MCLC: myths of social cohesion (3)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: KevinGLawrence <kglnyc at gmail.com>
Subject: myths of social cohesion (3)
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In response to Jason McGrath’s cogent observation that “it’s incredible
the NYT fails to mention that the Qianlong Emperor and the Qing Dynasty
were Manchu, not Han,” reporter Andrew Jacobs defends himself saying that
he makes clear distinctions between the various ethnicities his article
mentions and goes further to defend the editorial policies of his
newspaper: “the Times is pretty clear on this – we don’t use ‘Chinese’ to
describe ethnicity.” Well, actually, no, the Times is not being clear on
this issue in the least and the distinctions are not clear but entirely
muddled. In an article that seeks to expose how “the party-run history
machine is especially single-minded in its effort to promote story lines
that portray Uighurs, Mongolians, Tibetans and other groups as contented
members of an extended family whose traditional homelands have long been
part of the Chinese nation,” there is a disingenuous conflation of
“Chinese” with “Han” merely by juxtaposing “Chinese” with these other
ethnic designations in that very sentence. Jacobs’ further claim that his
use of “Chinese” is “not as a reference to ethnicity but rather how the
Qing and Qianlong were perceived by the outside world…both as nationality
and as a civilization” is particularly galling in how it obfuscates a
critical issue central to his entire article: is the history of China an
unmitigated record of “…subjugation and repression amid government-backed
efforts to dilute ethnic identity through the migration of members of
China’s dominant group, the Han?” Precisely because the “outside world”
supposedly regards the Chinese state in whatever period as an extension of
the Han majority, the NYTimes and Andrew Jacobs have a responsibility to
clarify that, in fact, the state has not always been ruled by Han Chinese
but occasionally by ethnic minorities. Specifically, using the
relationship between the Qianlong Emperor and his concubine
Xiangfei/Iparhan to illustrate a supposed alternative history of
repression really necessitates at least a passing reference that the Qing
was a multi-ethnic empire led by the Manchu who had varying policies
regarding migrations to areas they controlled. Otherwise, the casual NYT
reader of this article could easily turn to the next story about, perhaps,
China’s policies in the South China Seas with the notion that for over
four millennia, the Chinese state has always been promoting the
subjugation of border cultures in the interest of a Han majority, which is
a dubious if not downright fallacious impression.

The New York Times enjoys considerable influence on shaping general U.S.
perceptions of (and opinions about) China—both its history and as a
contemporary society; they therefore owe it to their readers not to
selectively airbrush substantive issues regarding historic ethnic
relations in the name of expediency when covering a story about ethnicity
in contemporary China.

(Finally, I cannot help but ruefully note that “Manchu” takes up less ink
and character-space than “Chinese,” and could easily have had a hyper-link
to a Wikipedia entry like other terms in the article that could have
provided the reader with the historic “back story” of who the Manchu are
which Jacobs felt he just didn’t have the space to do in this story.)

Best regards,
Kevin Lawrence