(TibetanReview.net, Nov14’24) –As Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call for Sinicizing Tibet – and other ethnic minority areas of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – continues to gather pace, Mandarin speech competitions are being held at schools and monasteries across the territory. These are combined with tests of the participants’ loyalty and patriotism towards the communist party of China state.
Seen by analysts as another ploy by Beijing to erase Tibetan language and culture, Mandarin speech competitions are now frequently held in monasteries and schools across Tibet, reported the Tibetan service of rfa.org Nov 13, citing two local sources.
The report noted that though there are many dialects of Chinese spoken in the country, as well as many other languages, including Tibetan and Uyghur, Mandarin is the official language and Beijing wants all citizens to use it, with little or no attention paid to preserving the other languages.
“The reality is that young children are being strongly forced into learning Chinese, which is having a significant impact toward the eradication of Tibetan language and cultural practices,” the report cited the first source as saying.
On Nov 9 and 10, some 33 Tibetans competed in the National Common Language Speech Contest in Tibet’s capital Lhasa. The competition was stated to have been so framed to encourage participation from farming and nomadic communities as well as young Tibetans.
As if to emphasize the sweep of the language-Sinicization drive, the contestants were stated to have been divided into five groups: farmers and nomads, infants, school-age children, young adolescents, and adults.
In October, a similar competition was stated to have been held in the southern Tibetan city of Shigatse, with the theme of “Being a loyal and sincere patriot of the new era.”
In Nagchu (Chinese: Naqu) in northern Tibet, monks and nuns were reported to have been made to praise the Chinese Communist Party in Mandarin as a part of “national language” competitions.
The report said that since 2020, China had been imposing stricter restrictions on language rights in Tibet, resulting in the closure of private Tibetan schools and a heightened emphasis on Chinese-language education in the name of standardizing textbooks and instructional materials.
It added that in 2021, authorities also began forbidding Tibetan children from attending informal language classes or workshops during winter breaks. It was in that year, on Dec 28, that China’s Ministry of Education, the National Rural Revitalization Bureau and the National Language Commission issued a plan to promote Mandarin. The stated aim was that by 2025, Mandarin will be spoken and understood in 85% of the PRC and 80% of its rural areas.
This has seen China set up a region-wide network of boarding schools for Tibetan children where they are taught primarily in Mandarin. They are also subjected to political indoctrination while being separated from their parents and homes in a bid to reduce their contact with their native Tibetan language and culture, the report cited activists as saying.
The report cited another Tibetan source as saying, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Tibetans residing in rural areas are now required to speak Mandarin and write in Chinese.
The report cited Chinese state media as saying the main objectives of these language competitions for Tibetans was to promote and encourage the use of the “national common language,” improve the language proficiency of the general population, and showcase the achievements of language work throughout the Tibet Autonomous Region.