- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
China has approved a sweeping new law which claims to help promote “ethnic unity” - but critics say it will further erode the rights of minority groups.
On paper, it aims to promote integration among the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, dominated by the Han Chinese, through education and housing. But critics say it cuts people off from their language and culture.
It mandates that all children should be taught Mandarin before kindergarten and up until the end of high school. Previously students could study most of the curriculum in their native language such as Tibetan, Uyghur or Mongolian.
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I’m Basque, we are “forced” to learn Spanish too since it’s a co-official language in out autonomous region of Spain.
This post might sound alarming to monolingual people, but for any multilingual that had to learn both official languages AND english, watching people complain about schools requiring extra languages is embarrassing.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the post, it doesn’t imply that most lectures need to be in Mandarin, only that the kids need to be taught the language, right?
Edit: I read the post. The language thing doesn’t matter, what’s alarming is actually this:
The law also provides a legal basis to prosecute parents or guardians who may instil what it described as “detrimental” views in children which would affect ethnic harmony and it calls for “mutually embedded community environments”.
If it were actually about language and communication, that bit wouldn’t be there.
There are restrictions on teaching the Tibetan language. This seems like an authoritarian move, not an educational one.
Imagine quoting “the Tibet post” seriously, an Indian tabloid whose official stance is the defense of the “Tibet government in exile”. This would be like using a Russian-based “Marie Antoinette post” defending monarchy in France as the legitimate system.
How do you feel about the guardian? I concede I didn’t vet the original link, but if you need to use “imagine” as an argument you aren’t capable of the very critical thinking you’re criticizing.
Two circular links in The Guardian without primary sources. I wonder why Zionist media would lie to me about China!
Firstly, they didn’t quote anything. Secondly, it’s very clear what they said is true no matter what they linked as proof of that. As per the other reply and if you’d have taken a few minutes to look up what other articles have said, it’s not wrong. I agree that it wasn’t a good choice but you’re apparently dumb enough to think that absolutely anything reported/said by something or someone bad must be untrue. Everything, no matter who and where it comes from should be looked at through facts and not “bad person/thing said something so it’s automatically untrue”.
Secondly, it’s very clear what they said is true
Source: Zionist media that would totally not lie to me
As per the other reply and if you’d have taken a few minutes to look up
Go ahead, tell me what’s the trend of Uyghur speakers in China versus Occitan speakers in France. Give me the fucking hard data if it’s so obvious
you’re apparently dumb
No need for ableism
absolutely anything reported/said by something or someone bad must be untrue
“Noooo how could the Zionist war machinery be lying to me :((((”
Everything, no matter who and where it comes from should be looked at through facts
Facts: pre-communist Tibet was a literal feudal kingdom in which Tibetans were serfs legally bound to the lands of their lord, with outrageously low life expectancy, close to zero literacy, amd massive poverty. Now it’s a thriving province in a multiethnical country and even has a higher degree of autonomy under the Chinese system due to belonging to the Tibet Autonomous Region. You’re quoting the fucking spiritual heir or Buddhism, not any fucking serious source
Catalan here, always funny to see monolinguals be shocked when China does it but turn around and see nothing wrong with Spain imposing Spanish to all its regions in the same way
If Spain doesn’t get in line on the Iran War, I’m confident we’re going to start getting stories about how we need to liberate Catalonia soon enough
Shit.
Does Spain prosecute Parents that teach about catalan?
Spain routinely kidnaps Roma children from their parents.
I think it varies in parts of Xinjiang, but in at least part of it, along with most of the rest of China, most school instruction is in Mandarin.
Everyone still speaks their native languages, but they speak mando to chinese from other places. The kids know a few english phrases too for some reason.
It’s rarely about the actual letter of the law and more about the vague wording and standards that allow it to be enforced in a bigoted way.
Except they literally won’t allow non-Mandarin families to teach their own cultures’ languages or histories. That’s not something I read second hand either, that’s from talking one-on-one with a Uyghur linguist that was given special recognition by an international linguistics organization for his efforts to save the language.
