The Ethnic Minority Study Center of China (EMSCOC) is designated as an interdisciplinary and international platform committed to advancing scholarly research, encouraging informed public debates, engaging in development projects, and exploring solutions to social, economic, environmental, and humanitarian issues in the ethnic minority regions of contemporary China. It is administered by Minzu University of China in Beijing as a national project of the social sciences and humanities initiated by the Ministry of Education in 2000. Its mission is not merely to continue research endeavors within the framework of existing ethnological studies at Minzu University but, more critically, to reorient the intellectual wisdom and scholarly resources of the University and its allies toward an understanding of the complex interplay of the interplay between the state, multi-cultural society, and the global forces of change.

The Center supports its scholars and international participants to engage in critical assessments of the ideas and practices of culture, heritage, identity, self, agency, modernity, and economic systems from all conceivable perspectives, ranging from the individual, the tribal, and the regional to the national and the global. It is the Center’s recognition that the globalization of the local and the localization of the global is a worldwide social fact whose implications have invariant manifestations in China, i.e. high-percentage economic growth, high-frequency migration and transposition of human labors and intellectual resources, inter-ethnic tensions due to asymmetrical regional economic development, and the dialectics of heritage preservation and the commercialization of both tangible and intangible heritages.

From a scholarly angle, the Center sees the parallel of the trend of China Studies worldwide with the geographic directions of China’s economic reform and modernization program initiated in the early 1980s. It radiates from the coastal metropolitan centers in eastern China to the agricultural and nomadic regions of western China. Ethno-demographically, it is the Han-majority in eastern China who is drawing the ethnic-minorities in western China into the system of the global market economy. Conversely, it is the ethnic minority regions’ natural resources and cultural heritages upon which the dependency of China’s consumption of energy and cultural products rests. For the last two decades, scholars in China and the West have taken the lead to open new fronts of China studies in various fields of the social sciences and humanities. The Minzu University of China has a long history of facilitating transnational scholarly research endeavors. Its scholarly resources are especially known for expertise in rare languages and area studies of Mongolia, Tibet, Uyghur, Yi, Naxi, and other ethnic regions. With its intellectually rich and supportive environment, the Center warmly invites the participation of international scholars from all countries and regions to join its endeavor.

Currently the Center is undergoing a new structural change adding more global orientation to its existing framework. It is envisioned as a leading global institution facilitating the flow of both international and domestic scholarly endeavors concerning the studies of China’s ethnic minority regions. It welcomes individual scholars and students, universities, independent research institutions, and international development organizations to engage in collaborative research and development projects. Scholars and staff members at the Center hope the newly-emphasized global orientation will invite a fresh wave of interested international scholars, development practitioners, and their institutions to think and work together thematically weaving a new tapestry of experimental theories, innovative models of applied social sciences, and ground-breaking paradigms of development projects concerning both humanitarian and ecological wellbeing of China’s ethnic minority regions and beyond.

The Center would like to orient its intended global attention toward its current creative themes:
· An international advisory board with members from both China and other parts of the world;
· A leading research host for international collaborative projects;
· A global center for applied social sciences and humanities;
· A pioneering initiative for exploring indigenous ecological wisdoms in ethnic minority regions of China as significant contributions to the global effort for the sustainability of our planet earth;
·A digital archive and analytical tools for historical records, geographic data, visual/audio research documentaries, and concerned web contents.
· A school of interdisciplinary field research;
· A multi-disciplinary training base for new generations of scholars and development practitioners with global visions;
·A comprehensive curriculum and teaching resources for a body of international students;
· An international post-doctoral program
· A leading academic journal, in English, bridging scholarly research results with the global public;
· A funding initiative for endowed chairs of distinguished scholars at the Center;
· Annual international conference;
·A periodic public forum for presentations and informed dialogues on current issues in ethnic minority regions.