Ethnic integration and spatial segregation of the Chinese population

Abstract

Because of the overwhelming numerical dominance of the Han within the Chinese population and the highly localised distributions of most minority groups, it is difficult to assess the level of either segregation or ethnic integration in China in a systematic or meaningful manner. Previous studies have either been limited to mapping the locations of minority groups or have been based on provincial data, which for analytical purposes are too coarse to characterise the geographical distribution of minority populations at the sub-provincial level. In this paper, county-level data were used to calculate a diversity index for each county to illustrate the level of ethnic diversity. The results of these analyses indicate that high levels of diversity for a particular province are limited to a specific geographic region within it (especially along the international boundary and in some mountainous areas), rather than characterising the province as a whole. The approach used in this paper also employs a new measure based upon the idea of a standard deviational ellipse—a measure that is used to evaluate the level of spatial segregation between ethnic groups. An index illustrating the degree of spatial correlation between ethnic groups was derived for each province using county-level data. The results indicate that, although major population groups in southern and western China display a low level of spatial correlation (i.e. they are highly segregated), these same areas nevertheless exhibit relatively high levels of ethnic diversity.