[Ombrageux]

Chinese authorities offer cash to promote interethnic marriages
Incentives offered to couples in parts of China's troubled Xinjiang region in effort to assimilate culturally distinct Uighur minority



Parts of China's troubled north-west region of Xinjiang have begun offering cash to interethnic couples as part of a drive to assimilate the culturally distinct Uighur minority.

Qiemo county, part of the 460,000 sq km Bayinguoleng autonomous Mongolian prefecture, announced the policy in late August, calling it a "big celebratory gift package" for couples in which one member is an ethnic minority and the other is Han Chinese.

The package includes annual cash payments of 10,000 yuan (£980) for interethnic couples during the first five years of their marriage, as well as housing, healthcare and education subsidies, according to a statement on the Qiemo county government's website.

"Ethnic groups are different only in that we have different languages and different customs, but we have the same blue sky above our heads, the same fertile ground beneath our feet, and the same love in our hearts!" Yasen Nasi'er, deputy secretary of the Qiongkule township Communist party committee, told journalists during the announcement on 25 August. "I believe that intermarriage between ethnic groups is a foundation of Chinese culture, and will strengthen the concrete expression of exchange, association, and mingling of all ethnic groups."

A county official confirmed the policy when reached by phone. "This is meant to promote ethnic unity – that's the main thing," he said.

Xinjiang is China's largest province, a vast sweep of mountains, forests and deserts bordering seven central and south Asian countries, including Afghanistan and India. Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim ethnic group, make up the region's plurality. When Communist troops took control of Xinjiang in 1949, Han Chinese only made up 6% of its total population. Today they make up nearly half.

While ethnic intermarriage is fairly common across China, it is rare between Uighurs and Han Chinese, underscoring the groups' deep-rooted cultural, religious and linguistic differences. The region's cities are often clearly divided along ethnic lines, with Han residents frequenting separate shops and restaurants from their Uighur counterparts.

The region has seen a sharp rise in violent incidents in recent years, including attacks on police stations and government offices, and increasingly, terror attacks in major urban centres. In late May, an attack at a crowded market in the region's capital city, Urumqi, killed 31 people and injured dozens. A month later, nearly 100 people were killed and 215 arrested when knife-wielding mobs rampaged through Shache, a county in Xinjiang's arid south-west, marking the region's worst clash in five years.

State media reports consistently blame the violence on Islamic fundamentalists, terrorists and "separatists", and point to economic growth and preferential ethnic policies as evidence of good regional governance.

Yet the region's 8 million Uighurs complain that the economic growth has mainly benefited the Han Chinese, and that local authorities place severe restrictions on their religious and cultural freedom, including bans on veils, beards and worship at non-state-sanctioned mosques.

Qiemo county's interethnic marriage policy "seems of a piece with general assumptions about Chinese policy in the region, in the sense that the party appears to believe that material incentives can overcome or mediate most political, economic and social problems", said Michael Clarke, an expert on Xinjiang at Griffith University in Australia.

According to the US-based broadcaster Radio Free Asia, Qiemo county officials have counted 57 mixed-race couples within their jurisdiction , in a county with a total population of about 60,000. The policy is experimental, and subject to change.

China also recently began promoting interethnic marriages in Tibet, its other politically recalcitrant ethnic frontier, according to a slew of state media reports published this summer. The Communist party's highest official in the Tibetan region, Chen Quanguo, had himself photographed with a large group of Tibetan-Han mixed-marriage families in mid-June. Interethnic marriages in the region grew from about 700 in 2008 to more than 4,700 last year, according to a report by the research office of the Communist party in Tibet.

"This seems to be part of a much larger effort by the government to essentially socially engineer support for a decidedly Beijing-centric perception of what a society should look like – or at least to minimise objections to the central government's policies," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.

"It seems to presume that Han will be supportive of government policies – a reality which is manifestly not true – and somehow, that the construct of marriage will promote that political loyalty."

She continued: "It certainly strikes me as one of the perverse efforts by a government that's known to engineer its way out of human rights abuses rather than removing the abusive policies that lead to protests in the first place."

So the question is: Is promoting interracial marriage racist crypto-genocide [in this case of the Uyghur people] or enlightened anti-racism? It presumably can't be both.

East Asians in general seem very hard-headed and unsentimental about such matters. Not coincidentally, the production of culture in these societies remains overwhelmingly in the hands of the ethnic majority. If the West collapses, it is likely to be East Asian historians who will be best able to write on the story of our demise.

For the record, I would support such policies encouraging interracial marriage and ethnic cohesion in France, for example. But if the State begins to consciously seek to shape the next generation we would also have to talk about the eugenic/dysgenic effect.

[Rejn]

My answer would be the former. Anti-racists don't need to promote interracial marriage.

