Re the non-minority "Han", they're really a mishmash of ethnicities and languages. (If we're really lucky, they'll discover nationalism and split into the dozens of countries they were thousands of years ago, and we'll be spared the major confrontation that is coming in the decades ahead).
The Cooked and the Raw: A Dark Chinese History
The Middle Kingdom and 4 Barbarian idea was created during the early Zhou Dynasty 1046-256 BCE.
Once upon a time, there lived the Middle Kingdom (Huaxia 華夏). They boasted themselves as the most civilized empire of the world, and everyone else were considered Barbarians. The Dongyi 東夷 “Eastern Barbarians”, Nanman 南蠻 “Southern Barbarians”, Xirong 西戎 “Western Barbarians”, and Beidi 北狄 “Northern Barbarians”.
One year, the Emperor had an idea. Expand and civilize the barbarians into his civil subjects. He would propagate hundreds of thousands of troops to conquer, and “civilize” them to dress, act, eat and behave like his subjects, and bow to him as their emperor.
He called it, “The Cook & The Raw“ assimilation campaign. He would send his armies to these "Raw” barbarian villages, and “Cook” them. If they became cooked, they became his subjects. Those who didn’t want to be “Cooked”, were the “Raw” ones.
Ancient Ming Dynasty Military Garrison in Guizhou.
The Middle Kingdom would build military garrisons to watch over them, and build large Great Walls to keep the barbarians as boundaries. They even built more walls to separate and split the people apart, banned them from writing, and gave them uniforms so that they will never reunite as an entire civilization again.
“Southern Great Wall” built in the Ming Dynasty in Hunan.
Villages were plundered and burned down. Men were tortured and killed, Women and Young Girls were raped and sold off as slaves, and Boys were castrated to become eunuchs for the Emperor.
But some villages were lucky, and had their men sent off to fight against other “barbarians” (For example, Hainan island), where they never returned home. And local ethnic women of the land were encouraged to marry Middle Kingdom soldiers, raise Middle Kingdom children and adopt Middle Kingdom culture and languages.
Of course, after 5,000 years later, over hundreds and hundreds of these “barbarians” and their culture, writing and languages would become extinct through genocide and massacre, and occupied and replaced by the Middle Kingdom. DNA in many Southern Chinese show Northern Han Chinese paternal linage, and a mix Southern Ethnic ‘Chinese’ maternal linage.
Those who escaped became recognized as the “Official 56 ethnic groups of China”, with hundreds more undocumented and unrecognized. They are the today “Raw”.
And those who became “Cooked”, became the Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, Fujian, Shanghainese, Hunanese, Yunnanese, Sichuannese, etc. etc. and became “Han Chinese”. Koreans and Vietnamese were mildly cooked.
There were many prior ethnic rebellions in Southern China that eventually would inspire the Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty.
Today, the new “Cook & Raw” method still continues. Many cultures and ethnic groups in China are quickly being displaced. Mandarin is replacing Shanghainese and Cantonese speaking provinces. Muslim Uighur women are banned from wearing hijabs, and through Chinese government monetary sentiments, Han Chinese now make up the majority ethnic group of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