Yeah, I covered that in the edit. That’s horrible and alarming.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the post, it doesn’t imply that most lectures need to be in Mandarin, only that the kids need to be taught the language, right?
You are misunderstand it (and the BBC article is also very unclear about it). Learning Mandarin was already mandatory, it’s now about making Mandarin the default.
I’m Basque, we are “forced” to learn Spanish too since it’s a co-official language in out autonomous region of Spain
All co-official languages of the Spanish state are co-official in all of the state, this is state policy and not just in specific autonomous regions.
Your critique comes from a good place as a people whose culture and language have a history of repression under fascism, but you need to understand that the history of China is the polar opposite of that: the communists won the civil war against the fascist Kuomintang. They’ve had and still enjoy a level of cultural diversity unseen anywhere in Europe for the past century, especially Spain as I say because of our fascist history.
Trying to extrapolate the centralist repressive policy of Spain to a country as different, huge and diverse and China is simply bad analysis based on unfortunately wrong starting points. As a silly example, ethnic minorities in China were exempt from single-child policy.
If you want an Uyghur person’s perspective on this, I suggest you watch this short video. Please listen to actual minority voices within China instead of listening we western-manufactured hate campaigns.
You didn’t read past my first paragraph man. You completely misunderstood the point I was making in the first half of the comment. I’m clearly making a similarity to then expand by saying that I don’t feel like it’s a problem for the official language to ALSO be learnt, and that for any multilingual person such a thing being complained about sounds silly.
Your “alarming edit” is the thing I’m mainly responding to. What do you have to say to that Uyghur national?
Watch as Americans without a shred of irony decry this and then demand people in our country speak English.
America is not a monolith, one group could say one statement and another say the other.
I’m decrying this AND the racists that demand everyone speak English in America. The American racists will probably say that this is fine because it’s Chinese governing Chinese, so long as they stay in China.
I think it’s a good opportunity for language submersion. They can still speak their native language. Me friend taught her two kids to speak Japanese. They speak English at school in the US. I wish we had more immersion opportunities here. I didn’t read the article so, I’m sure I’m missing the detail that warrants everyone’s reaction though. It could be a good thing if they aren’t being shitty simultaneously.
They’re a global super power. They’re going to be shitty about it.
dude, I knew an old German woman who immigrated after WW2 to the US.
she straight up started yelling at the Mexicans speaking Spanish that it’s disrespectful to not speak English in the US.
it’s not just Americans doing it…
Spanish is an American language (as is French, and lots of indigenous languages, also the Amish might disagree with her).
It’s because we’re living in a post American assimilation world and they don’t realize that happened. But my grandparents would talk about how they’d be slapped on the hands with rulers for speaking Cajun French and now it’s a dead language. This law feels like the first step to a similar cultural assimilation.
See, China’s peacefulness and benevolence are on full display providing conquered peoples free education, and re-education!
Anything can be true when you read Zionist media and take their word!
Slow genocide.
So basically like all of history
There’s no way to define “ethnic unity” that doesn’t involve racism and ethnic genocide.
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terrifying
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In the US, all children are required to take English classes from kindergarten and up until the end of high school. There are no alternatives offered, if a student can’t speak English, then they are at the very least offered ESL classes in addition to their regular English courses, but they still must take those courses and pass in order to get a diploma
While I don’t actually think that mandating the official national language as a class in schools is at all a problem (or a new idea), your argument is blatant whataboutism. Something cannot be justified merely by comparing it to somewhere else (especially the US, I might add).
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That’s your best comeback?
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I’m not ML by any means, but I don’t really see the problem here? Schools are for learning useful life skills, etc. Surely learning the official language of your nation is a very useful life skill to have? Mandating that kids be taught a language does not mean forcing them to unlearn their native language.
I’m not sure how the Uyghurs and Mongols came under Chinese power, but Tibetian people were captured by force. They have autonomous states each, where they could decide to just collectively learn Mandarin if they thought it was something they wanted.
If the autonomy of these states are being infringed by this law, then that is a problem. In that case, I think the reduction of autonomy is far more concerning than the particular curriculum change.
