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:
If it were actually about language and communication, that bit wouldn’t be there.
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.
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.
There are restrictions on teaching the Tibetan language. This seems like an authoritarian move, not an educational one.
https://thetibetpost.com/news/tibet/china-imprisons-tibetan-monk-for-six-years-for-teaching-tibetan-language
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/22/activist-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-for-promoting-tibetan-language
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.
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
Does Spain prosecute Parents that teach about catalan?
Spain routinely kidnaps Roma children from their parents.
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.
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.
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.
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.