Heberer 1989). They are considered important for China, and studies on them could also be enlightening to the more general sociology on ethnic relationships around the world.

MINZU in China at a Glance

One may feel confused about studies on Chinese Mongolians or other minorities in China for there is even no consensus on what “China” means (Ge 2011;Bo2007). In fact, the Chinese language makes no difference between , nationality, minor- ity, ethnicity, and ethnos. A liquid situation of Chinese identity has explained that whoever believes in and relative ethics could be considered as belonging to the Chinese cultural community, and this cosmopolitan ideology of “TianXia” has shaped the basic structure of Chinese worldviews throughout the history (Xu 2017). The modern concept of “nationality” was firstly introduced by Liang Qichao into the in 1899 (Huang 1995). Borrowed the term “MINZU” (民族) 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 697 from Japanese, he initially called for protecting the and fighting against from the western powers. Soon afterward, the term was applied in complicated ways and referred to different entities. Sun Yat-sen considered Zhonghua MINZU a racial concept and expressed his ambition to found a pure nation-state with only the Han population in his Three People’s Principles, by saying “ Da ” (驱除鞑虏). Here, “Qu Chu” meant “swiping out” and “Da Lu” mainly referred to Manchu and Mongol, who were not only the ruling ethnicities in Qing but also the ones considered really different from Han and Zhonghua population. Soon after the successful revolt, he replaced the nationalism principle into “ Zu Gong He” (五族共和) which meant ruling a republic China with the cooperation of Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Muslims for political purpose. Fur- thermore, Sun’s successor, Chiang Kai-shek, went opposite to classify minorities to avoid ethnic nationalism. Being backed by scholars like Sinian and Gu Jiegang, he argued a theory of “Jie Yi Lei Shi de Hun Yin” (结以累世的婚姻) which stressed that even Mongolians, Manchu, and Tibetans were offspring of Chinese ancestors and their kinships, so that there should be a consensus of Zhonghua Unity for all of them. On the contrary, the recognized the importance of identifying minorities and committing them with privileges. Chairman Mao stressed a “Political Model of Soviet Ethnicities” as the way to go against colonialism and hegemonism and the way to call for support from marginal areas of Han’s culture in his strategy of “encircling the cities.” The leader of the new sovereignty also tried to stop controversial discussions on the term “MINZU” by politically defining it as a description of various ethnicities of people came into being on a certain territory. In specific, all citizens in the People’s Republic of China were described as belonging to the Zhonghua MINZU under a common destiny, while the dominant population was named as “Han-MINZU” or just “Han” for short, and non-Hans were identified as “Shaoshu-MINZU” no matter they could be “minorities” to sociological and historical studies or “races” under the discourse of conflicts. Even “nationalism” in the worldwide had been translated into MINZUism (民族主义). Indeed, the wildly used Chinese term “MINZU” is a concept concealing complicated situations of ethnic groups in both academic and daily practice. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was an uncertain task to count how many MINZUs with how big populations were living in China. The census of 1953 focused on the question of MINZU as a fill-in-the-blank query wherein a registrant dictated survey objects’ MINZU name to the census taker, who then transcribed it into (Huang 1995). The census turned out more than 400 entries, which challenged the government for allocating seats of deputies for the National People’s Congress (Mullaney 2010). Since then, more than 200 historians and anthropologists of the China Academy of Sciences, associated with professors and students from the MINZU University and other institutes, and experts on music, art, and literature all worked together for recognizing and classifying ethnic minor- ities. Led by professors like Xiaotong Fei, Guangxue Huang, and Yaohua Lin, they were trying to convince whether some ethnic minorities could be branches of another one. 698 Chelegeer

