This month, China’s National People’s Congress passed a new law for “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”. This law plans to integrate 56 officially recognised ethnic groups through educational and housing programs, mainly by promoting Mandarin as the official “national common language”. On the surface, what appears to promote “ethnic unity” is deeply problematic to the minority group who have been increasingly marginalised throughout the history of China. However, the Chinese government, defends this bill, arguing that it promotes “modernisation through greater unity”.
The new law mandates that all educational institutions, from kindergartens to high schools, must teach in Mandarin. This regulation overlooks schools that traditionally taught in various languages, such as Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian, effectively sidelining these cultural practices. Magnus Fiskesjö, an associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University, expressed his concern, stating, “the children of the next generation are now isolated and brutally forced to forget their own language and culture.”
Another aspect of the law categorises the dissemination of “detrimental” views to children as a criminal act, particularly when it impacts the “mutually embedded community environments.” Instead, this law forces parents to “educate and guide minors to love the Chinese Communist Party”. This can be seen as a restriction on the expression of culture. This further ratifies the accusation made by ethnic groups in Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other regions across China.
The real motive behind this law is to assimilate all regions and cultures into the dominant Han culture, which already accounts for 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people. Other regions have faced regressive and harsh policies meant to undermine their human rights. A monk in Tibet told BBC correspondent Laura Bicker that, “we Tibetans are denied basic human rights. The Chinese government continues to oppress and persecute us. It is not a government that serves the people.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk voiced his concern over the law, stating that “this risks entrenching assimilationist policies in statute, restricting minority-language education, and limiting free practice of religion and culture”.
The implications behind this law are significant, as it complicates the efforts of ethnic minorities to preserve their culture and language while resisting government pressure. The government appears to be consolidating its power with an emphasis on Han culture, which poses a threat to the diversity of ethnic identities. This trend towards the assimilation of ethnic minorities, often referred to as “sinicisation,” goes back to the 2000s. The recent law seems to be another step in Xi Jinping’s strategy, risking children’s connection to their cultural heritage and linguistic roots. Furthermore, it raises concerns about the early indoctrination of children into the dominant Han Chinese culture, which could lead to the complete erasure of their own customs.
