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kept, rather than the simplified Dai script which has been in use for some time.
One of the strongest historical divisions between the Han and non-Han peoples in southern China has been that marked by the ability to write and to possess a form of writing, which 37 of the national minorities are listed as not having, and many groups which traditionally lacked any form of writing, such as the Hani and the Hmong, have legends attributing the loss of an original form of writing to the persecutions of a dominant, literate, majority population (in the Hani case, the Dai, in the Hmong case, the Chinese). Since literacy has historically been so strongly associated with the state in China, and since education has remained for so long an unattainable ideal for the minorities, we can, I think, understand something of the jealousy with which those groups possessed of an indigenous form of writing have guarded it, and those who have not, have, wherever possible, adopted one.
In the Chinese context, there could be no more adequate emblem of ethnic identity than the possession of a unique form of writing, and the importance currently attached to minority writing systems leads not only to important conclusions about the sense of ethnic consciousness among many of the minorities, but also points clearly to the quasi-religious significance with which some forms of writing can be invested. It is particularly significant in this regard that no fewer than ten writing systems have been invented for minority nationalities, while two others have been reformed and romanization introduced for a further two (Hsieh 1986), since this is in accordance with the original Article 53 of the 1949 Common Programme adopted by the Chinese People's Consultative Committee that ‘all minority nationalities shall be free to develop their own dialects and written languages'.
Economic liberalisation
The fourth major trend evident in the development of the minority nationalities has resulted directly from the abolition of the people's commune system and the economic reforms introduced into the countryside. While the growing disparities between rich and poor (officially sanctioned in the notion of encouraging some
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kept, rather than the simplified Dai script which has been in use for some time.
One of the strongest historical divisions between the Han and non-Han peoples in southern China has been that marked by the ability to write and to possess a form a writing, which 37 of the national minorities are listed as not having, and many groups which traditionally lacked any form of writing, such as the Hani and the Hmong, have legends attributing the loss of an original form of writing to the persecutions of a dominant, literate, major- ity population (in the Hani case, the Dai, in the Hmong case, the Chinese). Since literacy has historically been so strongly associat- ed with the state in China, and since education has remained for so long an unattainable ideal for the minorities, we can, I think, understand something of the jealousy with which those groups possessed of an indigeneous form of writing have guarded it, and those who have not, have, wherever possible, adopted one.
In the Chinese context there could be no more adequate em- blem of ethnic identity than the possession of a unique form of writing, and the importance currently attached to minority writ- ing systems leads not only to important conclusions about the sense of ethnic consciousness among many of the minorities, but also points clearly to the quasi-religious significance with which some forms of writing can be invested. It is particularly significant in this regard that no fewer than ten writing systems have been invented for minority nationalities, while two others have been reformed and romanization introduced for a further two (Hsieh 1986), since this is in accordance with the original Article 53 of the 1949 Common Programme adopted by the Chinese People's Con- sultative Committee that ‘all minority nationalities shall be free to develop their own dialects and written languages'.
Economic liberalisation
The fourth major trend evident in the development of the mi- nority nationalities has resulted directly from the abolition of the peoples' commune system and the economic reforms introduced into the countryside. While the growing disparities between rich and poor (officially sanctioned in the notion of encouraging some
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