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to a significant general trend in the recent development of the national minorities. If economic liberalisation continues, it is possible that this will lead to a reduction in the type of religious revivalism described above, since this has already occurred in the Dai areas of the Xishuangbanna.
It was Mao Zedong who first defined the nationalities question as a class struggle, and under Mao that the policy of allowing the minorities to develop at their own level was first outlined. It is clear that relations of class have not disappeared, either between the national minorities and the Han population, between national minorities themselves, or within particular ethnic groups. The questions which are likely to prove useful for future research on the national minorities of China, both for Chinese and for foreign researchers, are, therefore, the effects of state policies of economic liberalisation and ethnic unit classification on local distinctions of class and ethnicity, and the precise role of religious and cultural factors in this process.
NOTES
1
3
1 MILE = 1/15 ha.
Terms in parentheses refer to self-appellations.
My fieldwork among the Hmong of Thailand was conducted from April 1981 to October 1982 with the assistance of the Social Science Research Council and the Central Research Fund of the Univ. of London.
The Third Plenary Session of the Party's 11th Central Committee was held in 1978.
REFERENCES
Cohen, A. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1969).
Fei, Hsiao-tung. 'Ethnic Identification in China': Social Sciences in China, March 1980.
Fitzgerald, C.P. The Southern Expansion of the Chinese People (Barrie and Jenkins, London 1972).