For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.

Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.

The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

  • jpreston2005@lemmy.worldEnglish
    186·
    1 day ago

    While the text of the law doesn’t seem especially egregious, we’ll have to wait and see how it is enforced. The treatment of minorities by China in the past has been fraught with… well imprisonment, torture, and erasure of their communities. Kind of like the US and Canada, but worse and on a bigger scale.

    Probably just more of the same, honestly. My biggest concern is this:

    and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.

    So, uh, any Chinese national, anywhere in the world, does something they don’t like, they come after you? yeeeeeeah, that’s gonna be a No from me, dog.