James Leibold (La Trobe) - Xi's Agenda for Coercive Nation Building in Inner Mongolia
Channel: Nathan Hill
Date: 2021-11-19

James Leibold (La Trobe University) - Taming Mongolia: Xi Jinping’s Agenda for Coercive Nation Building in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region

Friday 19 November, 11am-noon

Inner Mongolia has long been considered the “model autonomous region” by Chinese Communist Party leaders. Its first Chairman Ulanhu played a crucial role in designing and implementing the Party’s “first generation” of progressive nationality policies, only to be purged during the Cultural Revolution. During the 1980s he was rehabilitated and together with his son Buhe helped to draft the 1984 Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy that re-established and strengthened these policies. Yet, over the last decade there have been calls for a “second generation” of ethnic policies that emphasis collective national belonging over ethnic peculiarities. Inner Mongolia is once again a frontier of contestation over Xi Jinping’s new agenda to “forge the collective consciousness of the Zhonghua nation/race” through more assertive and coercive nation-building policies. In this talk, Professor Leibold will provide an overview of the battle for Inner Mongolia, and the Party-state’s concerted efforts to tame and transformation the region since 2012. 

 James Leibold is a Professor and Head of the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra where he current leads the Xinjiang Data Project.