In the name of promoting inter-ethnic harmony, China is to force dozens of ethnic minorities within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to assimilate into Han-dominated society by enacting a landmark law during the upcoming fourth session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) which opens on Mar 5. The law will require ethnic minorities to use Mandarin Chinese as their main language of instruction, overturning decades-old policies that date back to the era of Mao Zedong, noted ft.com Mar 3.
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The sweeping law marks the latest effort in a signature “Sinicization” campaign under Chinese leader Xi Jinping and prescribes legal action against anyone, inside or outside the country, who undermines “national unity” or provokes “separatism”.
The so-called Han majority accounts for more than 90% of the PRC’s population of 1.4 billion and the country’s constitution recognises 55 ethnic minorities, and a dozen languages — some with their own written scripts — and hundreds of dialects.
Under the new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, while minority languages may still be taught as a second language, groups such as Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongolians will no longer be entitled to use their native tongues for core subjects in schools and universities, the report noted.
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The new law “overturns the multicultural promises upon which China was founded”, moving from “an idea of unity through difference or unity through pluralism, to one of unity through sameness, through the elimination of difference”, Benno Weiner, a historian of modern China, Tibet and Inner Asia at Carnegie Mellon University, has said.
“The conclusion that Xi Jinping and others seem to have come to is that diversity is dangerous.”
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Worryingly, one clause in the new law is cited as saying only the state has the right to promote “a system of symbols of Chinese civilisation”, which can be used “in public facilities and architectural design, scenic area exhibitions, place naming and public activities”. Such policies, if enforced, meant there was “no way” that non-Han people would be able to safely express “any type of discontent without being accused of being essentially separatists or terrorists,” Weiner has said.
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That’s already how it works in most (might be all) of Europe.
What Europe are you talking about??????? Because its definitely not in the Europe I'm in.
Minority people are very much entitled and do use their native language in schools and universities.
Belgium has dutch, french and german as its official langauges, each region teachin in the region's langauge. Minority language communities have their own full school systems. Finland's nationa languages are finnish and swedish; swedish-natives have the legal right to FULL education in their native tongue. There's Swedish-langauge schools all over the country. Spain - basque, catalan, galician. Similar shit. Switzerland - german, french, italian and romansh - all national languages. Even the french, who go crazy about their language shit, still have breton and basque language schools. Romania, hungarians being the largest minority, there's lots of hungarian-focused schools. German as well. Ukrainian, serbian, slovak, turkish. Uk - welsh, gaelic, and irish. Sweden - sami, finnish, romani and yiddish. Italy - german, french and slovenian.
I could talk all day. Not only is the opposite the reality about Europe, its definitely how it should be and its one of the things that Europe and the EU do right.