No, the Quebec law and this Chinese law are not comparable. It's an invalid comparison because the two laws aim to do fundamentally different things.
Quebec's Bill 21 is very simple and straightforward law. The law basically does 3 overarching things:
- Face coverings ban - All public services have to provided and received without face coverings to ensure safety and neutrality. The only face covering allowed are ones required by the service provided or ones related health situations.
- Religious symbolism ban - This ban ONLY affects public employees in authoritative positions (school teachers, judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison guards, etc.) from wearing any object for religious purposes or is reasonably considered religious in nature while on active duty. This regulation only applies to wearables, it does to people's bodies or what they choose to do with them. So things like tattoos of religious symbols, shaved heads, long beards, and even things like the Hindu bindis are not restricted in any way under this law.
- State secularism - The law officially declares Quebec to be a secular and neutral state, mandating that all public lands, property, institutions, and funds must be kept strictly secular. Meaning that schools funded with public dollars, can't force religious diets on students (halal, kosher, etc), government agencies can't be used to advocate for any religion, public spaces can't be used for things like public calls for prayer.
Whether you agree or disagree with this law is irrelevant. What matters in this conversation is what it does and who it affects. This law exclusively applies to the state itself. In other words, this is law is just a reiteration of secularism in the province. It does not affect the general public, it does not impose on the private lives of any citizen, it does not target or favor any religion, and the entirety of the law is based universal secular principles. This law doesn't restrict identities and beliefs, it protects them by making sure that the state respects all faiths equally and remains neutral.
The Chinese law is completely different. From what I gathered from this article and a couple others, the law does the following:
- All 56 recognized ethnic groups are required to assimilate into a single national identity based around the Han majority.
- Mandarin is now mandated to be the primary language of instruction in schools everywhere, thus removing the choice to teach in local languages.
- Educational curriculums must have heavy ideological elements that actively promote the Communist Party, Chinese patriotism, and strong sense of the Han Chinese identity.
- Parents are legally required to teach their kids to love the Communist Party and the Chinese people.
- Strictly prohibits any acts that are deemed "undermining ethnic unity" or "creating ethnic division". This is kepty intentionally vague so the CCP can have a legal avenue to prosecute minority activists, dissenters, and independent cultural practices. Essentially setting the stage for ethnic cleansing.
- The CCP gave itself power to prosecute any Chinese organizations or individuals in diaspora around the globe that they deem to be undermining their efforts at ethnic unity. They're basically claiming ownership of citizens of other countries just because they're ethnically Chinese, thus overriding the soverignty of other countries.
This law is as draconian as it gets. The Chinese government wants to enforce the CCP approved version of the Han identity on everyone, everywhere, at all times by force. The law applies to public employees, private citizens in their private lives, and even to non citizens around the world. The CCP is not neutral, they are playing favorites with ethnicities, and they vocally want to erase the ethnicities that they don't like.
This law is inherently different from the Quebec law. This law has nothing to do with secularism or religion, and it's implementation and enforcement is completely different. These two laws aren't comparable. This Chinese law is infinitely more tyrannical, insane, evil, and dangerous. It goes well past just being racist, this is some really spooky shit.