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.
A single unified culture, the stated intent of this law, means erasing the minority cultures. It’s no secret that Beijing does not let Tibet do what Tibet wants, just ask the 14th Dalai Lama.
People love to conflate the Dalai Lama with the people of Tibet.
He was plucked from a rural Chinese village as a child and turned into the head of Tibet’s theocracy. At the time Tibet was a miserable feudal backwater. The vast majority of the population were oppressed, illiterate peasants. It may not have been as bad as the Chinese government claims, but every account from outside observers talks about the deprivations in Tibet.
Today Tibet has almost all children in compulsory bi-lingual education and the people have many more job options than tenant-farmer. The fact that the Dalai-Lama lives in a temple in India instead of Tibet makes no difference to the lives of Tibetans.
Well then it’s a good thing China swooped in and saved them from savagery!
Nah. It’s fucked up when Western colonial expansion absorbs people against their will and it’s fucked up when China does it.
You still seem to think that the will of the Dalai Lama is at all related to the desires of the people of Tibet.
Aside from a CIA funded uprising half a century ago, there’s no evidence at all that China “absorbs people against their will.”
The 9-dash line? Not to mention the border disputes with India.
Nowhere does the law imply the creation of a single unified culture. You’re just making that up. Only fascists think that national unity and multiculturalism are in conflict. What’s actually in this law suggest that China thinks the exact opposite, that national unity requires the protection of minority cultures.
Also why do you take this self proclaimed theocratic in exile to be the representative of the people of Tibet? It genuinely makes no sense.