(TibetanReview.net, Mar03’26) – 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.
The report cited a draft of the legislation as saying it is aimed at “forging a sense of community in the Chinese nation”, the catchphrase in any speech on ethnic minority-related issues by China’s top leaders in recent times.
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.
The report cited analysts as saying the move would hasten the decline of minority culture. 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.”
Given this perception, China is concerned over the fact that the US and other western nations have passed legislation in response to the repression in Tibet and Xinjiang where strict curbs on religious practices and mother tongue education have been imposed. Targeting them and others, including those within the PRC, the new legislation threatens people and organisations “who engage in acts that undermine national unity and progress or incite separatism”.
“Ethnic unity and progress shall not be interfered with by external forces . . . under the guise of ethnicity, religion or human rights,” it is stated to say.
The law “will expand the legal basis for restricting religious, cultural and political activities among minority groups”, Neil Thomas, fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society’s Center for China Analysis. Has said.
State media reported earlier that President Xi presided over a meeting last year of the politburo, China’s top decision-making body, that called for the swift passage of this legislation.
It is highly unusual for official media to show the leadership discussing individual laws, the report cited NPC Observer, an independent monitor, as saying.
The law is a stark reversal of policy from the early years of Communist Party rule under Mao until the 1990s, when China espoused a certain notion of pluralism for non-Han people, Weiner has noted.
The new law will institutionalise the dilution of ethnic minority rights President Xi has been implementing since he came to power in 2012 in the name of Sinicizing all things ethnic minority. In continuation of this move, Beijing last year began to exclude Tibetan language as a core subject from the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, in the region.
The report cited Wang Yanzhong, researcher and former director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the government-affiliated China Academy of Social Sciences, as arguing the new law was needed to provide better legal safeguards for the party’s “ethnic work” in order to “maintain the security and stability of China’s border regions and ethnic regions.”
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.
Meanwhile, China’s official Xinhua news agency said Mar 3 that this year’s legislative agenda of the NPC is particularly robust, signaling a focus on long-term institutional development. “NPC deputies are set to deliberate on three important pieces of legislation covering areas including the environment, ethnic unity, and national development planning,” it said.