While (2013) argued the classification process was not a formal mission released by the Work Department, it was also not a simple scientific project for understanding the new state’s population. Quoted by Yaohua Lin, the research “must unite with politics, particularly with the problem of national secu- rity.” For example, in Leyao, local cadre Pan Demao stressed that the mass peasants there had no idea whether they belonged to Han, Zhuang, or others; however, they would be pleased to be identified as Yao for certain privileges, and so they did. Indeed, a willing principal was widely applied. In 1953, and confirmed that the government would respect personal rights that the process shall consult individual’s own pleasure whether he or she hoped to be identified as an ethnic or a Han; however, officials and scholars taken charge of the registration should not emphasize this principle (Qin 2013). Later in 1987, the classification project closed. At that time, prof. Huang Guangxue made a completion report confirming 55 ethnic minorities had been recognized, which could be regarded as the basic population structure of China. Not only numerous articles and statistics were published based on this category explaining their internal history and cultural heritage as well as their external challenges. Inspired by the Inner Mongolia autonomous founded in 1947, the central government also extended the autonomy system to most MINZU of the category to establish their autonomous . While there were uproar debates on the territorial entitlements of almost every autonomous region, an overwhelmingly strong stereotype emerged, assuming these MINZU as natural entities with fixed living spheres, continuity histories, everlasting cultures, and strong self-determined integrations (Ge 2005). The population census 2010 further indicated that the population of Shaoshu-MINZU reached 112 million, whose distribution was known as showed in the figure below (Fig. 1). Although Kaup (2000) argues that unified minority did not exist in southern and southwestern areas of China, she also suggests the biggest three Shaoshu-MINZU – Tibetans, Xinjiang Uygurs, and Mongolians – are those who could be in real sense nations. However, according to Rossabi (2017), the last one continues to be downplayed and unappreciated in recent discussions. In historical reviews, Tibetans and Han people had never been a jointed society until 1276 when conquered both of their capitals and reunified with ’ ancestors for the first time since the fall of the . Analysts like Lixiong and Takasugi even argues that the dynasty is a history of China being invaded so that Han had not exercised sovereignty over those areas. Birge (2017) concludes it is Mongolians that matters all aspects like the consolidation of territory, which became what we think of as “China” proper the authority and agenda of the central govern- ment; penal law; and the development of a national Confucian intelligentsia. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Bulag (2002) noticed Mongols or rather their history and their quintessential heroes had fought for the Chinese “wholeheart- edly.” There are numerous books and movies sanctificated Chinggis , once the leader of northern barbarians, as “the only Chinese to defeat the Europeans in our Chinese glorious era.” Indeed, the Mongolian history has weaved so deeply with Chinese history that every textbook in the mainland reads that the with 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 699

Fig. 1 Distribution of MINZU . (Adapted from UNICEF’s online open resource)

Mongolian emperors is a history of China’s own and any questions on this consent may challenge the legitimacy of the territory of the nation-state today. Furthermore, different from Tibetan and Xinjiang Uyghur, Mongolians play a much better role in cooperating with the central government and has established a much easier political and economic atmosphere compared with other ethnic areas. All the situation mentioned above raises the significance of Chinese Mongolians as the most important MINZU in understanding the state’s ethnic policies and its ethnic relationship. How Mongolians have been weaving their history with Han and, along with generational changes, how young Mongolians will react to the central government today as well as to their intricate identity of being a Mongolian as well as being a Chinese citizen are crucial questions to the Chinese government and may serve solutions for Trilemma with Han, Xinjiang Uyghur, and Tibetans. It may also favor more general debates on the study of China and the sociology of ethnicity.

Mongolian Elites Before 1949

The following part would trace the pan-Mongol society with a federal system centered on Chinggis Khan and his in a long history and would indicate the Mongolian identity being constructed by allegiance in between nobilities, 700 Chelegeer kinships, and subsequent religious. Clans and tribes occupied most significant positions until the twentieth century when great social changes introduced new elites of young modernizers.

The Old Nobility

Scholars like Lattimore (1962) explains that nomadic tribes came into being in central since the third century BC and formed their professional confederacy for military and civil affairs 1500 years thereafter to compete with agricultural people on the other side of the Great Wall in Qin and , when the term “Han” occurred as the name to distinguish the majority Chinese population with “outsiders.”“Mongol” was one of those Han’s strangers or nomadic barbarians, whose tribes could be traced back to early ninth century according to archaeology evidence and literature in the Chinese language. In 1206, a powerful state Mongol Uls was established under the leadership of Chinggis Khan, who integrated most tribal alliances in Mongolia Plateau, the grassland, and gradually unified a pan-Mongol community with national consciousness and a created language in standardization (Huang 1995). That regime was initially an alliance of 95 units, Myangads, with small administrative rulers and militaries; however, the emperor enjoyed such a superiority that he could take whatever he wanted from his people and remain as a cultural and spiritual icon (Hsiao and Sung 1978). Nobilities were principally composed of those considered to be members of the of Chinggis Khan and their spouses, who would be named as the leaders of those Myangads and obtained into the Mongolian empire. In other words, the Mongolian society could be forthright in describing as “truly feudal” because the social order was clearly stratified and hierarchically organized (Sneath 2000). Even Khubilai, the founder of Yuan, did not inherit the unified empire as a whole. Based on his princedom in the north part of today’s Chinese territory, he swept the , expanded a strong controlling power all over China with support from most of the pan-Mongol societies and the Tibetans, whose religious master identified him as a figure in the Buddhist pantheon. But there were still some lords like Qaidu, the ruler of today’s Xinjiang and certain parts of Middle , went against him and struggled to support his little brother. The risk of noble politics grew gradually. In the late of the fourteenth century, Qaidu’s descendant princess married to an Islamic Amir . While the new couple failed to revive the great Mongolian empire, their domain, Chagatai, had serendipitously been turned to a center of Muslim culture. To their east, Khubilai’s great-grandson, emperor Temur retreated to the far end of his territory as Northern Yuan after his being defeated by uprising troops of Han. Once again, the mainland of China was under control of its dominant population and came into the new dynasty of Ming. So far, one could tell that, along with the struggling against each other among Mongol rulers of the different sections of the vast empire, their relative military superiority declined. 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 701