It’s giving me native boarding school vibes. First they separate you from your language and force you to use theirs
I mean that’s clearly very bad, but the bad thing in particular in that scenario is separating you from your language, which afaik isn’t happening here? At least not yet?
Pattern recognition, this is how it starts
It’s not like they are separate problems, but both part of the same push where minority nations are being assimilated and stripped of indentity.
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Bold move, criticizing someone you never heard’s pronunciation of a language whose people you’ve never met.
If you wanted to change that, anybody can go to xinjiang or kazakhstan and talk to the people. Its really easy unlike Tibet, you can just go there.
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You are making some wild jumps in logic.
Learning another language is not “destroying a culture”, this is a dog whistle of hardcore conservatives who are afraid of diversity. What would be destroying a culture, would be forcefully restricting the use of the native languages, such as forbidding the use of the native languages in schools. But I am not aware of this happening, nor was I arguing in support of that in any way.
Also, justifying a curriculum choice in schools is a far leap from justification of colonialism. I am very much against the forced subjugation of native peoples, but that is not the topic.
overall good points, but I’d like to expand on the one about forbidding languages at educational institutions:
a ban isn’t even necessary to expediate the decline of a language; it’s often enough to simply defund it.
teachers need funding, and simply not giving any to other languages or other cultural curriculum is effectively the same as a ban.
few schools and administrations would shoulder the costs of “extra” curriculum, because few have the funds to do so, particularly when it comes to minorities…
source: am part of such a minority (in central europe though) and our state actually sponsors extra language classes, courses, and cultural clubs, activities, and events in order to preserve our unique identity and culture.
it’s still trending towards extinction though, as such minorities tend to do…
tl;dr: no need for a ban, just withhold a bit of funding and it will die out within a few generations…
That’s fair, but it assumes that mandating one language means that the other language will be defunded. Is that happening here? I think ideally both languages (national language, native language) would be funded and studied
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Did you read my messages at all? As stated, I very much oppose the colonisation and forced subjugation and assimilation of native peoples, including in Australia. But I do not think that English being a mandatory subject in Australia is a bad thing.
Is the idea of someone knowing more than one language, so foreign to you?
The actual struggles of the uhigurs is entirely alien to either what western media makes up or just imagining China is copying western imperialism despite having different material pressures.
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Its not an english word lmao would you rather I spell it using the alphabet they use?
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Everyone being able to speak a common language is good actually.
Which is a false equivalency to a state forcing a minority group to learn the majority language.
Forcing? Do you think parents should be allowed to remove the kid from those classes? Just send them out in the world unable to communicate with anyone outside their hometown?
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Ask the indigenous people how much they liked learning to speak the common tongue
Yes, teaching english is what’s wrong with what was/is being done to indigenous communities. Absolutely nothing else.
Yeah …notice I said “learning”, not “being taught”. Maybe the rest of it that I left implied is what happens when you force people to learn your language? Didn’t think I’d have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children to make them learn English for you to understand an implied point, but here we are.
How do you think they’re going to make these people learn Mandarin? Do you think they’re going to ask nicely? Or are they going to do the same thing every dominant colonial culture tries to do to its minorites?
Didn’t think I’d have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children
That is precisely why I referred to it that way, so you’d have to spell it out the dumb implication you’re making.
How do you think they’re going to make these people learn Mandarin?
Same way they teach math and science lmao.
It would be nice if we could speak a common language, yes. Then you’d be able to use it to read the article that was linked instead of a single paragraph excerpt and realize the new law is not just about the language.
The One Chinese Policy, everyone is Han Chinese now. Your individuality and your history is to be erased.
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This is very similar to the Native American genocide.
The one where Colonial European settlers were literally marching into Indian communities and massacring them?
Umm for the most part that was just the colonialists and later on the US when it was created. The actual Europeans were not always that horrible (except the Spanish ofc)
That China is following these same genocidal blueprints is no surprise considering their embrace of fascism.
The actual Europeans were not always that horrible (except the Spanish ofc)
What makes the Spanish worse than the Dutch, English or French? All enacted genocide where they arrived, brought in slaves from Africa, and funnily enough there are more native people left in the Spanish regions (Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala) than in the English-controlled ones, the Anglos were more thorough in their genocide.
