The Congressional-Executive Commission on China held another in its series of staff-led Issues Roundtables, entitled "China’s Ethnic Regional Autonomy Law: Does it Protect Minority Rights?” on Monday, April 11, from 2:00 – 3:30 PM in Room 2255 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

The Chinese government recognizes over 100 million people living within its borders as belonging to one of fifty-five minority nationalities. Although minorities constitute less than 9% of China’s total population, they occupy over 60% of the country’s total landmass, primarily along international borders. Minority areas often are located in resource-rich regions. More than thirty of the groups have ethnic counterparts abroad, making the assurance of their loyalty of strategic concern to the Chinese government.

The Constitution and the 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law guarantee numerous rights to minorities, including: self-government within designated autonomous areas; proportional representation in the government; freedom to develop their own languages, religions, and cultures; and power to adjust central directives to local conditions. The laws also guarantee minorities greater control over local economic development than allowed in non-autonomous areas; the right to manage and protect local natural resources; and the right to organize local public security forces to safeguard public order.

The implementation of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law has varied greatly across China. The Chinese government systematically denies some minorities their legal rights and arbitrarily arrests their members for exercising legally protected freedoms. The government has particularly failed to uphold the legal rights of minorities living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.

Roundtable witnesses examined the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law and its implementation in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia.

The panelists:

David L. Phillips, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, NY.

Mr. Phillips is the project director of a collaborative research project on “Legal Standards and Autonomy Options for Minorities in China: The Tibetan Case ,” and Deputy Director of the Center for Preventative Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Middle East Studies and Director of the Program on Conflict Prevention and Peace-building at American University’s Center for Global Peace. In 2003, he was an analyst for NBC News and works today providing commentary to the BBC. He has served as senior adviser to the United Nations Secretariat and the U.S. Department of State. Formerly President of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, Mr. Phillips serves on numerous boards concerned with human rights, humanitarian affairs, peace, and conflict prevention.

Gardner Bovingdon, Assistant Professor, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Author of several articles and book chapters on Xinjiang, Dr. Bovingdon is fluent in both Uighur and Chinese. He received his Ph.D from Cornell University in 2002 and conducted much of his dissertation fieldwork from Xinjiang University. Dr. Bovingdon published “Autonomy in Xinjiang: Han Nationalist Imperatives and Uyghur Discontent” as part of the East-West Center’s Study Group on Xinjiang. He is currently revising a manuscript for publication entitled “Strangers in the Own Land: The Politics of Uyghur Identity in Chinese Central Asia.”

Christopher P. Atwood, Associate Professor, Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Associate Professor of Mongolian Studies, Dr. Atwood has published extensively on Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. In his 2002 book “Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner Mongolia Interregnum Decades, 1911-1931,” he used recently opened Mongolian archives to explore early Chinese Communist Party nationality policy and pan-Mongol activism. He is the author of “Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire,” a comprehensive reference work on the region. His research interests include Mongolian nationalism, demography, and ecological immigration.

For additional information on this topic, please see the following materials on the Commission’s Virtual Academy:

• Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law
• State Council White Paper on Regional Autonomy Reviews Minority Policies
• Upgrade in Police Armament in Urumqi Signals Continued Tensions in Xinjiang
• Nankai University Students Promote Patriotism in Privately Sponsored Islamic School
• Xinjiang Announces 2004 Reduction in Provincial Economic Disparities
• Uighur Author Sentenced to Prison for “Inciting Splittism”
• "Flourishing Borders, Prosperous Nationalities" Campaign Expanded

• David L. Phillips
• Gardner Bovingdon
• Christopher P. Atwood

Transcript: