The boarding school system promises and delivers high quality, affordable education, making it a popular choice among many minority parents. Yet its goals are more political than pedagogical. Through the project, the Party-state seeks to cultivate a loyal cadre of ethnic elites fluent in Mandarin Chinese, while promoting politically correct thinking and behaviour as well as knowledge and affinity with Han-centric norms in minority communities. Recent interethnic violence has increased the importance of this ideological mission, with Party boss Xi Jinping<\/a> staking his personal credibility on the ethnic stability and social cohesion required to achieve his \u2018China dream\u2019.<\/p>\n A recently published textbook provides rare insight into the Party-state\u2019s indoctrination program in these schools. EntitledIntroduction to Xinjiang History & Ethnic and Religious Theory and Policy<\/em><\/a> (\u65b0\u7586\u5386\u53f2\u4e0e\u6c11\u65cf\u5b97\u6559\u7406\u8bba\u653f\u7b56\u6982\u8bba), the textbook was produced by the Department of Education of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and published by the Xinjiang Educational Press in late 2014. It is now taught as a required and assessable subject for all inland boarding school students from Xinjiang as a part of \u201cideological and political theory education<\/a>\u201d (\u601d\u60f3\u653f\u6cbb\u7406\u8bba\u6559\u80b2), a cornerstone of the curriculum.<\/p>\n The textbook\u2019s preface emphasizes the importance of cultivating \u2018the correct ideological perspective\u2019. State schools, it is claimed, are danger-zones of potential infiltration by the \u2018Three Inimical Forces<\/a>\u2019 (\u4e09\u80a1\u52bf\u529b) of separatism, terrorism, and extremism. The aim of the textbook is to \u2018build an ideological line of defence\u2019 and \u2018criticize false ideas and misguided thought\u2019 while cultivating \u2018reliable people\u2019 who will protect national unity and social stability, and also feel a sense of belonging and connection with the \u2018Chinese race-state\u2019 (\u4e2d\u534e\u6c11\u65cf) and \u2018Chinese culture\u2019 (\u4e2d\u534e\u6587\u5316). The terms \u2018ethnic\/racial unity\u2019 (\u6c11\u65cf\u56e2\u7ed3) appears 116 times in this 186 page textbook, while \u2018fatherland\u2019 (\u7956\u56fd) is used 145 times. The first chapter begins with a saccharine reminder of the Party-state\u2019s \u2018warm and loving concern for the people,\u2019 and how \u2018preferential policies\u2019 enable Xinjiang minority students to \u2018enjoy the superior educational resources of the interior\u2019. In turn, students are obligated to become \u2018a steely force for the protection of the fatherland\u2019s unity\u2019, especially in the face of continued ethnic violence and acts of terror.<\/p>\n The textbook takes students through the Party-state\u2019s ethnic and religious policies, stressing not only the importance of a \u2018scientific worldview\u2019 and the embrace of \u2018modern culture\u2019, but also how \u2018antagonistic forces\u2019 (\u654c\u5bf9\u52bf\u529b) are using religion, in particular, to infiltrate Xinjiang and divide the race-state. In sharp contrast to previous claims that \u2018religious belief is a citizen\u2019s personal affair\u2019, which appears (among other places) in the government\u2019s 1997 White Paper on Freedom of Religious Belief in China<\/a>, students are told that religion is deeply political rather than a mere private matter. Religion, it prompts students, is a pernicious and false consciousness, or what Marx called the \u2018opiate of the people\u2019, and thus must be resisted at all turns. Furthermore, the separation of education and religion means all students are prohibited from practicing religion or wearing religious symbols and clothing on campus. Yet, at the same time, religion should be distinguished from less harmful \u2018ethnic customs and social habits\u2019 (\u6c11\u65cf\u98ce\u4fd7\u4e60\u60ef), such as food taboos and traditional festivals, which can be observed in accordance with the principle of \u2018absorbing the best while casting off the dregs\u2019.<\/p>\n The textbook spends a great deal of time highlighting the \u2018historical\u2019 and \u2018scientific\u2019 basis of ethnic and racial unity in China. Here the focus is not only on demonstrating how \u2018Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of China since ancient times\u2019, but how the different peoples of China have been \u2018one family since ancient times, sharing weal and woes and thus inseparable\u2019. There is repeated emphasis on the deep consanguinity of the Chinese people, and how the long history of contact has literally fused bloodlines together. \u2018Over thousands of year\u2019, the textbook states, \u2018the continuous migration, mixed residency, interethnic marriage and exchange between different groups in ancient China gradually fused them together and gave birth to a new minzu<\/em> (\u6c11\u65cf, race, nation, or race-state)\u2019.