Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law 1: 24-46, 2007. © 2007 Koninklijke Brill NV. Printed in the Netherlands TO BE THE MASTERS OF THEIR OWN AFFAIRS: MINORITIES’ REPRESENTATION AND REGIONAL ETHNIC AUTONOMY IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Xia Chunli∗ 1. Introduction The right to participate in the conduct of public affairs is an important human right as provided in international human rights documents1 as well as in domestic laws.2 This right is based on the principle that the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.3 This right is especially important for minorities who are numerically inferior to the majority people in a country and therefore in a disadvantaged position in the decision-making processes because of the prevailing majoritarian rule. Minority representation in legislative bodies is an important indicator of the right to participate, since it shows how minority groups may have their voices expressed, heard and considered. Minority representation is also an important topic when discussing minority policies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because minorities account for only 8.41% of the whole ∗ PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. 1 Articles 21 and 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Articles 7, 8 and 14 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Articles 2, 6, 7, 15, 22 and 23 of the Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (ILO No. 169) and Articles 2 and 4 of the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (Minorities Declaration) all refer to the right to participate. 2 For example, the Constitution of the PRC regulates that the Chinese people are the masters of the country and all power in the PRC belongs to the people. See preface and Article 2 of the Constitution of the PRC. 3 Paragraph 3, Article 21 of the UDHR. Xia Chunli 25 population in China. 4 Minorities’ voices are further weakened because they are dispersed throughout much of the country.5 How minority representatives are nominated and elected depends on the electoral system of a state. Yash Ghai observed that a minority’s representation and participation in the elections is normally through a political party,6 by which a minority can either join the governing bodies and rule directly, or remain out of government while still acting as part of the opposition in the political process. In any case, for minorities such participation is expected to ‘add to the efficiency and effectiveness of the legislature by bringing to the attention of the majority perspectives they would otherwise miss’.7 Ghai’s is a typical description of the two-party or multi-party competitive system which does not exist in China. China runs a party system called ‘multi-party cooperation and political consultation’ led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (CCP lingdao xia de duodang hezuo, zhengzhi xieshang zhidu). It means that under the leadership of the CCP, all existing ‘democratic’ parties 8 and ‘people’s organisations, embracing all socialist working people, builders of the socialist cause, all patriots who support socialism and all patriots who stand for reunification of the motherland join in a broad patriotic united 4 State Statistics Bureau, Gazette of the Fifth National Population Survey of PRC (No. 1, 2001), at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjgb/rkpcgb/qgrkpcgb/t20020331_15434.htm, visited on 30 December 2005. 5 It is estimated that minorities live on almost 60% of China’s territory. See Ma Yin, ‘The Whole Party Should Attach Importance to the National Work’, in Collection of Ethnic Working Papers (Ma Yin Minzu Gongzuo Wenji), Ma Yin (ed.), Ethnic Publishing House, Beijing, 1995, p. 91. 6 Yash Ghai, ‘Autonomy as a Participatory Right in the Modern Democratic State: Public Participation, Autonomy and Minorities’, in Beyond A One-Dimensional State: An Emerging Right to Autonomy?, Zelim A. Skurbaty (ed.), Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden/Boston, 2005, p. 18. 7 Ibid. 8 Besides the CCP, there are currently another eight ‘democratic’ parties founded mainly during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945) and the War of Liberation (1946-1949). Since they occurred during the phase of national liberation and the pursuit of the ‘democracy of the people’, they are recognised in China as ‘democratic parties’. These are the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (founded in 1948), the China Democratic League (founded in 1941), the China National Democratic Construction Association (founded in 1945), the China Association for Promoting Democracy (founded in 1945), the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party (founded in 1930), the China Zhi Gong Dang (founded in 1925), the Jiusan Society (founded in 1945) and the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League (founded in 1947). See Information Office of State Council of the PRC, White Paper: Building Political Democracy in China, (Zhongguo Minzhu Zhengzhi Jianshe Baipishu), 2005, available at http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/145877.htm, visited on 22 January 2007. .