Parameters of Ethnic Minorhood

Abstract

The current crisis in China’s ethnic frontiers is animating intense discussion as to whether the present moment is a déjà vu of antecedents or an aberration of the Chinese ethno-political normative. Whereas the bulk of new scholarship focuses on the post-Mao era, few studies exist to elucidate the visuality of ethnic relations in the early PRC when state-building was still unfolding in the ethnic frontiers. This paper investigates how an ethnic hierarchy based on a majority-minority binarism was visually constructed during the formative decade of the socialist era (1949–59). Examining several films featuring Inner Mongolia and the socio-political interaction between Mongol indigenes and Han expeditionary personnel, this paper contends that constructing the visuality of Han superiority as adult guardian overlooking ethnic minors who must answer the interpellation of attaining the likeness of the Han was the centrepiece in substantiating a majority-minority binarism beyond a static ethno- demographic condition.