Are the Han Chinese in fact an ethnic group, the world’s largest? If so, what makes them an ethnic group, and how are they similar to or different from others, particularly China’s minority groups, who get the bulk of the attention when the question of ethnicity arises? Can we apply the same concepts and the same kinds of analysis to the 1.2 billion Han that we apply, say, to the 10 million Uyghur of Xinjiang or the 50,000 Mosuo or Na of the Sichuan-Yunnan border? How are the Han as an ethnic group different from the Chinese as a nationality? In what situations do people activate their identity as Han, and in what situations are local, national, or other identities more important? Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi’s The Han: China’s Diverse Majority addresses all these questions and more.
Based on interviews in such disparate places as the great metropolises of Shanghai and Beijing, the small, Uyghur-dominated city of Aqsu in southern Xinjiang, and the remote Lugu Lake region on the Sichuan-Yunnan border, Joniak-Lüthi addresses several issues in ways that expand our understanding of what constitutes China and how the Chinese majority thinks of itself.
First, there is the nature of the Han as an ethnic group. Although other works have addressed the problematic nature of the category Han as officially constituted, none has taken such a close and detailed look at what constitutes Han-ness for individual Han people in varied locations; or taken such an enlightening look at what individual Han people think Han people are like, or at what they think they all have in common as a group.
Second, there is the relationship between being Han and being Chinese. Again, there is a lot of theorizing about how Chinese as a national category and Han as an ethnic category relate to each other, but in Joniak-Lüthi’s study we find for the first time detailed examples of what individual Han interviewees in a variety of situations perceive as the relationship between the two identities.
Third, there are the internal divisions of the Han. Here, too, there are studies of particular subgroups, such as Hakka, Cantonese, or Subei people, but not until The Han have we had so clear a picture of the circumstances in which more local or regional identities, “home-place” identities as Joniak-Lüthi calls them, are more salient and those in which the unity of the Han is the more relevant concept. It is particularly interesting to know that regional stereotypes are pervasive among almost all groups of Han but that at the same time so many people can name characteristics of the Han as a whole.
Fourth, there is the relationship between Han and minorities. Although previous works have looked at the ways Han think of minorities, none has so thoroughly examined how Han identity fits into the general picture of ethnic-group identity in China. At a time when minority identities and conflicts between minorities and the state have become increasingly salient for our understanding of China and its politics, we need to pay more attention to the question of what Han identity means for the Han themselves and how conflict between Han and minorities is explained by the nature of Han identity. The Han makes an important contribution to this understanding.
Lastly, there is the question of ethnic groups and agency. Since we now know that China is not a totalitarian state where resistance is minimal and state-mandated categories are hegemonic in public discourse, but rather an authoritarian one where there is room to maneuver, even amid political repression and lack of democracy, it is important to know to what degree people accept the state’s idea of how they ought to think of themselves. The answer to this question resounds in The Han: despite all the internal diversity and regional stereotyping, despite all the unofficial categories that supersede “Han” in certain circumstances, almost no one disagrees that there is such a thing as a Han and that it is an important category of ethnic identity in China.
The issues that Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi addresses in The Han are thus complex, salient, and fascinating to any student of ethnic identity, nationalism, or the relationship between the two. The Han is only the third book in the Studies on Ethnic Groups in China series to address Han identity specifically (the first two are Nicole Constable’s Guest People and Edward Rhoads’s Manchus and Han), and the current volume is the first one to address the topic comprehensively. We are proud to introduce The Han as our nineteenth publication in Studies on Ethnic Groups in China.