Contemporary ethnic identities of China's Oirats and Tuvans: specificity of the PRC's national question revisited

The article examines some specific features of the national question in the People's Republic of China through the examples of ethnic Oirats and Tuvans. The paper illustrates the complicated structure of China-based Mongolic peoples, provides insights into the history of their explorations during the 1950s when the PRC witnessed the shaping of nationalities policies, nation and language building, implementation of the ethnic classification project. The structural registeration of the PRC's population established between 1956 and 1976 dealt with all aspects of China's social life, including that of ethnic composition. The early-to-mid 1950s abounded with ethnographic studies of non-Han peoples and investigations of minority languages. Despite all that, authorities chose to introduce the principle of merging peoples as part of unification policies. A number of Mongolic peoples, including the Turkic-speaking Tuvans, started being officially referred to as 'Mongols'. Nowadays the Chinese government pursues another policy but the idea of '56 nationalities of the PRC' is still there. So, understanding the necessity of official 'Mongolian' identity ethnic Oirats and Tuvans, nonetheless, retain their ethnic identities.