After 20 years, the parallel history of Northern Yuan dynasty and came into the end as the Mongolian capital being sacked. Since then, the pan- Mongolian alliance had collapsed into three major regimes and lost their power upon Chinese society. Besides the Muslim Chagatai, an Oriad Mongol community with created lords not belonging to the Chinggisid line grew rapidly, who were treated as another big threat to the old nobilities. Historian Yao Dali (2016) introduced a model of periodically expansion and collapse of the nomadic society for the wealth disparity. As the pastoral produc- tion based on elaborate usage and adoption of severe natural resources, tribes far apart from each other could hardly develop themselves without making alliances (Wang 2008). However, not only the dualistic opposition of elites and the common could be troublesome but those lords ruling more south forward areas would also quarrel with their northern kinships, for they would more likely to plunder or treat for rich productions with agricultural Han. This division was not simply a problem of economics; in fact, northern lords would criticize southern families being influenced by the farming culture and Confucianism. To a certain extent, it seemed like a betrayal to their common identity, and this was the other reason why old nobilities could hardly maintain the glory of the Borjigin clan while staying in their southeastern for years. Till the seventeenth century, became so unpopular that most lords of northern and western Mongolian tribes, like those leading Horchin, Harchin, and Halh all refused to protect him. They left Lindan died far west in exile in 1634 after being defeated by the Manchu Khan. Manchus was a promising power with strong militaries and sophisticated political skills, grown from affiliated and independent tribes in the east end of the pan- Mongol area (Bai 1990). After Ligdan’s death, the Manchu’s leader, Abahai khan, married three princesses from the Borjigin clan and rewarded Lindan’s son a diplomatic marriage with his own daughter. Till 1636 most of Chinggis Khan’s lineage from the southeast part of Mongolia submitted to Abahai. These nobilities worked as Abahai’s vassals and handed him the authority to rule directly through the Court of Dependencies in . With their support, this Manchu Khan swept Ming dynasty and took control of China as the start of . In 1691 the Halh Mongol, along with other subdivided administrative units in the northern part of Mongolia, also swore fealty to the new king. But they were ruled indirectly via the military governors of Urga, Uliasutai, and Hovd thousands miles away from the Qing’s capital. According to the different administrative practices, Qing emperors introduced terms of “Inner Mongolia” and “Outer Mongolia” to distinct their fields. Over the next 60 years, Qing destroyed the created power of the Oriad Mongol and returned their land to the traditional Borjigin family. For a further ruling purpose, Qing’s emperors served them high status and privileges and, at the same time, strengthened their division by intermarriages and supporting Mongolian princes and princesses to form small competitive councils in their league. The measurements were so successful that the pan-Mongolism could no longer gain popularity, espe- cially not in the aristocrat house. 702 Chelegeer

