Nation building, citizenship education and ethnic minorities in Chinese textbooks

Citizenship education is often assigned a role in nation building as it attempts in part to bridge social divisions within society and foster a more unified national identity. As an element of citizenship education, teaching about ethnic minorities is an imperative to achieve this aim. This article examines how ethnic minorities in China are represented in recent primary and secondary textbooks for political and civic subjects, focusing on the nature of state–minority interrelations. We find that textbooks frame ethnic minorities as patriotic Chinese citizens while legitimizing Chinese rule over them. These findings expand on the past literature emphasizing unequal Han–minority relationships and shed light on how diversity is negotiated and formulated in civic education in a non-western society.