Issue of Chinese zhuang people's ethnogenesis in foreign historiography

The People's Republic of China is by its constitution a multinational state with 56 nationalities. Han is the largest nationality in China and Han people take approximately 95 % of PRC's population. Nevertheless the rest 55 nationalities have together around 100 million of people and present great variety of languages, religions and customs. The article is devoted to the issue of Zhuang people ethnogenesis. Zhuang people are far the most populous ethnic minority among the 55 ethnic minorities, which are now officially recognized by the PRC government. The majority of Zhuang population of 16 million of people live in Guangxi-Zhuang Autonomous Region, or GZAR. The region was established in 1958 by the decision of the PRC government instead of former Guangxi province. Despite the fact that Zhuang people are numerous, there is a relatively small number of scholars doing their research on Zhuang issues. The goal of this article is to explore and clarify the question of Zhuang ethnogenesis. In ancient and modern Chinese historiography there were at least 5 versions of Zhuang's origin. 1. They came from the East, from Hunan and Guangdong. 2. They came from the Nort h, Shandong or Hunan. 3. They came from Southwest, from Sichuan. 4. The Zhuang are product of assimilation of Han people and local non-Han peoples. 5. They are indigenous people of Guangxi region. The sixth version of Zhuang origin is stated by some Western scholars. They claim, that Zhuang people are constructed identity created deliberately by PRC government to oppress possible separatism in the region of Guangxi and Guangdong, which is far from Beijing, and is critically important from political and economical prospectives. The sources for the article include the wide range of articles and books on Chinese, English and Russian languages. Some of them are rarely or never used in Russian historiography. Apart from articles by Chinese authors, the literature sources include masterpiece work by Jeffrey Barlow and Huang Xiangfan which are classical for Zhuang studies. The question is still remaining controversial to some extent, but the most sustainable version now is that Zhuang people are local inhabitants and are indigenous people of the region. The main theoretic founding of the article is that Zhuang people are to some extent "constructed" identity, but they are not fictive identity, and "constructed" in this case means "formed in contact with Han" but not "created by the Chinese government right after the PRC itself appearance". It is stated that no government can create a national minority of such population with such range of intra-group varieties without any pre-existing conditions and features of a separate minority like language, common traditions, culture, habits, etc.

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