We were talking about the Native American Genocide specifically. The US was absolutely genocidal whereas other European countries were actually respecting treaties and not always trying to steal lands like the US and British.
US is of European origin though, but sure
The actual Europeans were not always that horrible
Trying to explain this in Cherokee.
The Cherokee Genocide was almost exclusively attributed to the US. I do understand that the US came from Europe of course.
This is very similar to the Native American genocide.
In China it was the Communists who walked the death march.
In North America, unlike South America and Tibet or Xinjiang, the people don’t look native. It’s not very similar.
In China it was the Communists who walked the death march.
I was unaware communists were an ethnic group. But I guess if their predecessors had a hard time in a civil war 80 years ago it means they can’t be racists now.
In North America, unlike South America and Tibet or Xinjiang, the people don’t look native. It’s not very similar.
Ah yes, let’s set state policy based on what people look like.
it means they can’t be racists now.
It means they didn’t do death marches to genocide their population. It’s just a historic curiosity that they did one to themselves.
There were famines which could be used for genocides. Maybe you find something there.
set state policy based on what people look like.
The logic works in the other direction. The look shows past policies. But looking at prison numbers, race still seems to be an issue.
Yeah, I have huge doubt that this law won’t be used to crush any cultural diversity to make a mono culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system
Despite current views that might define the system of residential schools as racist or genocidal, many scholars contend that they were seen as progressive at the time, a form of state intervention.
The school system was created as a civilizing mission to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture.
During their stay many students were forced to assimilate to Euro-Canadian culture, losing their Indigenous identities and struggling to fit into both their own communities as well as Canadian society.
These acts assumed the inherent superiority of French and British ways, and the need for Indigenous peoples to become French or English speakers, Christians, and farmers.
In 1894, amendments to the Indian Act made attendance at a day school, if there was a day school on the reserve on which the child resided, compulsory for status Indian children between 7 and 16 years of age. The changes included a series of exemptions regarding school location, the health of the children and their prior completion of school examinations.[
The introduction of the Family Allowance Act in 1945 stipulated that school-aged children had to be enrolled in school for families to qualify for the “baby bonus”, further coercing Indigenous parents into having their children attend.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission list three reasons behind the federal government’s decision to establish residential schools.
- Provide Aboriginal people with skills to participate in a market-based economy.
- Further political assimilation, in hope that educated students would give up their status and not return to their reserves or families.
- Schools were “engines of cultural and spiritual change” where “‘savages’ were to emerge as Christian ‘white men’”.
It’s China. The ethnostate. The country known for acting solely in the interest of the ethnostate.
You should just assume it will be used to crush cultural diversity.
The country known for acting solely in the interest of the ethnostate.
Glances at Japan
Yeah… pretty sure South Korea is very xenophobic as well.
It’s China. The ethnostate. The country known for acting solely in the interest of the ethnostate
Meanwhile, in China there are entire regions with extra political autonomy like the Xinjiang autonomous region or the Tibet autonomous region, with a higher degree of political freedom than most Han-majority regions. But knowing this would require that you base your criticism of China on actual reading and not reddit comments
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But when Spain or France does the same to its own minorities nobody cares
Ah but the difference is they’re white and as we know it’s ok when white people do anything actually evil but when nonwhite people especially from the global south does anything it’s always evil.
The difference is that Spain, or especially so France (Occitan isn’t even an official language), actually carry out this policy, whereas this is manufactured bullshit that people are taking at face-value from Zionist media.
The same people who scream “speak American” will have a problem with this.
I assumed this was always the case in China, didn’t they create mandarin with the sole purpose of making everyone learn it
China is a very large country and a lot of different ethnic groups. You don’t see them because they have no mobility, aren’t featured in Chinese media and the CCP really doesn’t like them. Their idea of cultural “unity” is to convert everyone to Han.
Have you ever watched TV in china? It is full of representation of different ethnicities.
