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.
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.
What do you even do think Han is? lol To think that this law is a tool of Han supremacy is to ignore that it doesn’t actually encompass the idea of ethnicity as it exists in the West. Most people that would be identified as Han do not share an identical culture or even language. What this law talks about ie “the common language” is a construct created by many people who spoke other Chinese languages first. It’s wild how ready you are to speak with such authority about a country you seemingly know next to nothing about.
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?