【英语中国】中国的民族问题

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it suddenly became obvious that the USSR had never been a proper country. It was a multinational empire held together by force. Might we one day say the same of China?

Of course, any such suggestion is greeted with rage in Beijing. Chinese politicians are modern-minded pragmatists when it comes to economic management. But they revert to Maoist language when questions of territorial integrity are touched upon. Supporters of Taiwanese independence are “splittists”. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, has been described as a “monster with a human face and an animal's heart”. The Muslim Uighurs who rioted violently last week were denounced as the tools of sinister foreign forces.

According to David Shambaugh, an academic, the main lesson that the Chinese drew from studying the collapse of the USSR was to avoid “dogmatic ideology, entrenched elites, dormant party organisations, and a stagnant economy”.

It is an impressive list. But it misses out one obvious thing. The Soviet Union ultimately fell apart because of pressure from its different nationalities. In 1991, the USSR split up into its constituent republics.

Of course, the parallels are not exact. Ethnic Russians made up just over half the population of the USSR. The Han Chinese are over 92 per cent of the population of China. Yet Tibet and Xinjiang are exceptions. Some 90 per cent of the population of Tibet are still ethnic Tibetans. The Uighurs make up just under half the population of Xinjiang. Neither area is comfortably integrated into the rest of the country – to put it mildly. Last week's riots in Xinjiang led to the deaths of more than 180 people, the bloodiest known civil disturbance in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989. There were also serious disturbances in Tibet just before last year's Olympics.

In a country of more than 1.3bn people, the 2.6m in Tibet and the 20m in Xinjiang sound insignificant. But together they account for about a third of China's land mass – and for a large proportion of its inadequate reserves of oil and gas. Just as the Russians fear Chinese influence over Siberia, so the Chinese fear that Muslim Xinjiang could drift off into Central Asia.

Han Chinese immigrants suffered badly in the race riots that convulsed Xinjiang. But China's emotional and affronted reaction to the upheavals in Xinjiang is typical of an empire under challenge. With the British in Ireland, the Portuguese in Africa and many others besides, the refrain was always that the locals were ungrateful for all the benefits that had been showered upon them.

In the mid-1990s I had a conversation with an Indonesian general who was genuinely outraged by what he regarded as the ungrateful attitude of the brutalised population of East Timor, after all the lovely roads and schools that had been paid for by Jakarta.

China is especially ill-equipped to understand ethnic nationalism within its borders because many government officials simply do not accept, or even grasp, the idea of “self-determination”. Years of official propaganda about the need to reunify the motherland, and the disastrous historical consequences of a divided China, means that these attitudes are very widely shared. I once met a Chinese dissident who was strongly opposed to Communist party rule. But when I suggested that perhaps Taiwan should be allowed to be independent, if that was what its people wanted, his liberalism disappeared. That was unthinkable, I was assured. Taiwan was an inalienable part of China.

Yet the idea that Tibet and Xinjiang could aspire to be separate nations is by no means absurd. China insists that both areas have been an inseparable part of the motherland for centuries. However, they both experienced periods of independence in the 20th century. There was a short-lived East Turkestan Republic in Xinjiang, which was extinguished by the arrival of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1949. Tibet experienced de facto independence between 1912 and 1949.

As things stand, the break-up of China looks very unlikely. Over the long term, a steady flow of Han immigrants into Xinjiang and Tibet should weaken separatist tendencies. The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, is not even calling for independence. Some Uighurs may be more militant – but they lack leadership and the international sympathy that bolsters the Tibetan cause.

The Mikhail Gorbachev years and the loss of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe created a degree of political turmoil inside the USSR that does not exist in contemporary China. The Chinese state is much more economically successful, more confident and more willing to shed blood to keep the country together.

Violent repression of separatism can be very effective for a while. But it risks creating the grievances that keep independence movements alive across the generations.

For the moment activists campaigning for Xinjiang or Tibet look forlorn and defeated. That is often the fate of champions of obscure and oppressed peoples. The Baltic and Ukrainian exiles who kept their countries' aspirations alive during the Soviet era seemed quaint and unthreatening for decades. They were the archetypal champions of lost causes. Until, one day, they won.

