BA East Asian Studies with International Study

This course introduces China’s borderland regions, the diverse peoples who live there, and how they help us understand China today. Although distant from the well-known metropoles of Beijing or Shanghai, relations between China’s ethnic Han majority and the non-Han “minority nationalities” (Ch. shaoshu minzu) have long been key in shaping how the country is run. During the semester we will explore the frigid sub-Siberian taigas of the northeast, the prairies, deserts, and mountains of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet, and the jungled hills of Yunnan and Guangxi. While these areas have seen successive Chinese governments seek to exert political control, they have also been home to groups with millennia-long traditions of proud self-government, or who themselves have ruled over China. Reading historical, anthropological, and literary works by Han, non-Han, and foreign writers, we will develop our understanding of China’s ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic complexity, and the shifting constructions of “China” over time. The ethnic, political, and geographic borders of the Chinese nation-state thus form a crucial vantage-point from which to survey the controversies of identity, history, nationalism, and the state which lie at the heart of the country’s ongoing transformations. 

• Provide students with a sound understanding of China’s borderland regions, the people who live there, and how these came to be a part of the contemporary Chinese state
• Foster greater awareness of ideas of ‘diversity’ in China, and of social, political and cultural issues arising from relations between the Chinese centre and its peripheries
• Develop awareness of how China’s borderlands, their peoples and histories are seen from the perspective of the Chinese government and education system
• Train students to adopt a balanced approach to potentially fraught political questions, weighing up and critiquing state ideology and policy against the perspectives of minority peoples
• Improve students’ ability to express complex ideas in oral and written form

• Show familiarity with borderland areas of China which are often overlooked, and the main ethnic groups who live in them
• Understand the cultural, religious and ethnic diversity which are a feature of these regions
• Illustrate how relations between the Chinese state and its borderlands have developed over the country’s recent history

• Read, discuss, and critically analyse materials relating to China’s borderlands and minority peoples
• Apply independent critical thinking skills when making use of academic materials, as well as more popular sources including media
• Make connections between different regions and those who live in them, and between those people and the Chinese state at large
• Express ideas about China’s borderlands in the form of well-structured and well-research written essays

• Think independently and analytically about globally important ideas such as ‘state’, ‘nation’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘culture’
• Be well informed about much-debated issues around China’s borderlands, while remaining sensitive to cross-cultural perspectives on them
• Express ideas clearly in speech and writing
• Read effectively (both primary and secondary texts)

Assessment Task	Weighting within unit
Weekly Discussion Posts	10%
Essay plan	10%
Final Essay	40%
Final Exam (In-Person)	40%

 

Resit Assessment

Assessment task

1 Essay on agreed topic

• Brook, Timothy, Michael van Walt van Praag, and Mike Boltjes eds. Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations Since Chinggis Khan. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
• Bulag, Uradyn. Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China’s Mongolian Frontier. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.
• Harrell, Stevan ed. Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.
• Gladney, Dru. Dislocating China: Minorities and Other Subaltern Subjects. London: Hurst, 2004.
• Lary, Diana ed. The Chinese State at the Borders. Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2007.
• Millward, James. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (Revised Edition). London: Hurst, 2011.
• Mullaney, Thomas. Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2011.
• Mullaney, Thomas, James Leibold, Séphane Gros, and Eric Bussche eds. Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Tuition fees for home students will be £10,050 for the 2027/28 academic year. In England and Wales, tuition fees for home undergraduate students are subject to the Government fee cap, which the Government has announced will be £10,050 for the 2027/28 academic year.

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