Enze Han
Office: Monroe 480
Office Hrs: Fridays 2-4pm
Email: enzehan@gwmail.gwu.edu
CV: Download CV
Education: B.A. Beijing Foreign Studies University, M.A. University of British Columbia
Major: Comparative Politics
Minor: International Relations
Dissertation Title: External Kin, Ethnic Identity and the Politics of Ethnic Mobilization in the People's Republic of China
Committee: Bruce Dickson, Jim Goldgeier, Henry Hale, Holger Schmidt
Academic Interests
Ethnic Conflict, Nationalism, Chinese Politics, East Asian Politics, Southeast Asian Politics
Abstract
As a scholar of ethnic conflict and nationalism, my dissertation research focuses on the politics of ethnic mobilization in the People’s Republic of China. My research occupies a special niche that connects the traditionally narrow Chinese politics field with the broad comparative research on ethnic conflict and nationalism in the discipline. This is a still under studied field yet one with tremendous theoretical potential and real-world significance. My dissertation combines both qualitative and quantitative analyses, and is based on more than one year of extensive field research in various ethnic minority regions in China.
Why are some ethnic groups in a given country more politically mobilized than others? In particular, why are some ethnic minority groups, such as the Tibetans and the Uighurs, are more political mobilized than other ethnic minority groups in China? Adopting a triadic relationship model that involves domestic ethnic minorities, the external kin of the minorities, and the state where the minorities reside, and treating ethnicity as a category not as a fixed entity, it argues that it is the interaction between domestic and international factors that contribute to the construction of ethnic group boundaries and group members’ preferences for whether to pursue more autonomy. Encounters between ethnic minority groups and their external kin produce a feedback function on how ethnic minority group members perceive and evaluate their living conditions in the state they currently reside. Only when an ethnic minority group perceives that its external kin enjoys better living conditions and when its external kin is willing and capable to offer support can we expect to see that group to be likely to mobilize for more autonomy.
Since my theoretical framework examines the interactive mechanisms in a triadic relationship model involving the ethnic minority group, its external kin, and the Chinese state, the major part of the dissertation is composed of controlled case studies of four ethnic minority groups in China. The four cases are the Uighurs in Xinjiang, the Mongols in Inner Mongolia, the Koreans in northeast China, and the Dais in southwest China.
My dissertation argues that the ethnic identity and potential for political mobilization of ethnic groups depends on its relations with the central state and ethnic kin across the border. For the Uighurs, their nationalist movements were tied deeply with the ones in Central Asia and Turkey since the late 19th century. In the 20th century, the former Soviet Union, later the independent Central Asian Republics, and Turkey all have provided a more modern and much more developed alternative model than has China. On the other hand, for Inner Mongolia, the former Soviet satellite country Mongolia has not be able to present a strong and appealing model since the latter is still mired within great underdevelopment and poverty. A similar story can be said about the Dais and their ethnic kin living in Burma. For the Chinese Koreans, although there is a more prosperous but also more distant South Korea, they are constantly reminded of the abject condition across the border in nearby North Korea. For these groups with external kin, their satisfaction with life conditions in China and their perception towards the Chinese state are conditioned upon a comparative framework that involves China and the neighboring countries where their external kin reside.
Other than these four cases, my dissertation also includes a chapter to test how far my argument travels. It analyzes how my argument applies to other cases of ethnic mobilization across the globe. In addition, it also includes a statistical test using the Minority At Risk (MAR) Dataset, and an original dataset on ethnic minorities in China to test the relationship between external kin and ethnic minority identity construction in China and other countries.
Publications
- Han, Enze. 2007. "Modernization, Economic Development and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Contemporary China." In Guo, Suijian and Baogang Guo, eds. Challenges Facing Chinese Political Development. Lexington Books.
