Narrative ‘Self-Grasping’ and Ontological Insecurity: Beijing’s Sinicisation of Tibetan and Uyghur Histories

This article interrogates the Chinese state’s pursuit of ontological security (OS) through the Sinicisation of history, conceptualised as narrative self-grasping. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy and ontological security theory, it argues that China’s quest to achieve existential stability by constructing a coherent, teleological national self – the Zhonghua minzu – paradoxically generates deeper existential insecurity. Through an analysis of Chinese historiography and Tibetan and Uyghur counter-narratives, the article demonstrates how the state’s effort to dissolve historical plurality into a singular story of national identity provokes narrative resistance. Tibetan narratives of sacred descent and distinctive history and identity, and Uyghur historiographies of endurance and moral remembrance collectively expose the fragility of the state’s existential project. By juxtaposing the state’s narrative totalisation with Buddhist critiques of attachment to illusory identity, the study reconceptualises OS as the capacity to dwell with narrative contingency rather than real ising, mastering or denying it. The article thus advances an alternative understanding of security grounded in ontological humility and plural coexistence, revealing that the more the state narrates itself into permanence, the more unstable its being becomes .