So call out the journalistic bias, or hypocritical behaviour of the BBC. But if the topic in general is brought up in conversation, just pointing to the US as some kind of justification, is definitely whataboutism. It sidesteps actual critical thinking by playing to familiarity: "well if this country does it, then it must be fine!", which is clearly a logical fallacy.

All countries actions should be criticized equally. No countries actions should be justified by being the same as another country.

You do understand that the widely recognized genocide in North America is and has been criticized for this, right? The language deprivation has mostly wrapped up in political terms but a linguistic rebirth is still struggling financially and in many nations/tribes will never fully recover.

China is not being singled out, but called out based on historical familiarity with the process.

It's giving me native boarding school vibes. First they separate you from your language and force you to use theirs

It’s not like they are separate problems, but both part of the same push where minority nations are being assimilated and stripped of indentity.

Yeah ....notice I said "learning", not "being taught". Maybe the rest of it that I left implied is what happens when you force people to learn your language? Didn't think I'd have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children to make them learn English for you to understand an implied point, but here we are.

How do you think they're going to make these people learn Mandarin? Do you think they're going to ask nicely? Or are they going to do the same thing every dominant colonial culture tries to do to its minorites?