From Old House to New Elite

Mongolian nobilities kept their loyalty to Manchu empires for two centuries. Till the twentieth century when Qing weakened and started to reclaim land in Inner Mongolia, which broke its former prohibition on immigrating agricultural popula- tion. As a result, the proportion of Mongols dropped from an estimated 50–34.5% in 1912 (Bureau of Statistics 1997). Mongolian independence movements also emerged then, drawing upon the political and financial interests of the elite and the anti-Chinese sentiment among the commoners. A few months before the Qing Dynasty’s collapse, the 8th Jabzandamba Khutagt lama proclaimed the Outer Mongolia’s sovereignty and purified themselves from China in 1911 with support from more than 30 noble leaders of competitive clans in the northwest of the vast territory of Mongolian habitat. Tibetan Lamaism revived the alliance with Mongol nobility in 1578 when Sodnamjamsu lama of the Ge-luk-pa was seeking for support to rival with the old school of Nyingma. In 1642 the new faith became the dominant one and, in return, invested the title of Jebtsundamba Khutagt, the “Living Buddha,” to certain Mon- golian Khan’s relatives. At the beginning, it was the Shamanism and other rural- localism norms that rooted in the pan-Mongol society, but being central oriented with the noble family gave the chance to to extend influence all over the Mongolia plateau. Qing emperors, who made even stronger connections with Tibetan leaders, also supported the power in both Inner and Outer Mongolia as another way to fragment noble’s ruling power (Yu 2005). By the early twentieth century, there were over a thousand monasteries and at least 135,000 lamas, who usually owned large herds of livestock, land, Han Chinese tenant farmers, and a considerable income from trading and transportation activities (Heissig 2000). The had grown so influential that after Outer Mongolia proclaimed its independence, nobilities in Inner Mongolia found it impossible to wave popularity without a religious leader (Jagchid 1999). That was why when the escaped from Tibet in the 1920s, Prince Demchugdongrub welcomed him overwhelmingly to Bat-haalag monastery, where he launched a conference for Inner Mongolia autonomous right later in 1933. The conference was known in the history as Movement, which, besides Prince De and some other noble leaders, had also attracted many young modernizers who concerned the future of Inner Mongolia. Qing was dragged to modernity by wars in the late nineteenth century and was flooded by opium and other international products along with new technologies and fresh ideas. After 1900 when an international military of British, America, , Austria, , , Italia, and broke the siege of Boxer Rebellion and occupied Peking for days, the Qing emperors had almost no controlling power upon both Inner and Outer Mongolia anymore. As the conservative state who kept the Shut-Door policy collapsed soon afterward, China and its people were facing uncertainties and dramatic changes. Mongolians’ future was also ambiguous. The declaration of independence of the Outer Mongol was not real for sovereignty. At that time, the Russians signed a 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 703 secret treaty with the Japanese that divided Mongolia into two spheres of influence: Outer Mongolia was allocated to the Russians, while Inner Mongolia was consid- ered to be part of the Japanese sphere (Rossabi 1975). As the de facto ruler, Russians increased their interests and economic activities in the at the expense of the Chinese, who were increasingly excluded in 1912. The Soviet Union, later on, kept a standoff with conflicts and more treaties with the Japanese along the border of the Hulun Buir district for more than 20 years, until the Yalta Conference when the international landscape being rearranged. The Outer Mongol then became a republic nation-state, the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR), after the unanimous vote in 1945. The situation for Inner Mongolia was even more complicated for its struggling with more political and military forces from the Russians, the Japanese, local warlords, and the administrative powers from main- land China. In 1934, the government accepted the Bailingmiao Movement and President Chiang Kai-shek visited Prince De in Inner Mongolia; however, the Kuoming Dang had no power to restrict Japanese from pressing its influence upon this area. In 1936, Prince De was somehow controlled by the Japanese, which led to attacks from Han warlord who invalided the autonomous government next year. More autonomous movements happened with the leadership of Prince De and his relatives and trusted subordinates, but none of them existed long enough to gain popularity. Indeed, the history had indicated times and times again that although some old nobilities and the religious icons remain beloved, these elites could no long reunify the Mongolian alliance or pointed out the future of Inner Mongolia. It was , or Yun Ze as his real name, who made the administrative system similar to today’s Inner Mongolia. In 1922, the 16-year-old boy was sent to Mon- golian-Tibetan Academy in Beijing by Prince Gungsangnorbu as a part of the modernization movement for the common Inner Mongolian people and became a communist while furthering his study in the Soviet Union (Bartke and Schier 1985). During the period of the 1930s, he undertook an information job for the Chinese Communist Party and also worked as a small leader in a security team of the Bat- haalag monastery under the Prince De’s autonomous government. Later on, he joined the rebellion against Prince De and went to Yan’an for serving MINZU issues in the heart of the communist base area. Supported by most Mongolian young modernizers, he replaced the head of the Eastern Mongolian Autonomous Govern- ment, which was a Japanese client, and started his pro-communist movement in 1946. Ulanhu’s diplomatic efforts were under two frameworks of autonomy and communist. Till 1954, the man born from nothing became the President of Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region and the Vice-Premier of the People’s Republic of China. Different from traditional elites, Ulanhu was born in a peasant family and had nothing related to the aristocratic house or a religious center. There even had controversial arguments about his identity whether he was a Mongolian person or a Han. His real name Yun Ze was a typical Chinese one, and his name in the was, in fact, the translation of “a red son of the communism.” 704 Chelegeer

