Chinese scholarly work on ethnic relations

So, today I was helping my friend with her translation of a document into English. Supposedly this will be read in front of Hu Jintao (don't know if it's the English or the Chinese version), but this is just the sort of thing that drives me crazy. Here is a brief excerpt from the paper:

By comparison with the rest of Chinese history, the last fifty years correspond with the best period for the ethnic relations in China; and by comparison with other countries all over the world, China is one of the nation with the best harmonious ethnic relations. Even if China has witnessed many disorders such as the Cultural Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the violent changes of the Eastern Europe, it is still a stable united country. As comrade Deng Xiaoping said: “Our country is united, we solved marvelously the problem regarding ethnicity” (internal speech, 1986), “One of the best characteristics of China is not having a big ethnic dispute" (Deng Xiaoping).

I'm not really going to go into much detail here (and it's probably best that I don't actually post much of the paper), but the rest of the article screams critical thought even more. Although the first half of it is written pretty well, as soon as it actually starts talking about Chinese history, the hands start waving.

If you would care to notice, through a few waves of my hand, I can show that pigs do indeed fly.

Ok, don't get me wrong. What China has accomplished in the last several decades is amazing, and I do respect it. But this summer I was constantly hearing about this continually polished image that completely ignored the rotting internals of what is going on right in front of my eyes. So, I have somewhat distorted, extremist view, that Chinese scholarly writing involving anything to do with ethnic relations defies any sort of common sense. I do understand this is caused by governmental issues. Unfortunately, I lose respect for it. I do wish it had credibility. I think that is China did talk openly about it's problems, it would gain credibility, or maybe some just solutions could be discovered. Or maybe the country would rip itself apart. On one hand, China seems very successful, but on the other it sort of feels like it's coming apart at the seams. I do recognize that these things are a lot of my feelings, and not necessarily backed up with hard evidence to support my claims. One of my favorite quotes from the summer:

"Why did you come to China to study Chinese history? None of it is true." --a Chinese history professor to one of my friends

I think people, especially the Chinese, are very aware of that kind of hypocrisy, but what can be done?

Keeping up appearances