China has approved a new law that claims to help promote “ethnic unity,” but critics say it will further erode the rights of minority groups.
On paper, the law aims to promote integration among the 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, dominated by the Han Chinese, through education and housing. But critics say it cuts people off from their language and culture. The law mandates that all children should be taught Mandarin, starting before kindergarten and continuing until the end of high school. Previously, students could study most of the curriculum in their native languages, including Tibetan, Uyghur, or Mongolian.
“The law is consistent with a dramatic recent policy shift to suppress the ethnic diversity formally recognized since 1949,” Magnus Fiskesjö, an associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University, said in a university report. “The children of the next generation are now isolated and brutally forced to forget their own language and culture.”
The National People’s Congress in Beijing argues that teaching the next generation Mandarin will help their job prospects. Government officials also state that the new law is crucial for promoting “modernization through greater unity.”
The law provides a legal basis to prosecute parents or guardians who may instill what it describes as “detrimental” views in children that would affect ethnic harmony. The law also calls for “mutually embedded community environments” that some analysts believe could result in the breakup of minority-heavy neighborhoods.
“This focus on development and prosperity is telling,” Ian Chong, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore, said. “It’s easy to read this language as meaning that minority languages and cultures are backward and impediments to advancement.”
BBC (3/12/26) By Laura Bicker