Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities

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Abstract
DRU GLADNEY's article contends that Han Chinese objectivize national minorities as the "Other," paralleling "the valorization of gender and political hierarchies in China." In the process, the state has not only created distorted images of national minorities, but also employs those images to redefine, homogenize and subject to greater state control the Han Chinese. Gladney emphasizes that the Han objectification of national minorities is like the objectification of women by Chinese patriarchal values. He shows that when minority women are objectified as highly sexual, this representation is used to suggest that Han Chinese women are not. He believes that through such binary contrasting of the national minorities with an image of a more progressive, de-ethnicized Han, the present regime in China gains more control over the Han majority.