114 Part II: Outsiders
Moreover, there are long-term processes by which people change from one
ethnicity to another. The 1.16 billion Han Chinese did not achieve those num-
bers solely by outreproducing the other 55 ethnic groups. Over centuries, peo-
ples from other groups have deliberately “Han-ified” themselves as a self-
conscious strategy to raise their status and local influence by taking on the cul-
tural practices of the dominant ethnic group of the Chinese state. This process
of assimilation or acculturation is sometimes encouraged by the state and
sometimes resisted by it. An example of the latter is the stigmatized boat peo-
ple of Guangdong Province, who were required to register as non-Han “Dan”
people. There was tremendous social pressure against any effort to pass oneself
off as Han, yet many tried to do just that. The 1561 Records of Guangdong Prov-
ince gives a typical characterization of the Dan boat people:
The Dan people are peculiar in that people of the same surname inter-
marry, in that they do not wear hats or shoes, and are foolish, illiterate, and
ignorant of their ages.... In recent years, those who live in the center of
Guangdong are beginning to learn to read. [Some] have moved ashore and,
having attached themselves to registered households, are themselves regis-
tered in the same way as commoners. There are even some who have suc-
ceeded in the examinations. (Ye Xian’en 1995)
In other words, through accumulating wealth, investing in land, and acquiring
an education, some were beginning to turn themselves into Han. But this effort
was not always successful, and there are records of ex-Dan being convicted and
punished for falsely claiming to be Han.
On the other hand, the state often puts considerable pressure on people to
assimilate to the dominant culture. The 1945 constitution of Indonesia
describes the 1.5 million tribespeople on their 13,000 islands as having “social
life, economic performance and level of civilization below acceptable stan-
dards” (Burger 1987:142). The state views its mission as bringing these people
up to acceptable standards. The dominant center of Indonesian power is Java,
where 141 million people, or 57 percent of the entire population, live on 7 per-
cent of the land. People on other islands have their own distinct cultures. It was
only the Dutch Empire that gave legitimacy to Indonesia and established dom-
inance from Java. Official Indonesian policy insists that the many distinct eth-
nic groups are one political, economic, cultural, and defense unit. The state
actively promotes “transmigration” to resettle Javanese in other areas, such as
in Irian Jaya, the western half of New Guinea. The population of Irian Jaya is
Melanesian, having vastly more in common linguistically, culturally, and his-
torically with people on the eastern half of the island in the independent state
of Papua New Guinea than they have ever had with the Javanese.
China even in prerepublican and prerevolutionary times had a similar
viewpoint, as Stevan Harrell writes:
That the attitude of the late Imperial (Ming and Qing) Chinese state toward
its peripheral peoples can be characterized as a civilizing project, we have