I know that, I’m saying I assumed the ccp was forcing them to learn mandarin all this time already
Question: how often do you watch Chinese media? I personally visited China last year and in their National History Museum they have constant mentions to many different ethnicities even if they didn’t belong to China proper at the time
Han groups have like 100+ non-mutually-intelligible languages.
Historically, it’s been a largely regional split with Cantonese in the West and Mandarin in the East.
China’s been something of an outlayer in supporting as many languages as it does.
Don’t the US, Canada, and Australia have similar laws? Kinda crazy China took so long to stoop to our level
EDIT: I have since learned that public schools in the US are not required to teach in English, so you can cross the US off that list! My bad!
EDIT2: I just googled it, and it turns out it is required. Back on the list it goes!
EDIT3: I’ve had to explain multiple times in the comments that I’m not talking about teaching immigrants the local language, but teaching the native population the language of the colonizers. The US, Canada, Australia all arrived somewhere where there were already people, like Polynesians, Inuits, and Aboriginals, and in their public school, they’re all taught in English. It’s disheartening to see how little people think of the native population of these countries, and it shows how effective the native American genocide was.
No, it’s actually a very important point that there is no national language in the US.
And no, the EO from 2025 is not legally binding and is more symbolic than anything.
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Genuine question : why do requiring a earnest effort to learn the language of the country a bad thing?
There is a shit ton of bad things about our immigration laws, but forcing immigrants to learn the local language isn’t one of them.
Language barriers isolate people and learning the local language helps reduce the isolation, benefiting everyone.
They didn’t move there. They were conquered. That’s called cultural genocide.
The post I am replying to is specifying Canada, US and Australia. Not China.
I agree that assimilating vs integration is a different thing.
I specified those countries (and not, for example, Germany or France) because they are settler colonies. I’m not talking about immigration.
So we should only expect immigrants to learn the current local language only if the country they immigrate to isn’t a colonialist country?
I am not talking about immigrants, I am talking about the native population. The Uyghurs, Tibetans, Polynesians, Inuit, Aboriginals are not immigrants.
Learning a language in itself is not a bad thing, as long as you have a lot of support and mix with the locals, but mixing it with integration politics, the R word will start to rear its head: by endlessly raising the bar to a fantasy “native” level of the target local language in business hiring, that a coded word meaning they don’t want expats. While the government is simultaneously pulling public funding away from language schools. Oh no, you will never be one of them. Realistically, you will also need some years to be at a native level; the pressure is real.
I actually don’t think having a main language in a country and offering education in that language is a bad thing per se.
But I don’t like hypocrisy, and if someone’s upset at the Chinese for teaching in Mandarin I need them to be just as upset at Australia, Canada and the US for doing the exact same thing.
What hypocrisy?
The discussion conflates a lots of things. So to be clear :
We are talking about someone moving to a new country, not a country invading another country and forcing them to learn the new language to assimilate them.
We can be mad at China for annexing Tibet for example, forcing them to learn mandarin and forbidding them to talk to their native language.
But if I decide to go live in China, then it is not far fetched to expect me to learn mandarin, regardless of its history. It is two different things.
Context matters.
I live in Canada. Should we make real efforts to restitute Natives? Absolutely. Does that mean that we can’t expect new immigrants to learn the current local language because of our past?
We can’t change the past, but we can make better in the future and integrating new arrivants is necessary and beneficial for everyone.
Why can’t I move to China and assimilate into the Uighur or Tibetan population, if that’s something I really want to do? Why does only the dominant imperialist ethnicity get to expect immigrants to learn the language? Maybe it should be the opposite. Maybe every Han person who moves to Western China should have to learn Uighur or Tibetan. After all, they’re immigrants.
We are talking about someone moving to a new country, not a country invading another country and forcing them to learn the new language to assimilate them.
I’m not talking about people moving to a new country at all. Polynesians didn’t move to the US, the US invaded their land and forced them to learn a new language. And so on and so forth for the other settler colonies. I am not talking about immigration at all. There’s a reason why I talk about the US, Canada, and Australia, and not for example Italy. They are settler colonies. They moved somewhere and then forced the locals to learn their language.
