Sunday, September 7, 2014

Fighting Ethnic Tension by Subsidizing Marriage

One Chinese region is trying to combat rising strife between Han Chinese and Uighurs by paying people to marry across the cultural divide.
The economic rewards for mixed marriages are being offered in Cherchen County, known as Qiemo in Chinese, to any couple that includes one Han and one member from any of China’s 55 ethnic minorities. According to official statistics, the 10,000 people in this county along the old southern Silk Road and east of the Kunlun Mountains are 73 percent Uighur and 27 percent Han.
I doubt this will work; there were plenty of marriages between Serbs and Croats.

1 comment:

Katya said...

Isn't the point, from the Chinese perspective, not really to smooth ethnic tensions but to experiment with trying to breed the Uighurs out?

A generation of 50/50 Han/Uighurs could theoretically bring a demographic shift as to how those people self-identify. And if a nation dedicated its resources to chipping away at that problem in this particular way for a sufficiently extended period of time... well, a cultural watering-down could ultimately be achieved.