He also said he believes that the government mistakenly associates anti-Han sentiment with the paucity of jobs and material wealth.
Han Feizi thought differently.
Nationalism has become more important as a unifying ideology in both countries, expressed either in the form of the clericalism and anti-German sentiments of the Kaczynski twins in Poland or the Han chauvinism and anti-Japanese sentiments so prevalent in Chinese chat rooms.
And as in other areas where ethnic minorities have been restive—Inner Mongolia and, especially, Xinjiang it hopes immigration by the majority Han Chinese will swamp nationalist sentiment.
This sentiment recurs in Han Feizi, a text that expresses with utmost clarity its belief that every member of the elite like any member of society pursues his own interests (cf. Goldin 2005: 58–65; 2013).
The Open Constitution Initiative (OCI), operated by several Weiquan lawyers and intellectuals, issued a paper in May 2009 challenging the official narrative, and suggesting that the protests were instead a response to economic inequities, Han Chinese migration, and religious sentiments.
These sentiments manifested themselves in the Han court in the form of the pro-war faction, who advocated the reversal of Han's policy of appeasement.
He was dethroned and killed eight years later, and Han-dynasty rule was restored.The next ruler, Emperor Guangwu, took a different approach, studying rumours as a barometer of public sentiment, according to a recent book "Rumours in the Han Dynasty" by Lu Zongli, a historian.
As a Korean-American, I can understand the author's sentiments, including the cultural remorse and Korean-specific emotions like han and hwa-byung.
Given the heightened surveillance here, it is not always easy to tease out unvarnished sentiments from either the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, or the Han, who make up 96 percent of China's population.
Economic development of the region under Communist rule has been accompanied by large-scale immigration of Han Chinese, and Uighur allegations of discrimination and marginalisation have been behind more visible anti-Han and separatist sentiment since the 1990s.
