What is the term for ethnic groups that once had or wish to have or regain autonomous political status?

If we argue that the Northern Song Dynasty overcame the split of the Five Dynasties, and the unification of the Central Plains was restored, then its power was certainly weak. In 916 AD, a strong people arose in the North called the Khitan, in what is today Balinzuoqi in Inner Mongolia. They establisheda kingdom called Liao. Its territory extended from the mouth of the Heilongjiang River, to the middle of modern-day Mongolia. Its Southern region extended from modern-day Tianjin, across Hebei’s Baxian County, to Yanmenguan in Shanxi, sharing a border with the Northern Song Dynasty. They ruled for 210 years before being defeated by another Northern tribe, the Jurchen. The Jurchen originated in the Northeast, and in the year 1115 they established a kingdom called Jin. In 1125, they defeated the Liao, and continued on to defeat the Northern Song, successively establishing capitals in modern-day Beijing and Kaifeng. Their territory included the Liao’s native land, and expanded westward to Shaanxi, Gasu, and the Western Xia border, and southward to the Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River to the border of the Southern Song. The Northern Song had only 300 years of history. This period of mixing of the different ethnic groups in the Northern Central Plains provided a process of assimilation and integration, and certainly contributed to the Han ethnicity’s expansion of power southwards. But that is a story for another time.

Here, we should talk a bit about the Songliao Plains, which lie in the East ofthe Greater Xing’an Mountains. The Greater Xing’an Mountains at that time played as a barrier between the Songliao Plains and the vast grasslands, and this vast forest may have blocked the further expansion eastwards of the nomadic tribes. It appears that some nomadic tribes can trace their origins to the hunting tribes in this forest.

Recently, I went to the Greater Xing’an Forest region to conduct field research. Ten kilometers northwest of the town of Alihe, Hulunbeier League, in aforest I saw a cave called Gaxian Cave. Inside the cave, there are stone carvings dating back to 443 AD, made by Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty in memory of his ancestors. This is evidence that Xianbei lived in the Greater Xing’an Forest region. The Xianbei later moved from the mountainous Southwest to the Hulunchi Grasslands, and continued their migration Southwest to the region between Yinshan and the river bend. Here they formed the TuobaXianbei, some of whom entered Qinghai, while the majority were active during the beginning of the fourth century in modern-day Inner Mongolia and the Datong area in Shanxi. In 386 AD, they established the Wei kingdom, and in 439 AD they unified the Northern areas of the Central Plains.

The Khitan peoples who established the kingdom of Liao were originally active among the nomadic tribes of the upper-Liao River. Having surrendered to the Tang, in 916 AD they established the Liao kingdom. Prior to and after the establishment of the kingdom, large numbers of Han peoples had already migrated into the area, and had developed agriculture and handicrafts industries. However, after being defeated by the Jin, the Khitan peoples integrated with the Han and Jurchen.

The Jurchan tribe that established the Jin kingdom also originated from the Songliao Plains. They travelled the same road as the Khitan, first going from weak to strong, and then from strength to death. After occupying the northern part of the Central Plains, they namedthe inhabitants Han peoples, Yan peoples, Southerners, and others in order not to be referred to as ‘Jurchen’. However, later on many Jurchen started to use Han surnames. There are 31 such surnames recorded in the History of Jin, and this was certainly not the result of imperial compulsion, but rather it arose naturally from the people. Of course, using Han surnames certainly does not imply that they had completely become Han, but only suggests that they no longer resisted Han-icization.

Despite their political superiority in the northern part of the Central Plains, neither the Khitan nor the Jurchen were able to unify China. The regime that was able to incorporate all of the territory of China under a single regime was the Mongol-established Yuan Dynasty. Later on, the descendants of the Jurchen, the Manchus, established the Qing Dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty ruled for ninety-six years (1271–1365 AD), and the Qing Dynasty ruled for nearly two hundred sixty years (1644–1911 AD). The Mongols and Manchus of course were non-Han, and in the present they still have a population of over one millionamong ethnic minorities. While they were in power, their populations grew; however, after their rule, most Mongols and Manchus integrated with the Han.

The peoples under the rule of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty were split into four groups: Mongols, Semu, Han, and Southerners. During this period, the Jurchen, Khitan, and Koreans were all included under the ‘Han’, and received the same treatment as Han. According to the History of Yuan, Jurchen and Khitan are the same as Han. If there are Jurchen and Khitan in the northwest who wouldnot agree to use the Han language, they would be considered to bethe same as Mongolian; the Jurchen (who had chosen the name Khitan) who grew up in the Han areas, werethe same as Han.(Biography of Emperor Kublai Khan,Shizujishi世祖记十). It seems that either there were distinctions between the Jurchen and the Khitan, or they were integrated with the Han, or integrated with the Mongols. During the Yuan Dynasty, the Han were divided into two groups: the Han people, and the Southerners, demarcated by the border between Song and Jin. All of the Han living in the territory originally belonging to the Jin, later conquered by the Mongols, were still called Han. Those who were living in the Mongols-conquered territory of the Southern Song, were called either Southerners, Song peoples, new peoples, or barbarians. It also appears that this included the non-Han living South of the Yangtze River. This further strengthened the integration of these non-Han peoples with the Han.

After the Mongols, a Han-dominated regime came to power, called the Ming. They initially ordered the restoration of ‘Tang Dynasty Dress’, and banned the clothing, languages, and surnames of the Northern tribes. But using administrative orders to try and change ethnic customs, habits, and languages is futile. In a 1442 AD memorial found in the Ming Records, there is reference to the popularity of Tatar dresses at the time, over Tang dresses. However, popular exchanges are proved to be useful. In his Rizhilu, on the topic of ethnic mixing at the time, GuYanwu of the late-Ming and early-Qing wrote: “In Han’s genealogy, surnames used to mix with that of the barbarians. Nobles nowadays sighed, ‘the barbarians followed Han’s language and forgot their own origins.”’He went on to write, “Most of this generation of the Shandong clans find their origins in the Jin and Yuan.” This indicates that in the upper-classes of the time, inter-marriage was already common, and many were already Han-icized.

