Established in 1947, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region became the first autonomous region in the Chinese liberated zone. Xinjiang was made autonomous in 1955 after the PRC's founding, and Guangxi and Ningxia were made autonomous in 1958. Tibet was annexed by the People's Republic of China in 1951, and was declared an autonomous region in 1965. The designation of Guangxi and Ningxia as Zhuang and Hui autonomous areas, respectively, was bitterly protested by the local Han Chinese, who made up two-thirds of the population of each region.[citation needed] Although Mongols made up an even smaller percentage of Inner Mongolia than either of these, the ensuing Chinese Civil War gave little opportunity for protest.[2]
Legal rights
Autonomous regions in China have no legal right to secede, unlike in the Soviet Union – the Law of the People's Republic of China on Regional Ethnic Autonomy, written in 1984, states that "each and every ethnic autonomous region is an inseparable part of the People's Republic of China," and that "any form of... separatism... is absolutely prohibited."[3][4][5]
Public goods and services
In general, China's minority regions have some of the highest per capita government spending on education, among other public goods and services.[6]: 366 Providing public goods and services in these areas is part of a government effort to reduce regional inequalities, reduce the risk of separatism, and stimulate economic development.[6]: 366
^Dreyer, June Teufel (1997). "Assimilation and Accommodation in China". In Brown, Michael Edward; Ganguly, Šumit (eds.). Government Policies and Ethnic Relations in Asia and the Pacific. MIT Press. p. 365.
^"First Union Constitution". Seventeen Moments in Soviet History. 2015-08-27. Archived from the original on 2017-01-11. Retrieved 2021-07-07. ARTICLE 4. Each one of the member Republics retains the right to freely withdraw from the union.
