China, despite being the world’s fourth largest economy, remains a developing country with GDP per capita of $1,740 and with 135 million people living on less than a dollar a day. China has the world’s biggest ethnic minority population (106 million people), and this population is disproportionately poor, including 46% of China’s entire population still in extreme poverty. China owes much of its cultural wealth to the unique diversity of its 55 recognized ethnic minority groups, yet these minorities risk becoming increasingly vulnerable without the capacity and opportunities to access the benefits of China’s overall development.
China is strongly committed to lifting its minorities out of poverty. It is investing substantial domestic resources to this end. In 2001 it issued a Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy, giving the State an obligation to support accelerated development, which Premier Wen Jiabao recently recommitted to implementing. And support for ethnic minority development is strong in China’s 11th Five Year Plan, covering 2006-2010.
China is looking to the UN for a diverse, cross-sectoral range of international advice and expertise to enable it to move to an increasingly rights-based approach to development for minorities. This is the key comparative advantage of the UN Country Team’s cross-sectoral team. With this support, China’s domestic investments will be deployed to even better effect, accelerating the achievement of MDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 for 106 million people and making a substantial impact on global MDG indicators.
China’s minorities have been hampered by a combination of forces – in part historical, geographical and environmental. But they have also been constrained by poor education provision, in which teaching materials – and staff – in local languages and locally-tailored teaching methods and curricula have not been widely developed. Poor health status of minorities is a second key constraint. An acute challenge is in maternal and child health, where poor outcomes are a result of restricted access (for both distance and financial reasons), and of service provision not tailored to local cultural needs. The third key constraint has been in employment, where minority languages are little used and where discrimination and labour rights infringements are barriers. Ethnic minority women have suffered multiple discrimination in each of the above areas: as women, as minorities, and as a result of some traditional practices.
China’s minorities also need support to take greater advantage of their own cultural heritage. While China and its partners have sought to protect cultural heritage, there has been less focus on using it as a route to development. There has been relatively little mapping of tangible and intangible heritage, and minority communities and their governments have lacked capacity to manage and promote it, particularly in three specific areas. First, in domestic and international tourism, for which there is currently limited planning and limited benefit for communities. Second, in the minority arts and crafts sector which has yet to realize its potential as it has lacked benefits of scale and a strategy for value chain development. A better enabling environment for the sector is also needed, such that enterprises can inter alia benefit from stronger copyright protection. Similar opportunities and constraints also apply to creative industries, the third key sector.
Across all the above areas, minorities have suffered from having little capacity or opportunity to participate in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of development policies. For all the areas above, the programme will therefore combine capacity building for improved service delivery, access and utilization with specific rights-based actions to empower minorities – particularly women – to participate in development, and to enable authorities to bring minorities into decision-making.
The programme will work to build capacity and shape policy in government, but a major focus will also be to pilot new culture and rights-based approaches in selected counties across the five provinces as a prelude to scaling up. This approach will bring all agencies together into one UN effort to address all the constraints and opportunities in the same places at the same time.
China’s UNDAF places the UN strongly in this area. It has specific focus areas on reducing disparities in access to services, and on respect for the rule of law in connection with minorities. The UN works closely with relevant Ministries, provincial governments, civil society and the private sector. The Country Team has ongoing work in – inter alia –building leadership in Qinghai, Yunnan and Xinjiang, revitalizing ethnic minority languages, and reducing workplace discrimination. Each of the pilots previously undertaken has been rolled out by Government. These ongoing programmes have built trust between the UN and Government that allow us to provide support in an area which has often not been appropriate for other donors.