前苏联1991年解体时，人们突然认识到：苏维埃社会主义共和国联盟从来都不是一个名副其实的国家。它是一个用武力维系起来的跨国帝国。将来的某一天，我们会不会也这样评价中国呢？

当然，任何此类暗示都会令北京大为恼火。在经济管理方面，中国的政治家是具有现代头脑的实用主义者，而一旦触及领土完整，他们就会重新拾起“毛式语言”：台独支持者是“分裂分子”，西藏精神领袖达赖喇嘛被形容为“人面兽心”，上周参与暴乱的穆斯林维吾尔人则被说成是被国外邪恶势力利用的工具。

中国问题学者沈大伟(David Shambaugh)认为，中国人从前苏联解体中汲取的主要教训是：要避免“意识形态教条化，地位牢固的精英阶层，僵化的党组织，以及停滞不前的经济”。

这份清单令人印象深刻。但它遗漏了一个明显的事实。前苏联最终分崩离析，是来自不同民族的压力所致。1991年，各个加盟共和国都从前苏联分离了出来。

当然，这种类比并不准确。俄罗斯族人仅占前苏联人口的一半多一点，而汉人则占中国人口的92%以上。但西藏和新疆却是例外：西藏人口中，大约90%仍是藏人；而维吾尔人在新疆人口中占了将近一半。说得婉转些，这两个地区都没有与中国其它地区很好地融合。本月初发生在新疆的骚乱导致180多人丧生（编者注：最新数字已达190多人），是1989年天安门事件以来中国国内流血人数最多的一场骚乱。去年奥运会开幕前不久，西藏也曾发生严重骚乱。

在一个超过13亿人口的国度，西藏的260万人与新疆的2000万人听上去无足轻重。但两地加起来，约占中国陆地总面积的三分之一，在中国并不丰富的油气储量中，两地也占了相当大的比例。就像俄罗斯担心中国在西伯利亚的影响力一样，中国也担心，以穆斯林为主的新疆可能会与中亚越走越近。

在这场震撼新疆的民族骚乱中，汉族移民深受伤害。但中国对新疆暴乱所表现出深受冒犯的激动情绪，是帝国遭到挑战的一种典型反应。无论是爱尔兰的英国人，非洲的葡萄牙人，还是其他许多国家的民众，他们总是唱着同一个调子：当地人对他们施予的大量恩惠毫不领情。

上世纪90年代中期，我曾与印尼的一位将军有过一次对话。在他看来，雅加达花钱帮东帝汶建设了漂亮的公路和学校，但野蛮的东帝汶人却毫不领情，这令他义愤填膺。

中国尤其不能理解其境内的种族民族主义，因为许多政府官员根本就不接受——甚至无法理解——“民族自决”的概念。多年来官方对祖国需要重新统一的宣传，以及国土分裂造成的灾难性后果，都意味着这些姿态在中国得到了广泛认同。我曾见过一名中国异议人士，他强烈反对共产党的统治。但当我提出，如果基于台湾人民的意愿，中国政府或许应允许台湾独立。听罢，他的自由主义消失了。他断然告诉我，这是不容考虑的，台湾是中国不可分割的一部分。

不过，那种有关西藏和新疆渴望成为独立国家的想法并不完全荒诞。中国坚称，几个世纪以来，这两个地区都是祖国不可分割的一部分。然而，它们在二十世纪都曾有过一段独立时期。在新疆，曾成立了存在时间很短的东突厥斯坦共和国——随着中国人民解放军1949年进入新疆而消亡。西藏在1912年至1949年间事实上也是独立的。

在目前情况下，想从中国分裂出去似乎完全不可能。从长期看，汉人持续向新疆和西藏移民应该会削弱其分裂倾向。西藏精神领袖达赖喇嘛甚至没有呼吁西藏独立。一些维吾尔人或许更加好武，但他们缺乏领袖以及支持西藏的国际同情。

前苏联领导人米哈伊尔•戈尔巴乔夫(Mikhail Gorbachev)时代及苏联帝国在东欧的失败，造成了前苏联内部一定程度的政治动荡，而这种状况在当代中国并不存在。中国在经济上更成功，也更自信，更愿意用流血手段保持国家的完整。

对分裂主义进行暴力镇压或许暂时会很有效。但它可能招致怨愤，并让独立运动世代传承下去。

目前，争取新疆或西藏独立的活动家们看来境况凄凉，遭受了失败。这是那些地位卑微、受压迫人民经常遭受的命运。那些在苏联时代没有抛弃国家梦想的波罗的海和乌克兰流亡人士，几十年间里行为古怪，并不构成任何威胁。他们明知自己的事业注定失败但仍为之奋斗。直到有一天，他们获胜了。

译者/何黎