So folks getting upset about the Chinese teaching Uyghurs and Tibetans in Mandarin in schools should be just as upset at the Americans, Canadians, and Australians for teaching Polynesians, Inuit, and Aboriginals in English in their schools. I hope it’s a bit clearer now, I’m not a great communicator, and I really cannot make the hypocrisy more obvious than this.
Other examples: Norwegians teaching Sami in Norwegian, the Portuguese teaching the locals in Brazil in Portuguese, the Spanish teaching the locals in Chile in Spanish, the English teaching the Maori in New Zealand in English, et cetera.
Nonexamples: the Dutch teaching Turkish immigrants in Dutch, the Germans teaching Moroccan immigrants in German, Italy teaching Slovenian immigrants in Italian, the US teaching Mexican immigrants in English, China teaching Indonesian immigrants in Mandarin. – I am fine with all of these, full stop.
We can be both upset at what our ancestors and parents did and integrate new arrivant within the current state of the society they arrive in.
Both aren’t exclusive. I get what you are saying, but I don’t see that as hypocrisy.
And again, there is a distinction between integration and assimilation.
Holy shit you are so fucking dense. This has nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants. No one is talking about immigrants but you.
Your argument boils down to : If there is history of colonialism, requiring a basic level of the most spoken language is bad. Otherwise it’s good.
Society at large has been multi-cultural for as long as human written history has existed through conquest, war and trade.
There is a possibility to require people to both learn the country’s main language while keeping their culture. I live in a city where that happens on a daily basis and everyone is better for it.
These people are not immigrants? The country of China was created around them and they have the right to speak and use their language as anyone of Han descent might?
Don’t the US, Canada, and Australia have similar laws?
Yes, but all these countries have politicians who say they feel bad about it
but teaching the native population the language of the colonizers
And you don’t think China is a colonial empire that expanded its borders in the exact same way the US or Russia did? Just how exactly do you think China ended up being a majority Han nation ruling over a bunch of ethnic minorities? Skin color or ethnicity is not a prerequisite for imperialism.
You’re putting words in my mouth.
I keep mentioning, over and over, Polynesians, Inuit, Aboriginals AND Tibetans AND Uyghur as examples of native populations forced to learn the tongue of their colonizer. I keep mentioning, over and over, how the situation of colonization in the US, Canada, and Australia is SIMILAR to the one in China. It’s deeply frustrating how much I have to re-explain here. Am I that bad at writing?
It varies by state, but some do require instruction in English. While the US has no official language, most states have English as their official language, which impacts various policies. Schools are federally required to support the education of students learning English as a second language.
Last I checked, only three states (AZ, MA and OK) have required english instruction - only one of them (MA) requires english immersion instead of ESL or bilingual-specific classes, and all three allow for public-funded nonenglish education, just outside the district.
Bilingual and ESL programs are still designed such that the student will learn English though. I’m not aware of a state in which a child can graduate high school without English as a core subject.
In Canada we don’t legally force people to learn English. Legally the federal government MUST provide services in English AND French. Meanwhile, they also offer their many of their services in other languages depending on need and logistics.
So the Inuits get to choose between two European languages. I don’t see how this is better.
Spanish speaking kids get an education too. It’s not malicious. We’re not all monsters here. Just half of us.
Yep, in English, which is what this thread is about. Also, the Spanish kids are not the right comparison. When you think of Uyghurs or Tibetans, what demographics in the US come to mind?
Hint: Public schools in Hawaii teach in English.
Good point. I forgot about that guy going to jail for teaching his language recently. I think he was Tibetan.
No, fundamentally the USA does not.
Garbage journalism from the BBC. They provide no link to the primary source i.e. the text of the law: Ethnic Unity and Progress Law
(my bold)
Article 46: Religious groups, religious schools and religious activity sites shall carry out publicity and education on forging a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people, persist in the direction of sinicization of our nation’s religions, guide religions to adapt to socialist society, guide religious professionals and believers to carry forward the tradition of patriotism, and promote ethnic, religious, and social harmony.
Will children be punished for speaking languages other than Mandarin in schools?
