Ethnic China is the collective endeavour of 17 scholars, all originally from China, and most trained in American or Canadian universities. Covering a wide range of topics, from political elite debates during the Qing dynasty to the status of women in Xinjiang today, the contributors are primarily social scientists and historians. Though the strength of the chapters is uneven, taken as a whole, the book provides an interesting snapshot of how the state, intellectuals and ethnic communities intersect.

The book is divided into three sections. Each of the three chapters in part one uses an historical approach to studying issues of perception, definition and identity. Xiaoyuan Liu examines the tensions that began during the Qing dynasty between territorial and new national conceptions of the state. Detailing debates between Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Wang Jingwei and many others, Liu argues that the debate over what role frontier and ethnic people should play in the modern national state has yet to be fully resolved. Patrick Fuliang Shan coins the term “elastic self-consciousness” to explain the near disappearance of those claiming Manchu identity in 1949 and the surge in numbers doing so beginning in the 1980s. Shan draws from a wealth of Chinese and English sources focused on the Manchu, though the chapter should note similarities with other ethnic experiences in China and engage more deeply in the broader literature on ethnic identity formation. Also focused on intellectual debates in the waning years of the Qing dynasty, Yufeng Mao examines the vision key reformist Hui Muslims had for the future of China as a nation-state, showing that most supported a multi-ethnic China and nearly all advocated for a representative government offering equal citizenship to all. She draws from a wealth of scholarly writings and journals found in both China and Japan in the late Qing period.

The second section on policy and marginality moves to a focus on contemporary issues, including the status of women in Xinjiang, ethnic tourism in Yunnan, and challenges facing the Hui under the Open up the West Campaign of 2000. Oddly, this section also includes a chapter titled “The Protestant Church shortage and religious market in China,” which does not once mention ethnicity or ethnic issues. Mei Zhou and Xiaoxiao Li's chapter on the status of Uyghur women in Xinjiang, though replete with interesting statistics, reads more like a Chinese Communist Party report than a scholarly analysis. Particularly troubling is the conclusion, which notes among other similar points, that “Han people in Xinjiang are used to tolerating imbalanced and different policies between them and the ethnic minority people…[but now] Han people strive for equal treatment” (p. 96). Needed citations are also missing in the chapter. Linda Wang's interesting chapter on cultural tourism in Naxi and Mo-so areas insightfully concludes that “tourists are almost encouraged to misconstrue the meaning of the surviving Mo-so cultural tradition in the absence of proper social contextualization” (p. 121).

The final section is titled “Relations, confrontation, and solution.” The first two chapters deal with religious issues. Jieli Li and Lei Ji's chapter on Hui Muslims concludes that Han–Hui positive relations disprove claims that Muslim communities are inherently problematic to a non-Islamic society. The tone of this essay seems similar to Zhou and Li's chapter, and seems quick to blame the Uyghur for being “unwilling and reluctant to answer the government-initiated campaign for “Opening up the West”… which is supposed to benefit them directly” (p. 164). Absent from the analysis as to why the Uyghur people are more resistant to the state than the Hui is any mention of Party policy culpability. By contrast, Xiaobing Li's examination of current policy in Tibet concludes that “key issues causing the religious riots include limited political participation, unequal economic opportunities, inequitable development and inadequate protection of Tibetan people…” (p. 190). Qiang Fang seeks to explain the escalating violence in Xinjiang and Tibet since the late 1980s. Though his chapter compiles a useful and fairly detailed summary of CCP minority policy since 1921, he is wrong to claim that no others have ever done so (p. 200). He need only consult the work of Pittman Potter among others to find the “linear and comprehensive analysis of the CCP's law and policies toward minorities” he seeks (p. 200). The final chapter by Guangqiu Xu provides a useful, though not necessarily new, overview of US policy toward Tibet.

The book contains a number of factual errors (that “Xinjiang is the only province in the country where the ethnic population outnumbers the Han Chinese,” p. 11 for example) and could use another round of careful editing, but overall will be useful for undergraduates, graduates, and scholars interested in a wide variety of contemporary issues placed in historical context.