<\/p>\n The character rong<\/em> (\u878d, meaning \u2018to blend\u2019 or \u2018fuse\u2019) appears 56 times in the text, with numerous stories, quotes and anecdotes aimed at convincing minority students that \u2018the comradeship of blood is thicker than water\u2019. This blood lineage is mixed yet not equal, with students reminded that some groups still \u2018lag behind\u2019 due to differences in size, natural environment, and historical and social development, which produces obvious deviation in physical features and innate \u2018quality\u2019 (\u7d20\u8d28). These inbred differences, in turn, help to explain gaps in wealth, social status, income and living conditions among ethnic groups, despite the achievement of formal political equality under the CCP.<\/p>\n How effective is this sort of ideological training? On the surface, the message and its delivery are crude and overdone. We now have a number of excellent ethnographies<\/a> on these dislocated schools. They find that the schooling process not only strengthens minority ethno-national consciousness, but in many cases, actually forges a strong oppositional consciousness and identity that did not exist prior. Here the textbook\u2019s point about ethnic harmony, unity and fusion seems to fall on deaf ears.<\/p>\n Yet it is premature to dismiss the affects of this sort indoctrination. The textbook and these required political education classes, teach minority students the \u2018official script\u2019 while impressing on them the importance of political correctness. Students might privately reject aspects of the message, yet they also come to realize that their future success and wellbeing depends on the ability to master the rules of the current political system and parrot the language of the Party-state when required. China\u2019s frontier governance relies on a series of carrot and stick mechanisms<\/a>, which rewards political compliance through preferential benefits and promotion while harshly punishing those who stray too far from the Party line. A parallel system of self-disciplining exists among the Han majority; yet the bar of loyalty and obedience is set much higher for minority students as their otherness fosters suspicion.<\/p>\n Graduates of minority boarding schools are told they are special, different not only from the Han majority but also their co-ethnics back in the frontier. In return for this precious \u2018gift<\/a>\u2019 of education, nurturing and social mobility, they are expected to \u2018give service back to the fatherland\u2019 and put aside their own language, religion, and culture in order to advance the Party and the race-state. In their daily lives, however, these minority youths make their own decisions on how best to navigate the complexities of the current political system. The results can be confusing and contradictory. Carefully manoeuver between multiple identities and bureaucratic obstacles, students find themselves at times reaffirming, and at other times deflecting, the Party-state\u2019s ideology, as they seek to preserve their Uyghur identity while strategically embracing elements of Han-defined modernity.<\/p>\n James Leibold<\/em><\/a> is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Philosophy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and <\/em>Timothy A. Grose<\/em><\/a> is an Assistant Professor of China Studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, USA. They are the co-authors of \u201cIslamic Veiling in Xinjiang: The Struggle to Define Uyghur Female Adornment,\u201d forthcoming in The China Journal<\/u>. Image Credit: CC<\/a> by La Priz<\/a>\/Flickr.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since 1980 the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been uprooting Tibetan, Uyghur and other minority youths from their communities in Western China and schooling them in the language and culture of the Han majority in eastern and coastal cities thousands of kilometres away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/docs.uyghuramerican.org\/images\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-03-at-13.08.22.png\")
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