Preferential Policies for Ethnic Minorities and Educational Equality in Higher Education in China

Abstract

Historically, there have been great socioeconomic disparities and inequalities between China’s minorities and the majority Han. As has been discussed in chapters one through three, after the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, influenced by Marxist national theories, the Chinese government instituted preferential policies for minorities to improve their access to education (for principles for policy making, see chapter two; for specifics on Marxism, see chapter one). However, with China’s transition to a market economy from a centrally planned economy beginning in the 1980s, preferential policies on access to higher education have generated challenges and controversies.