While being doubted by many Mongolian commoners, his education backgrounds in the Tibetan-Mongolian Academy and in Moscow from 1925 to 1929 were extremely helpful for his career. During those periods, he made friends with activists like Wang Ruofei, Chou Enlai, Wu Xiuquan, and so on (Bulag 2002). In short, his success was partly rooted in coincidences and opportunities in that changing era. As concluded by Sneath (2000), the early twentieth century had seen the emergence of a new political elite of young, educated, Inner Mongolian intellectuals, with experience of Japanese, nationalist, and communist administrations. Throughout the Mongolian history, we can tell that an elite politics had worked for hundreds of years with the Borjigin family containing most accesses to the administrative system. Noble leaders’ same ancestral assumption kept the vast area concentered with the historical memory of Mongol Uls and the pan-Mongol identity. However, there were always conflicting of competitive identities of clans and struggles from created powers as well as contradictions caused by the interactions with Han. Indeed, the pan-Mongol society had never been a real united monocultural one and had separated into different regimes for times until the twentieth century when great changes embraced new elites concerning the future of Inner Mongolia and bringing new ideas about the identity.

Mongol MINZU from 1949 to 1979

Inner Mongolia Province, the well-known first communist autonomous region and the habitat of Mongolian people, had changed its administrative division for times. When Ulanhu established the autonomous government, the district mainly contained five leagues of clans with a 538,000 km2 land and two million popula- tion. In 1949, besides the Shilingol, Higgan, Chahar, Noni-Muren, and Hulun Buir, two further leagues –Jirem and Juu – joined. Even after the new state confirmed the legal status of Inner Mongolian, the autonomous region was reformed thrice more according to orders from the central government. In 1954, Premier Chou Enlai stressedtoreunifySuiyuanasitwashistorically a part of the pan-Mongol area while leaving regions like Alashan and Bayangol to and Xinjiang provinces. Later in 1956, the Alashan was replaced into the Inner Mongolia province. The Hulun Buir district, however, had been enforced out of the Inner Mongolia province in 1969 to province as a Han district and then moved back to be an ethnic area in 1980. Since then, the province of 1,183,000 km2 had been written and believed as the constant hometown for the Mongolian population of China. Indeed, the reform of the administrative districts of Inner Mongolia represented a new power taking control of the old noble conflicts and indicated the historical and cultural entities being an object to a modern ideology and its creations. The follow- ing parts will focus on how Inner Mongolia being reformed and modernized as a trustworthy borderland of China, and how mainstreaming ideology came into being and will discuss the consequences of the MINZU category in the socialist transfor- mation of the Inner Mongolian people (Fig. 2). 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 705

Fig. 2 Inner Mongolia and its 102 counties in P.R.C. (Online open resource)

Economic and Cultural Reforming

After the communists won the civil war, a land reform campaign began all over China. In the Inner Mongolia province, the reform had been to eliminate feudal privileges, to open the pasture to unrestricted private grazing, and, more seriously, to wipe out considered “enemies” from the Party. In some places, the old elites were dispossessed of their power and wealth but retained a measure of high status among locals; however, in other areas, the campaign was more sustained that many were killed or forced to flee (Sneath 2000). Buddhists and lamas were also reviewed superstitious and suspectable, who had supported the feudal order and the Kuoming Dang. Since 1951, radical people in Hulun Buir started to attack monasteries. More and more lamas were sent to special schools for education and were “encouraged” to be transferred into productive labors. At the end of the 1950s, 80% of lamas had been eradicated from this area (Sneath 2000). Noble leaders especially those in pastoral regions, on the other hand, were not being abused that much. Some studies indicated that upheavals were mainly led by Han peasants in most semi-pastoral and crop-farming counties, who were immi- grated in as “slaves” to Mongolians, who, as a whole, were believed in a higher position. The class struggle was aroused by Chairman Mao, while Ulanhu tried different ways to control the situation and improve social justice to keep the autonomous region secure. 706 Chelegeer