A concrete example of the integration of the Mongols with the Han can be found in Mr. Liang Shuming’s recently published Questions and Answers (p.2). He writes, “My ancestors were originally in the same clan as the Yuan emperors, sharing the surname “Esentemur”(也先帖木儿), and were of the Mongol ethnicity. After the fall of the Yuan, the last emperor of the Dynasty and the rest of the royal family fled to the north to what is now Mongolia. However, our family did not take this path, but chose to stay in Ruyang, Henan, and took the Han surname Liang…on the topic of divine lineage, in the 500 years between the end of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, not only did others not know of our Mongolian heritage, but even our own family members would not have known if they did not have written genealogical records. But over hundreds of years of intermarriage with Han people, and continuous intermixing of blood, there was a natural emergence of a temperament somewhere in the middle.” Before reading this passage, I had not known Mr. Liang’s ancestors were Mongolian. He certainly had never registered as Mongolian and he seemed comfortable with being recognized and self-identifying as Han. But it is interesting that he views the 500-year-old origin of lineage and his ‘middle temperament’ to come from the same source. You can see that ethnic consciousness runs deep. After the liberation, there were many who had originally been registered as Han ethnicity, changed their registration to Mongolian.

It was noting that the Mongolians first unified the North, and only later did they push westward into Central Asia, then returned to conquer Gansu, and expanded down the Yangtze River, intoSichuan and Yunnan. During these wars, another important ethnic minority was added to the Chinese nation: the Hui. In the 1983 census, their population stood at 7.22 million, second only to the Zhuang minority among China’s ethnic minorities, and the group that is most widely distributed. They live mainly in Ningxia and Gansu, however they are also in Shanghai, Henan, Shandong, Yunnan, and other provinces—indeed, most large cities have a Hui neighborhood of varying size.

Around the middle of the seventh century, a large number of Muslim merchants from Arabia and Persia settled in the coastal commercial ports of Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Hangzhou, and Yangzhou, they were at the time called “foreign visitors”. After the Mongols’ conquest of Central Asia in the early thirteenth century, a large number of merchants and craftsmen signed on to conduct military logistical expeditions. Known at the time as the ‘Horseback Red Army,’ they returned to conquer the Southern Song Dynasty, Han peoples began to call them the ‘Hui Army.’ It was in the exchanges of foreign visitors and the Hui Army that most intermarriages between the Han and the Hui occurred, forming a group that included all of the Muslims of the Central Plains. In addition to the Central Asian merchants and craftsmen who settled in the large cities with the Mongolian army, a large number of Central Asians settled in various other regions, mainly in Gansu and Yunnan. In accordance with the principle of “mount horses in preparation for combat and dismount to open up wasteland”, they settled down. During the Yuan Dynasty, they were given higher social and political status than the Han people. During the Ming Dynasty, they retained relatively high status in the government and military. In fact, in regions with particularly large Hui populations like Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia, there was a saying that “for every three Han, there are seven Hui.” There were also large numbers of Hui in Dali, in the Yunnan region. However, as a result of the Qing Dynasty’s ethnic vendetta, the Hui population in the Northwest and Yunnan was greatly reduced.

Because this ethnic group had a strong commercial tradition, and participated in much commercial activity along the Silk Road during the early Tang Dynasty, foreign visitors occupiedan important status. After the formation of the Hui ethnicity, the reliance on the ‘Tea-Horse Trade’ on the Loess Plateau region bordering Mongolia in the North, andthe Qinghai-Tibetan nomadic region in the West, that is the upper corridor of the Yellow River in Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia, was especially beneficial for the development of Hui ethnic pride, especially for their expertise in commerce. As a result, the largest populations of Hui today are still in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu.

Nowadays, the Hui use the common Han language. It is difficult to determine when and how the Muslim populations arriving by sea and from Central Asia lost their language. Some people think that because women were scarce among the merchant and soldier populations that they intermarried with local women. As a result, mothers taught their language to their children which led to the linguistic change. In order to conduct trade, merchants also had to master the local language, which may be another reason. Moreover, Hui generally lived in small, dispersed settlements, and in close proximity to Han settlements. As a result, the convergence of language and every aspect of lifestyle was a natural sociological conclusion. However, they adhered to their Islamic faith, and thus were able to maintain and strengthen their ethnic consciousness in the vast ocean of the Han ethnicity. In general, their habit was that after a Hui man married a Han woman, she had toconvert to Islam. Hui women, however, could not be married to Han men, unless the men converted to Islam and become a member of the Hui.

The Manchus of the Qing Dynasty did not transgress the old road of the Northern tribes entering the Central Plains. This is the history of our recent memory, so we need not say more. Before the liberation, I had not heard that the linguist Luo Changpei and the writer Lao She were Manchurian. They both became open about their ethnic origins only after the liberation. Of course, we Han coexisted with them without ever sensing any sort of difference between us. Prior to revealing their ethnic origins, they knew that they were Manchurian. This again demonstrates that the multi-ethnic component of the unified nation is stubbornly persistent.

During the course of history, the non-Han tribes of the North repeatedly conducted large-scale invasions of the agricultural areas of the Central Plains, and continuously infused new blood into the Han ethnicity, bolstering up the strength of the Han, while at the same time providing more contributing factors to the multi-ethnic makeup of the Chinese nation. In this essay, I can only provide the simplified narrative described above, and point out that it is only an outline.