Promoting mixed marriages is what the Paraguayans did and it is now the most ethnically homogenous country in South America.

I would probably only seek to assimilate small groups in a country as their culture wouldn't be able to fundamentally influence the dominant culture. As for the larger groups, I don't really have a solution.

[Godstud]

It's interesting, but it simply won't spur people to get married.

[Quantum]

Interesting policy. I never thought that these racially assimilationist financial incentives would ever leave the drawing board and actually be implemented in real life. I doubt this will happen in the West since the governments here seem to have no problem with people not marrying at all, regardless of racial background.

[JohnRawls]

Good policy, don't see anything bad in it. (I wouldn't mind this kind of subsidies in Estonia)

[Political Interest]

The problem with such a policy is that it will result in the destruction of historic ethnic groups. If they inter-marry and become assimilated it is possible they will lose their culture. Do we really want to see the disappearance of historic ethnicities who have lived there for centuries?

[Rejn]

Yes, that is the point.

No more Uyghur violence in Xinjiang, no more Tibetan violence in Xizang.

[JohnRawls]

Yes PI, why is that bad? Multiculturalism causes problems also, this is a gentle way of correcting the problem.

[Quantum]

The problem with such a policy is that it will result in the destruction of historic ethnic groups. If they inter-marry and become assimilated it is possible they will lose their culture. Do we really want to see the disappearance of historic ethnicities who have lived there for centuries?

What is wrong with this idea in principle? It's not like people are being executed and are merely being encouraged to marry out. There should be much more economic and social pressure to achieve such a desired outcome in society. Giving cash is a weak incentive as most will reject such a proposal.

[Political Interest]

Yes, that is the point.

No more Uyghur violence in Xinjiang, no more Tibetan violence in Xizang.

I understand the reasons why they would pursue such a policy, however I do not think the destruction of historic cultures is desirable.

Yes PI, why is that bad? Multiculturalism causes problems also, this is a gentle way of correcting the problem.

The difference between immigrant multiculturalism and local multiculturalism is that the latter is based on history and geography. You cannot compare the establishment of diaspora communities with the existence of multiple different ethnic groups living next to each other in their own native land. This will result in the assimilation of one group into another in their own native homeland. Did the Russians not want to do this in their empire?

What is wrong with this idea in principle? It's not like people are being executed and are merely being encouraged to marry out. There should be much more economic and social pressure to achieve such a desired outcome in society. Giving cash is a weak incentive.

It is wrong because it will destroy global diversity.

[Quantum]

It is wrong because it will destroy global diversity.

I see nothing wrong with this. When the Europeans came to the Americas, the number of languages spoken was reduced from thousands to just a handful of official languages spoken by the majority of the population. Whilst I don't condone the genocide of the Indians, I certainly don't mourn the loss of the cultural diversity in the Americas.

My only objection to this that corporate culture reigns instead of socialism or some other non-corporate ideology. I have no problem with the USSR trying to stamp out the peasant languages in the Ukraine and elsewhere.

[Ombrageux]

The difference between immigrant multiculturalism and local multiculturalism is that the latter is based on history and geography. You cannot compare the establishment of diaspora communities with the existence of multiple different ethnic groups living next to each other in their own native land. This will result in the assimilation of one group into another in their own native homeland. Did the Russians not want to do this in their empire?

I think this is a really important point. One of the ways of ensuring inter-ethnic peace is to say that the balance of power between them will be preserved. So a decent deal with historic minorities (for example in the Russian Empire) was: You may be Muslim and remain so, but you may not threaten the Russian majority.

But if the ethnic balance changes, either through a historic group growing/falling or through immigration, issues are raised.

I understand this system of clearly-demarcated separation and balance between groups has worked quite well in Switzerland.

[JohnRawls]

The difference between immigrant multiculturalism and local multiculturalism is that the latter is based on history and geography. You cannot compare the establishment of diaspora communities with the existence of multiple different ethnic groups living next to each other in their own native land. This will result in the assimilation of one group into another in their own native homeland. Did the Russians not want to do this in their empire?

You misunderstood me a bit i guess. I should have given more explanation. What i ment is that it doesnt exactly destroy multiculturalism itself but it fixes some problems with multiculturalism. As an example i can give you Estonia, under the swedish rule we were uplifted of sorts(Educated, but there were tentions between estonians and swedes) but after conquest from Peter the Great, he specifically left all of the privelgies to the then ruling German/Swedish elite in the country plus advised/encouraged his servants(high ranking ones) to marry into those families from time to time and in general high ranking Russian Empire officials were encouraged to marry European nobility. This significantly eased the tentions in the country to the point there were no massive rebellions nor a massive ethnic tention untill around 1820 (The time when whole of the Russian empire was asking for more liberty an influence of Napoleonic wars of sorts) Even after that in the 1850s when our national movement has begun there was almost no ethnic tention because same rules were followed and Russian nobility was encouraged to marry either European Nobility/Border land nobility. Only 1880s when Russification was implemented in the Russian empire, only then problems started to appear, because while the 1st method was valuntary the 2nd one is forced on you. Also our Culture didnt exactly die in the 250+ rules under the Russian empire with the similar situation as to what China wants to implement right now.