The Ulanhu’s effort was soon interrupted in the 1960s when Mao’s class struggle line emboldened the second land reform to differentiate Han and Mongols. The Sino- Soviet split even caused suspect of Mongolians being in separatism, which started new “revolutionary” organizations to exclude Mongols (Bulag 2002). The Vice- Premier himself was being under house arrest in Beijing since 1966. Later in 1968, General Teng Haiqing from Beijing associated with other local Maoists exaggerated the Movement in Inner Mongolia by further ransacking monasteries, arresting lamas, and “dragging out” senior Mongolians who might be evil to the , which led to 22,900 people being killed and 120,000 permanently injured (Woody and Schoenhals 1993). After all, the old nobilities, religious leaders, and growing modernizers of Mongolian intellectuals had all been wiped out off the social bureaucracy in Inner Mongolia, left only new “lords” of Maoists taking charge. The growing of this Maoist could be seen as a result of intra-conflicts between loyal natives and dubious Mongolians, while in another aspect, the inter-provincial connections between Inner Mongolians and Han from southward China were strengthened. During the period from 1959 to 1962, many agricultural areas in southern parts of China suffered from a serious lack of food. The central government made a decision to move thousands of abandoned babies and orphans to Inner Mongolian ordinary families to keep them alive. An approximated 50,000 children had flooded into the ethnic area then and founded strong interethnic connections. Inner Mongolian families could feed these extra-mouths for their distinct nomadic production system, excess land reclamation, and the relatively stable scale of livestock, which was another main subject for the socialist transformation. According to the government work report in 1958, establishing Peoples Com- munes were the main way in forming cooperative economics and had experienced great success. At the end of that year, there were 2292 communes including 96.29% of households, which increased the level of state planning and control of the economy to climax. Before the 1950s, grasslands were owned by nobilities, lama- series, or clans and remained in common use by herders, while in the collectivist period, grasslands, as well as livestock on them, were transferred their ownership to communes and were used communally by all local herders under the supervisions of both the central and local institutions (Hua and Squires 2015). As the consumption of livestock was strictly limited, a total calculation of economics increased seem- ingly. In fact, not only the forced collectivization frustrated Inner Mongolians productivity but also the central government’s policy to protect “farming oxen” decreased the price of beef and inhibited the market consumption demand. After all, the benefits of pastoral families in Inner Mongolia shrank more than a third (Rinqin and 2011; Sneath 2003). While not clearly regulated, other policies reforming the socioeconomic structure of Inner Mongolia at this period were introduced as the campaign to settle down the nomads and to step up Han immigration in the hope of developing agricultural productions (Humphrey and Sneath 1999). Since the late 1950s, a movement for building mud-brick houses swept the pastoral area and nomadic families who enjoyed great mobility in the grassland before were encouraged to stay in fixed houses with limited “moving herding” for “enjoying” government furnished 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 707 equipment like schools (Liu and Guangzhi 1979). As pastoral Mongolian people had no skills in building and farming crops, the movement was mostly initiated by migrant Han labors whose population doubled by 1960. Till 1963, the proportion of Mongols to the total population in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region dropped to 10.2%. As Bulag (1998) concerned, all these changes had made original Inner Mongo- lians feeling of diaspora and hybridity, which was a story of natives becoming strangers in their own homelands. Although, as accused by Ulanhu, those Inner Mongolian Maoists should also be blamed for they were the latest elites who directly responsible for the miscarriage of justice and contradictions between party and intelligentsia and between ethnicities.

MINZU as Social Transformation

The cultural and economic transformation during this period also raised a crucial question that what would being a Mongolian mean when the natives were being marginalized and disconnected with the pastoral producing lifestyle for the socialist transformation. As Ulanhu himself was charged in the dark period as both a Mongolian nationalist and the one not fighting for the rights of ethnic compatriots, there were contradictions about his own background as a Han or a Mongol. Indeed, the boundary of Mongolians and Han was not that clear. Ulanhu could be a Han but he behaved like a Mongol, while, as recorded by Wang (2016), there were also many Han pretended to be among the Mongolian MINZU. In the census of 1953, there were five questions being asked including the most basic ones on name, gender, age, the relationship between the head of household, and the fill-in-blank MINZU category. This census brought the newly established state some basic knowledge about its population and its ethnic distribution while applying the original HUKOU system. In fact, the later on classification process of MINZU category was related to this national household registration system. The first formal regulation on HUKOU was released in 1958, and since then, it had been the most basic legal document with a certification page where a citizen’s MINZU category and other identifying information such as his or her residence, name, spouse, and date of birth had to be confirmed. It had been widely used in people’s daily practices for migration, registering a school and applying for social insurance, with the purpose of maintaining social security, restricting and guiding population mobility, distribution of welfares, and ethnic management (Wang and Fang 2008). Different from white ethnics from in America who can report their ancestral backgrounds freely, as ethnicity is not something that influences their lives unless they want it to (Waters 1990), the categories of MINZU in China are restricted political entities not allowed changing optionally. Furthermore, the ethnic identity in China is heritable through the HUKOU system as the Measures for Administration of the Ethnic Composition stipulates that an individual’s ethnic identity shall be recorded the same as the identity of either his or her father or 708 Chelegeer mother, including step- and foster-parent relationship. For those who are younger than 18 years old, changes can be made according to the different ethnic identities between the father-in-law and mother-in-law. As shown in Fig. 3, after being classified, each Chinese citizen had been certif- icated with a certain ethnic identity. Take a Mongolian as an example, when he or she got married with a Han or another one with another ethnic identity, their child could be recorded as either a Mongolian or a Han/other according to the decision made by this couple. If they divorced or the child got a new foster relationship with other Mongolian parents, he or she could also change the record to be a Mongol before his or her 18-year-old birthday based on the family’s choice. Indeed, the identification of Mongolians in China had been reformed from expressing consanguinity and cultural relations with the Borjigin clan to the formal certification.

