State-sponsored preferential policies for ethnic minorities in the People's Republic of China are among the world's oldest and largest programs, encompassing approximately 110 million people and 55 different minority groups. This paper examines the minority policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1949 to the present, from the perspective of modernization theory, the dominant discourse of economic development during the 1950s and 1960s. The paper gives particular attention to Chinese policies for minority education and a discussion of minority religious and language policies is undertaken to provide a broader context of the position of the government toward minorities. It examines the ways in which the CCP has implemented these policies in its efforts toward modernization. Contains a 26-item bibliography. (BT)