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Book Review
Asia
| Xiaoyuan Liu. Frontier Passages: Ethnopolitics and the Rise of Chinese Communism, 1921–1945. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center and Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2004. Pp. xix, 240. $45.00.
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| This is a well-researched and well-argued volume. Relying on previously underutilized Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Soviet Comintern documents, Xiaoyuan Liu presents a thorough and valuable examination of the evolution of CCP "ethnopolitics" from its founding in 1921 to the end of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945. It is an important study for scholars with interest in ethnicity, Kuomintang (KMT)-CCP relations, and revolution in general, and a significant addition to our understanding of this critical era. |
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The author argues, in clearly delineated chapters, that the evolution of the CCP's ethnic policy relied less on Marxism than on China's historical tradition of frontier management. If the Leninist model for the "national question" had any real impact on the CCP, it was limited to the notion of equality in social, political, and ethnic terms. As the CCP matured, its policies toward non-Han minorities became less Marxist-Leninist and more traditional in scope. What resulted was a policy of Han-centric nationalism in which the CCP used persuasion to keep ethnic peoples within the Chinese state and reforms to win over their loyalty not only to the party but also to the state. |
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