Fig. 3 Chinese ethnic identities are heritable through the ID card and HUKOU system. (Drawn by the author) 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 709

While it is still often simply asserted as obvious that the MINZU identified in China today are simply new names for natural social categories (Caffrey 2004), they are now politically oriented as modern creations. Furthermore, being an ethnic person means getting extra marks in the national college entrance examination, getting financial subsidies and immunity rights of the One-Child Policy, and accessing to other special treatments in occupation, education, landing, and criminal sanctions. No statistics data is available on how many newborns were “mistakenly” recorded; news reports on changing ethnic identity illegally can be seen every now and then. In fact, the situation is so serious that the State Ethnic Affairs Commission cooperated with the Ministry of Public Security has released a regulation, which empowers related departments at all levels to investigate and to give an administra- tive penalty or even a criminal sanction to those who changed their ethnic identities for purposes. In 1960s a lot of the adopted orphans and children from southern China were recorded as Mongolian MINZU legally, while other migrants flooded in this area had too considered it more carefully. However, Wang (2016) concluded that changing ethnic identification record to Shaoshu-MINZU was actually a common way for Han migrants to interact with natives and the government for benefits in Inner Mongolia. It was possible when the willing principal was applied in the classification process, and the following generations could make family choices, or even break the law, in recording their children for privileges. In fact, no matter how hard it has been for Han to change their ethnic certification, there will always be ways as long as MINZU category can be seen as a social resource and let alone in that period of chaos.

Ongoing Generations from the 1980s

Till now we have seen great changes in Mongolian society. In history, the Mongolian identity was identified and maintained by the noble families who strengthened their connection with Chinggis Khan and influence upon the commoners. But nobilities were not always in solidarity, on the contrary, they competed with each other seriously which rooted the risk of fragmentation. Since the nineteenth century, the pan-Mongol area was dragged into the with uncertainties. Represented by Ulanhu, the new political elite of young, educated, Inner Mongolian intellectuals, with experience of Japanese, nationalist, and communist administrations finally lead the Inner Mongolian area into the People’s Republic of China. However, they were quickly replaced by Maoist cadres. The socialist transformation from 1949 funda- mentally challenged the pastoral culture and producing measurements, and the classification and registration process further disconnected the modern MINZU category with the historical community, while more uproars about assimilation and confliction were just around the corner of the new era. The modernization of Inner Mongolia started from the 1980s when the whole county began to correct its class struggle line to economic development. Since the Opening-Up, the gross regional product (GRP) of Inner Mongolia increased from 5.8 billion Yuan in 1978 to 100 billion in 1996, while the rate kept high and the 710 Chelegeer number reached 1863.2 billion at the end of 2016, almost ten times higher than in Tibetan or Xinjiang. is one of the most influential progresses to the human world. Durkheim (1984) argued an emergence of organic solidarity, where relationships of economic reciprocity and mutual dependency had replaced beliefs in creating social consensus. In Inner Mongolia, the proportion of “illiterate popula- tion” dropped so quickly from 17.82% to 3.3% at the beginning of 1990s that almost every school-age children could join either a mandarin or a bilingual one to study compulsory courses on Chinese characters and national MINZU policies. The proportion of interethnic marriage further jumped to 38.137%. The Han-Mongol family count to 37.49%, while another 64.7% are with ethnic minorities like Manchu, Hui, and Daur. The studies of Naran Bilik (1985) and Wang Minjun (2001) introduced a marrying up mechanism in the ethnic region for economic benefits, improving social status and more sources for social mobility. According to the tabulation of population census of 1990, 2000, and 2010, as shown in Table 1, there is an ever-growing trend for Inner Mongolians to go to urban areas to make a living as a salesperson, dining and entertainment server, and owner of an enterprise. While being leaders in administrative departments or public insti- tutions are shrinking even through preferential policies are seemingly in favor of their needs. All in all, what had been changed in the 1960s had been intensified along with the urbanization process. As more and more rural families moving to urban areas and some settlements of nomad becoming modern cities, the ethnic identity of Mongo- lian people was kept on disembedding with their traditional cultural and pastoral way of life. Being mixed with Han, as well as those “fake Mongols” who would have been Han but finally certificated as a Mongolian, challenged the existence of the Mongol community in China. Bulag (1998) along with other scholars noticed that there was a burning desire for many Chinese Mongolians to communicate with Mongols in Mongolian People’s Republic for cultural and kinship until 1990, while the more general context represented the intense between the orthodox writing of the Great Mongol Uls and the modern created category of Mongolian MINZU. While along with generational changes, a new nationalism and a different attitude toward outer kinships occurred. In the biggest question-and-answer website ZHIHU. COM, there is a discussion section on how Mongolian MINZU thinks of their relationship with Mongols outside China. Most young users express their paying no attention to them; while others believe that Inner Mongolia could be the real center of Mongolian history and culture.