[benpenguin]

Cultures don't get destroyed by interracial marriages, PI, they mix and evolve, and new cultural elements emerge. That's how humanity moved forward.
I also prefer our cultures to be a spectrum than polar extremes. This will help find some middle ground between the Hans and the Uighurs.

[Rejn]

BenPenguin, Manchu culture and identity is near extinction. The Han adopted much of their culture for sure but that was mainly because the Manchurians were politically and socially powerful. If intermarriage is aggressively promoted, Uyghurs will eventually assimilate into Han culture and become extinct. I don't believe they will be able to influence Han culture that much.

[Drlee]

Its the perfect communist solution. It is an arranged marriage, with the dowry paid by the state. What could be more communist than that?


It is also a good way for overweight mouth-breathers with sleep apnea to get a wife.

[ThirdTerm]

Haplogroup O-M122 is found in over 50% of Han Chinese males but its frequency is only 12.2% in the Uyghur population, while 6.1% have Haplogroup C that is common in East Asia. The most common haplogroup in the Uyghur population is R1a1 (28.6%), followed by J (18.4%), and the Uyghurs' genetic makeup is up to 80% Western Eurasian (Zhou et al. 2007; Xu et al. 2008). The Uyghurs are one of the oldest tribal groups in the world with Haplogroup J's parent haplogroup F (10.2%) as well as P (8.2%), which is a parent haplogroup of R1a and R1b commonly found in Europe. The Tarim mummies discovered in Xinjiang were classified as Caucasoid and their paternal lines were R1a1 but their maternal lines were predominantly East Asian C, which may show that intermarriages were common about 5,000 years ago, when the ancestors of the Uyghurs colonised present-day Xinjiang. Allowing significant autonomy to the Uyghurs could resolve the issue of Uyghur separatism but Beijing recently decided to prescreen all future chief executive candidates of Hong Kong and Communist China's oppressive polices against ethnic and political minorities would continue in the foreseeable future.

The Liqian people in north China are well known because of the controversial hypothesis of an ancient Roman mercenary origin. To test this hypothesis, 227 male individuals representing four Chinese populations were analyzed at 12 short tandem repeat (STR) loci and 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). At the haplogroup levels, 77% Liqian Y chromosomes were restricted to East Asia. Principal component (PC) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis suggests that the Liqians are closely related to Chinese populations, especially Han Chinese populations, whereas they greatly deviate from Central Asian and Western Eurasian populations. Further phylogenetic and admixture analysis confirmed that the Han Chinese contributed greatly to the Liqian gene pool. The Liqian and the Yugur people, regarded as kindred populations with common origins, present an underlying genetic difference in a median-joining network. Overall, a Roman mercenary origin could not be accepted as true according to paternal genetic variation, and the current Liqian population is more likely to be a subgroup of the Chinese majority Han.
http://www.nature.com/jhg/journal/v52/n7/abs/jhg200782a.html

At the individual level, the proportion of East Asian ancestry in UIG individuals ranges from 15.7% to 59.7%, and the proportion of European ancestry in UIG individuals ranges from 40.3% to 84.3%. The distribution of admixture proportions among UIG individuals is relatively even, and the variation is much smaller than the estimation of variation in the AfA population.58 It is unlikely that such results were due to sampling of closely related individuals, because the IBD values within UIG samples were the lowest in all populations (CHB, JPT, CEU, YRI) (Table 3). Furthermore, the ancestry variation among individuals could even be overestimated, given that the result was based on the data of one single chromosome. This result suggests a much longer history of admixture events for the Uyghur population compared with the AfA population, because recombination over many generations has interwoven chromosome segments derived from both ancestries and drift of ancestries among individuals has become very small.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2427216/

Haplogroup O is a relatively young haplogroup that split from NO and it can only partially explain the origins of the Chinese people and its sister haplogroup N is prevalent in Finland (61%). Oα, Oβ, and Oγ may have originated from only three persons but it could be three clans or tribes that existed around 6,500 years ago. The Chinese authors linked the three subgroups to specific cultures such as the Yangshao and Dawenkou cultures but they also admit that there is no DNA or archaeological evidence to confirm their tentative assumption.

