The leader’s nationalist effort to meld ethnic groups, an agenda increasingly central to his rule, is seen as a bulwark against internal divisions and threats from the West.
By Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang and Joy Dong
Oct. 11, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
“Across Tibetan villages in southwest China, Communist Party officials have been spreading the top leader Xi Jinping’s gospel of national unity: that every ethnic group must fuse into one indivisible China with a shared heritage dating back over 5,000 years.
Thousands of officials in Ganzi, a Tibetan region of Sichuan Province, have been paired with families to collect information and give out gifts of rice, cooking oil and beatific portraits of Mr. Xi — all to hammer home his message of an encompassing Chinese identity, from Xinjiang in the west to the contested island of Taiwan in the east.”