Exile as Nationality: The Salar of Northwest China
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The reform of state socialism came relatively late to Qinghai Province in the Northwest of the People’s Republic of China. One of Qinghai’s most dynamic groups in the social leadership of reform has been the Salar, one of the officially recognized nationalities identified in the PRC during the 1950s. A relatively small group of some 100,000 people living along the upper reaches of the Yellow River, on the borders of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, the Salar are committed to both Islam and China, and believe that they live in permanent exile. While there is considerable uncertainty about their origins, my recent research in Qinghai suggests that the perspective of being Chinese citizens, yet a people in exile, shapes Salar social and economic activism.