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.
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.
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.
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.
Watch as Americans without a shred of irony decry this and then demand people in our country speak English.
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.
America is not a monolith, one group could say one statement and another say the other.
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!
There’s no way to define “ethnic unity” that doesn’t involve racism and ethnic genocide.
Slow genocide.
So basically like all of history
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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
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.
The One Chinese Policy, everyone is Han Chinese now. Your individuality and your history is to be erased.
The same people who scream “speak American” will have a problem with this.
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?
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.
I know that, I’m saying I assumed the ccp was forcing them to learn mandarin all this time already
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.
I found this amusing: all the American LLM systems I fed the translated text to for a take refused to reply, calling the topic “prohibited.”
Stepfun3.5 (locally) had no problem, and surprisingly, neither did GLM 5 over their web UI; it went and double checked the Chinese translation, in fact, and said it’s “difficult to square with international human rights norms,” along with any LLM’s usual hedged approach. I’ll put the conclusion slop in a spoiler, but here it is:
spoiler
### 5.2 Major concerns and criticisms 1. **Language and education: heavy assimilation bias** - The law’s strong emphasis on Mandarin as the national common language, and on unified teaching materials, is widely seen by outside observers as **curtailing minority-language education**. - BBC and other analyses note that it mandates Mandarin-medium education from pre-school through high school, replacing previous policies that allowed many subjects to be taught in Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian, etc.【turn1fetch2】 - While Art. 15 formally says minority languages are protected, the **practical effect** is likely to be further erosion of those languages as living languages of education and public life. This raises serious issues under international human rights standards on **minority language education and cultural rights**, even if Beijing argues that Mandarin improves job prospects and national unity.【turn1fetch2】 2. **Ideological uniformity and freedom of expression** - The “five identifications,” the obligation to love the CCP and the motherland, and the restrictions on parents transmitting views “not conducive to ethnic unity” (Art. 20) go far beyond typical anti-discrimination or hate-speech rules. - They effectively **mandate a specific political and historical narrative** and can be used to penalize dissenting views on history, politics, or religion. - This is hard to reconcile with robust protections for freedom of expression and belief, even if one accepts that every state promotes some national narrative. 3. **Potential for misuse and overreach** - Concepts like “undermining ethnic unity” or “ideas not conducive to ethnic unity” are broad and can be interpreted flexibly by local officials, especially in a context where the judiciary is not independent. - The combination of: - vague prohibitions, - extensive supervision and reporting obligations, and - penalties for failing to stop “wrongful” behavior creates a strong **incentive to over-enforce**, for fear of being accused of laxity. 4. **Impact on minority communities and identities** - Policies promoting “mutually embedded” communities and Mandarin dominance can improve mobility and opportunity, but they can also **dismantle concentrated minority neighborhoods** and weaken the social base for distinctive linguistic and cultural practices. - Scholars and exile organizations argue that this is part of a longer-term **“Sinicization” campaign** to reshape minority identities around a CCP-defined Chinese nation identity.【turn2search0】【turn2search1】 That’s why many see the law as **“legalizing assimilation”** rather than simply promoting equality and unity. 5. **Extraterritorial reach and foreign criticism** - Art. 63 claims jurisdiction over overseas organizations and individuals who target China with actions undermining ethnic unity. - From Beijing’s perspective, this is a defensive move against foreign support for separatist or critical movements; from outside, it looks like an attempt to **export censorship** and intimidate critics abroad. --- ## 6. Overall judgment If I step back: - **Legally and institutionally**, the law is a significant step: it elevates “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation” into a fundamental legal principle and tries to align every part of the state apparatus around that goal. - **From a development and stability angle**, it strengthens tools for reducing regional inequality and managing ethnic-related risks, which could enhance social stability and long-term development—**provided** implementation is restrained and rights-protective. - **From a human-rights and pluralism angle**, it clearly **prioritizes unity and commonality over diversity and minority rights**. The language and education provisions, ideological requirements, and broad prohibitions on “harmful” views will likely deepen fears of cultural erasure and political control, especially among Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, and other smaller groups.【turn1fetch2】【turn2search0】【turn2search1】 So my view is: - As a **state-building and governance instrument**, it’s coherent and ambitious. - As a **framework for genuine ethnic pluralism and minority rights**, it leans heavily toward assimilation and control, and is difficult to square with international human rights norms, even if it formally commits to equality and non-discrimination. If you’d like, I can next map out specific “trade-offs” (e.g., unity vs. diversity, development vs. cultural rights) in a table or draw out a comparison with China’s earlier autonomy-based system.I’m not a tankie. I’ll make fun of Sam Altman as an idiot all day long.
…But it is interesting how Chinese open-weights LLMs, for all their obvious gaps and kool-aid of their own, seem to be quite “uncensored” compared to American ones.
It’s… not a good sign.
If you post very long blocks like that I think it’s considered polite to use a spoiler tag
I did use a spoiler! I think:
edit: Is it not showing up in a particular UI?
Oh. I guess sync didn’t render it automatically then.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Don’t the US, Canada, and Australia have similar laws?
Yes, but all these countries have politicians who say they feel bad about it
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.
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You can tell by the moral blindness.
Mandating it might be a bit too much but everyone should try to learn the language of the country they live in. China’s not crazy for this though
