| Summary/Abstract |
The last few years have seen a vigorous public policy debate emerge over a “second-generation” ethnic policy (di’erdai minzu zhengce) which, if implemented, would constitute a major revision of ethnic politics in China. Despite the fact that nationalities policy is a notoriously sensitive subject within China, the debate is happening openly in newspapers, academic journals and on the Internet. The prominence accorded to anthropological theory and international comparison is a notable feature of the debate. This article first explores the main positions in the ongoing policy discussion, then goes on to argue that, rather than comparing China’s non-Han peoples to minority immigrant populations in the industrialized democracies, a better comparison is to indigenous peoples. It then considers why this perspective is completely missing from the present debate.
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