The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020 85→They also have a much tougher time finding jobs→China’s ethnic minorities tend to be worse off than the Han majoritySources: Hou, Liu and Crabtree, 2019; Quillian et al., 2019; Bertrand and Duflo, 2017; Distelhorst and Hou, 2014; Maurer-Fazio,
2012; government statistics;The Economist *Weighted by study size †One outlier not shown ‡Compared to white peopleMinority population,2010, % of total Life expectancy,2018, yearsNumber of job applications minorities must send to get a response
Relative to the largest ethnic group, 2002-19African/Black,NetherlandsAfrican/Black,United StatesAsian,NorwayMongolian,ChinaArmenian/Azeri,GeorgiaIndigenous,Peru‡African/Black,FranceAsian,AustraliaAfrican/Black,BritainAsian,BritainHui,ChinaTibetan,ChinaMinority: Uighur,Location: ChinaLatin American/Hispanic,United StatesMiddle Eastern/North African,GermanyMiddle Eastern/North African,NetherlandsMiddle Eastern/North African,SwedenMiddle Eastern/North African,France†=1 studyAverage*→Lower relative success1:1 = equality 2:1 3:1 4:11:1 2:1 3:1 4:1In this study a Uighur
candidate had to apply
nearly four times as
often as a Han oneCall-back ratio, log scale0 20 40 60 80 10092% of Tibet’s population come
from ethnic minority groupsXinjiangQinghai
Tibet68 70 72 74 76 78 80People in Tibet have a life
expectancy of 68 years, 12 lower
than citizens of Beijing or ShanghaiBeijingShanghaiI
t is easyto think of China as monolithic.
But the government’s repression in Tibet
and “re-education camps” in Xinjiang, in
which perhaps 1m Uighurs have been in-
carcerated, are reminders that not every-
one receives equal treatment. New re-
search shows that discrimination against
China’s ethnic minorities, who make up
8% of the country’s population, is perva-
sive, even in cosmopolitan megacities.
One common way to measure how
much racial discrimination there is in a
society is by conducting “résumé experi-
ments”, in which researchers send off
thousands of fake job applications and
count the number of responses by ethni-
city. A recent paper by Yue Hou, Chuyu Liu
and Charles Crabtree, three political scien-
tists, applies this method to employers in
China to see how well job applicants of
three of China’s ethnicities fare: the Han,
who are the majority, and Uighurs and
Huis. The latter two are mainly Muslim mi-
nority groups, though the Huis are cultur-
ally much closer to the Han than Uighurs.
The study shows that on average, Hui
job-seekers had to send twice as many ap-
plications as Han applicants do to hear
back, and Uighurs nearly four times as
many. The gap was even greater for highly
educated workers: Uighur candidates who
were in the top 1% academically needed to
send six times as many applications as
equally qualified Han candidates. This dif-
ference was also similar in both smaller
cities and in the provincial-level regions of
Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai. State-
owned enterprises, which have an official
mandate to hire more minority workers,
appeared at least as biased as other firms.
These figures are especially troubling
when placed in an international context.
The Economisttracked down over 100 ré-
sumé experiments conducted in 15 coun-
tries over the past 20 years. These experi-
ments have mainly been done in Western
countries where research funding is readi-
ly available. Still, we find that Tibetans and
Uighurs in China have a much tougher
time looking for jobs than minorities in
any other countries with reliable data.
Unemployed minorities in China hop-
ing the state will help might well be disap-
pointed. One study, also based on a
randomised experiment, found that gov-
ernment officials were 33% less likely to re-
spond to information requests about a
cash-transfer programme for the poor if
they were signed with a Uighur name. 7China’s ethnic minorities have an
especially hard time finding jobsCall me maybe
Graphic detailDiscrimination in China