Table 1 The occupation structure of Chinese Mongolians Serving Business Rural Leaders Intellectuals staff professionals Workers labors Others 1990 2.7% 9.4% 2.9% 2.7% 9.6% 70.3% 0.1% 2000 2.22% 8.29% 3.66% 6.77% 8.26% 70.75% 0.05% 2010 1.63% 9.09% 5.05% 11.06% 9.82% 63.25% 0.1% Adapted by the author 39 Elites in Between Ethnic Mongolians and the Han in China 711

In Hulun Buir the biggest lamasery, Ganzhuermiao, which ruined in the 1960s began to rebuild in 2001 and started to hold seasonally dharma assembly since 2003. While in , 23 more bilingual schools were built in 2010 which would serve more than 8000 pupils to learn how to write and read the Mongolian language with the , which had been replaced by Cyrillic characters in the Mongolian People’s Republic as a result of being colonized. An interviewee described that:

The biggest difference between Chinese Mongolians and Outer Mongolians is we are being Sinicized while they are being Europeanized. is, somehow, a good thing to combine our culture with an efficient economic entity. Thanks to the donations and intensive investments, we developed much faster and had been more capable to protect our tradition and heritages than people in the PRM could. While they are living with the Mongolian language and Mongolian citizenship, it is we that kept the created by alive.

Tamir (1993) stressed that individuals should have the right to choose their national identities and the right to keep the ethno-culture they embraced. However those Mongolian MINZU in higher classes and with more social resources are people who stick to their national identity record on one hand, and have to react with the ethno-culture unfamiliar to them on the other. To certain extent, they have been pragmatists. On one hand, they avoid arguing Mongolian MINZU being a modern creation but still an identity shared by the historical entity with specific habitat and culture; while, on the other hand, they are trying to express this identity under the social policies and economic frameworks of China. A survey conducted by the author indicates a pilgrim system for Mongols from Inner Mongolia toward Beijing for education and social resources. Some inter- viewees simply stressed to make a living in the cosmopolitan for better opportuni- ties, while others expressed their willingness to access the resources in the center of China to their marginal hometown. In the pilgrim, new images of Mongols as modern components of Chinese citizens and a language of development have been created.

Conclusion

Tamir (1993) could be right that ethnic identity and nationalism are mainly the contexts of culture. But it is not a simple question on how to leave ethnic movements under a liberal atmosphere of protecting and developing their own culture. There are indeed more subtle factors like how the ethnic elites are generating and spreading their knowledge and how territorial relationship comes across to biological myths. In the history, Mongolian people seemed to be connected by bloodlines with the Borjigin family, while the new political elite of young and Maoist finally trans- formed the community into a modern MINZU category with official constructed certification of identity. Along with the urbanization process which even discon- nected the traditional way of life to this identity, the ongoing generations have to 712 Chelegeer react to their MINZU identification accordingly. A desire for communicating kin- ships with Outer Mongols happened until the 1990s, while more recent young urban born intellectuals are moving their Mecca to Beijing. Indeed, this research challenges the idea of Mongolians being a clear ethnicity in itself but favors the idea that ethnicity is an everlasting process where elites negotiate the language describing the identity with their commoners and others.

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