MCLC: myths of social cohesion (2)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Matthew Robertson <mprob7 at gmail.com>
Subject: myths of social cohesion (2)
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I'm passing along Andrew Jacobs' response to Jason McGrath's comments on
his NYT article:

I never said the emperor was Han; throughout the story, I make clear
distinctions between "ethnic Han" as opposed to "ethnic Uighur." I just
didn't have the space to go into the Manchu back story on Qianlong (as it
was the piece was cut substantially.)

I used "Chinese" not as a reference to ethnicity but rather how the Qing
and Qianlong were perceived by the outside world -- as Chinese, both as
nationality and as a civilization.

The Times is pretty clear on this -- we don't use "Chinese" to describe
ethnicity. It's really just the notion of the Chinese nation, which is
open to all sorts of interpretations but for the general reader, there
isn't always space to explain these nuances when one is making a quick
reference to say, the Qing or Qianlong.

Best,
Andrew