Since the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, China’s ethnic policies have been focused upon the provision of “autonomy.” However, scholars have held different views regarding how the implementation of ethnic autonomy in China has fluctuated over time and by groups, and what indicators can best demonstrate these variations remains debatable. The lack of concrete measures of ethnic autonomy in China further impedes cogent explanations for these longitudinal and inter-group variations. By consulting the literature of comparative decentralization and federalism, in this paper I propose some plausible measures of ethnic autonomy, including the proportion of ethnic cadres in subnational autonomous government entities, the number of newly-established subnational autonomous entities, and the number of subnational autonomous, separate, and supplementary ethnic regulations. I will analyze the strength and weakness of each of them and briefly discuss other possible measures. They shall help future scholars conduct further comparative studies of ethnic politics in China and other multi-ethnic states.
