À la recherche d’une diversité dans l’unité : l
e passé, le présent et l’avenir de la Chine multiethnique

This thesis divided into three chapters deals with the national question in China. The first chapter traces the conceptual evolution of the notion of nation, a concept imported into China from the West through Japan, to reveal how Chinese society adapts to this new idea. It demonstrates that the concept of minzu, because of its semantic ambiguity by an ab initio indecisive interpretation, allows political powers to manipulate it for political purposes and meanwhile, il enables ethnic minorities to challenge the legitimacy of power. The indeterminacy makes the concept of minzu a double-edged sword: on one hand the Chinese government is committed to building a nation-state and on the other hand it recognizes and maintains an ancient multinational legacy.  The second chapter first presents the current policies on ethnic minorities in China through a descriptive approach and a critical evaluation. It demonstrates that the system of ethnic regional autonomy, based on political recognition of ethnic minorities characterized by antisecessionism, paternalism and developmentalism, runs counter to what the Chinese Communist Party wanted, namely inter-ethnic cohesion within the Chinese nation. The second section of this chapter examines the contemporary intellectual debate on the national question. Several thinkers wonder about cultural pluralism that would strengthen the ethnic identity of minorities who want to separate if common citizenship is not required. The debate takes place in an authoritarian environment, which leads eventually to an opposition between sectarianism and statism. The last part of the chapter is devoted to a thorough examination of Confucianism. After analyzing the revival of Confucianism as a manifestation of majority ethnic nationalism, it examines the ideas inherent in Chinese philosophy to reveal its political and cultural repercussions on today's identity politics.  The third chapter seeks to explore a solution for managing diversity in the unity. It begins by dissecting the nationalist strategy that the party-state promotes under the guise of patriotism to underpin its legitimacy. The state nationalism, although distanced by majority nationalism, must rely on the dominant group’s culture to represent sinity, which is disputed by both the majority and minorities. Then we move to review different expressions of identity crisis of contemporary Chinese and we demonstrate that a common citizenship is not able to unite the Chinese in an undemocratic China. We then examine the relationship between democratization and the national question. By bringing Habermas’ constitutional patriotism and neo-tianxiaism, an idea drawn from local experiences, we propose in the end that only a Chinese identity built on a new civilization that shall take all the civilizations and cultures present in China into account, shall be shared by all Chinese.  To conclude, China remains a test bed to test the idea of a multinational state and its variants.

Keyphrases: minzu, Chine, national minority, minzu, ethnicity, multinatinonal state, citizenship, China, National minority, Ethnicity, Multinational state, Citizenship, China