Lixiang Jin (김리향)

Under the same national ethnic policy, China’s minority communities have formed their boundaries in strikingly different ways. This article asks what produces that variation, and analyzes the mechanisms through which minority groups develop boundary-changing strategies as they navigate the tension between the desire to enter mainstream society and the decline of their own ethnic communities. Using the cases of ethnic education among the Mongols, Koreans, and Uyghurs, I develop a typology of boundary change. Before the Reform and Opening era, institutions had a decisive effect, and all three groups adopted strategies consistent with institutional change. Afterward, their strategies diverged according to each group’s power distribution and symbolic boundaries: boundary crossing and blurring predominate among Mongols; crossing, maintenance, and blurring among Koreans; and crossing and maintenance among Uyghurs.

This paper examines how ethnic minorities negotiate and practice national and ethnic identities after migration. While immigrant identity research has moved beyond methodological “groupism” toward transnational and hybrid identities, less is understood about how migrants who were already ethnic minorities in the sending country navigate their identities when they interact simultaneously with co-nationals of other ethnicities and with co-ethnics from other nation-states. Drawing on 53 semi-structured interviews with Korean Chinese (ethnic Koreans with Chinese nationality) in Flushing, New York, this paper discusses a paradox of belonging: why Korean Chinese identity appears homogeneous from the outside yet remains internally diverse in how people interpret and enact “Chinese” and “Korean” affiliation.

The findings are as follows. First, state nationalism in China produces strong political identification as “Chinese,” even as cultural distinctiveness persists. Second, although emotional attachment to South Korea is limited by status hierarchy and political ideology, everyday interaction is embedded in Korean networks, producing interdependence between the Korean and Korean Chinese communities in New York. Third, Korean Chinese are close to the Korean community yet lack formal membership, while retaining political eligibility in the Chinese community despite loose interaction. This position has prompted new Korean Chinese organizations that model Korean associations while strategically maintaining independence amid the political sensitivities of the United States, China, and South Korea.

When a state’s policies change ethnic practices, how does an ethnic group respond? This paper examines Korean Chinese responses to China’s ethnic curriculum reform and ethnic-language regulations in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Korean Chinese are ethnic Koreans with Chinese nationality who migrated to China from the late nineteenth century through 1949. The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, located in Northeast China, has certain rights of self-governance, such as using Korean as an official language in schools and public communication. The ethnic language policies, implemented mainly in 2019 and 2021, aimed to replace Korean-language textbooks and Korean-medium instruction with Mandarin and to regulate the use of Korean within the autonomous region, including changes to public signage requiring Chinese to be placed before Korean.

This paper asks how state policies reshape ethnic discourse and how interpretations differ between local state-affiliated media and public media outlets. In October 2026, 2,551 WeChat articles (2016–2026) from 243 accounts were collected through Korean-keyword searches on Sogou WeChat. Embedding-based topic modeling and a sentence-level response typology were applied to 8,551 sentences on language, schooling, and identity.

Preliminary findings are as follows. First, local state media reproduce central government statements; their discourse is ethnic in form but national in content. Korean-language official media, nominally the community’s own voice under regional autonomy, have become amplifiers of central statements. Sentences endorsing the “Chinese national community” rose from 2019, and sharply after 2021. These media depict learning Chinese well as a means of promoting national unity within a framework of ethnic solidarity.

Second, public discourse remains diverse but shows few significant changes before and after the policy reforms. On one side, people attribute the loss of Korean language and education to urbanization and accept the curriculum reform pragmatically as a way to master Mandarin and integrate into mainstream society. With the Korean Chinese population declining due to emigration and low birth rates, Korean has become less useful as a language. As Korean communities rapidly weaken, the reforms appear to evoke grief over cultural loss rather than direct political opposition. On the other side, people affirm the value of the Korean language for its own sake, but rather than contesting state policy, they turn it into a private heritage maintained by families rather than schools. Parents have found alternative ways to continue Korean education, such as sending children to weekend Korean-language schools. Even some arguments supporting Korean education frame it as contributing to national unity within China’s ethnic policy framework, reflecting a sense of belonging to China that extends to identity itself.

However, the data do not allow us to conclude whether the absence of direct criticism reflects acceptance of the policy or awareness of government censorship. Overall, despite significant constraints on public expression, diverse perspectives remain evident. These findings show what being an ethnic minority means under the political force of national unity and pragmatic calculations about preserving ethnic language. The paper further suggests that ethnic autonomy in China is understood less as a political right than as a symbolic system of ethnic recognition.

• Literature review: Reviewed the historical background and contemporary experiences of Asian American groups, especially East Asian Americans.
• Data collection: Gathered data primarily for the economic chapter, focusing on the AANHPI informal economy, labor precarity, workforce characteristics, and small businesses.
• Draft revision: Refined wording, rewrote selected paragraphs, and checked the accuracy and consistency of cited data.

• Recruitment and fieldwork: Recruited participants, scheduled and conducted interviews, and conducted fieldwork, including attending the opening event of a Korean Chinese association.
• Transcription: Transcribed interview recordings.
• Qualitative coding: Coded interview transcripts using ATLAS.ti.