The earliest agriculture in North China emerged before 10 kya [46], however, no distinct Y chromosomal expansion could be related to this event. The three star-like expansions happened several thousand years later, thus are likely linked to middle Neolithic cultures such as Yangshao (6.9–4.9 kya) and Dawenkou Culture (6.2–4.6 kya) in the Yellow River Basin [27]. During this period, agriculture became mature and intensive, and the majority of human diet shifted from food collection into production [47], [48]. In the middle and late phases of Yangshao and Dawenkou culture, the burial customs showed a gradual transition from an egalitarian matrilineal society into a hierarchical patrilineal one [49], [50]. Interestingly, the major maternal expansions in China shown by mitochondrial tree (among which are also several star-shaped expansions) occurred much earlier, at the late Paleolithic Age [3]. Although without ancient DNA proofs, we cannot yet confirm the initial expanding regions of these three clans, whether they were original in the middle or lower reach of Yellow River Valley or migrated from the vicinity, we are now at least certain that a majority of Han Chinese did derive from just a few patrilineal ancestors in the Neolithic Age. Whether each of them could be related to the legendary Emperors Yan and Huang or their tribes, is to be solved with more prudence and with the help of interdisciplinary genetic, archeological, ethnical, and documentary studies.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0105691

[Drlee]

OK. Forum Rule 106. No more showing of that you passed high school Earth Science and that the take away was the word "Haplogroup". There are currently two threads running using the word Haplogroup. This is way too many. There is no fucking way in hell that any adult or group of adults should every hear this term more than three times. Once in class, once in the textbook and once on the mid-terms. That is it. So just stop this shit.

No more Goggling Uighurs and posting some statistics about them. From now on we will use the more acceptable term....Ui***r when it is absolutely unavoidable to mention them at all. They live in East Turkistan FGS. Please tell me, a white American, how much of a shit I am supposed to give about a minority in East Turkistan. I'm already having a hell of a time trying to order McDonalds with a Guatemalan accent. Here I am in Arizona, up to my ass in run away children from points south who snuck into the US through gopher holes and stowing away in Mormon Missionaries shaving kits and I am supposed to spend some of my dwindling short-term memory on Ui***rs? And OH BY THE WAY.....if you are going to write what we are supposed to believe is scholarly stuff rather than cut and paste from Google try not to illustrate your PhD thesis with a picture from Lolipop.sg. It will not be your thesis you are going to be defending if you know what I mean.

I'm getting tired of this ethnographic horse shit anyway. We used to have perfectly good Sioux Indians here. A proud people. (So we are given to know. We take that claim at face value.) Now they got all ethnic and we are supposed to know that some of them are Yankton and Yanktonai. I mean really. Who gives a flying fuck. But I seriously ask you....what would you think if someone called you Yanktonai? I would not be pleased. Right down the road is a tribe that for time and all eternity (which is for me I will bet a fuck of a lot longer than it is for you) was called Yaqui. Nice name Yaqui. Now they got all grandiose and want us to call them Tohono O'odham. I guess that is fine but did they really have to get a tribal website called http://www.tonation.nsn.gov? I couldn't make this shit up. Guys. You have all of those MSWs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs sitting on their asses with nothing to do since you all got rich as a Gates one quarter at a time and you did not ask one of them why they were rolling on the ground laughing because you called your website http://www.tonation.nsn.gov? No wonder they put you in a big playground and won't let you leave.

Do tell me again why I am supposed to get serious and lose sleep over the Pashtuns? I forgot. Perhaps they are killing someone.

And to the guy I met yesterday on campus. You are not a fucking Palestinian. Palestinians do not wear Rolexes and drive Trans Am's. You are a goddamn virgin Saudi and you were fine being a virgin Saudi until you found out that American Jewish Princesses in the Fine Arts department can't wait to blow Palestinians. I wonder what Haplographic group is most likely to get fucked by a Tri-Delta girl?

So can we please drop all of this nonsense? If China wants to breed away the last 17 Ui***rs by offering them $25.00 a week and junior college, and it works, then it was just time to get their Haplogroup kicked down to the minors. Besides. What they are not saying is that all those Ui***r men are either out tapping Chinese chicks or hanging around the unemployment office or this shit wouldn't work.

[benpenguin]

Han culture is a mix of hundreds of assimilated ancient countries and bloodlines, which itself is again diversified into tons of different cultures. I don't see the problem of "Uighurs" disappearing. I don't even see the problem of Hans disappearing if one day it comes to that.
Hans don't call themselves Hans. I call myself Hong Konger, the guy next to me calls himself Mongolian. We collectively call ourselves Chinese. And so what? +1 for Dr. Lee. Who gives a shit?

Paying people to get married is the most gentle assimilation measure I can think of. Nobody is getting hurt or anything. But hey, we all need to bash some evil communist, and I certainly get that.

[Ombrageux]

In some respects Western perceptions of Chinese homogeneity seem justified. For example, a recent study found that 40% of Chinese Y-chromosomes come from just 3 neolithic "super-grandfathers."