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China’s Communist Party
ChinaPolitics

Language rules for Inner Mongolia another step to erode ethnic groups in China

  • Mandarin Chinese requirement part of an assimilation policy to achieve national unity through cultural identity
  • Despite a fall in the number of Mongols being taught in their own language, the move has led to protests

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A protest in Ulan Bator, capital of neighbouring Mongolia, against China's plan to introduce Mandarin-only classes in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Photo: AFP
Linda Lew
China’s latest efforts to speed up the assimilation of its ethnic minorities into the majority Han culture have reached Inner Mongolia, where recent education reforms have sparked protests over fears they will erode the Mongolian language.

Students staged walkouts, parents pulled their children out of school and petitions have been circulating online opposing the introduction of textbooks in key subjects, to be taught in Mandarin Chinese rather than the local language.

The reforms were announced just days before the start of the school term, with new textbooks for language and literature, morality and law, and history classes which will be compulsory across all grades in Mongolian schools by 2022.

China officially recognises 56 ethnic groups and grants a level of autonomy to some, but Beijing made clear late last year that the so-called affirmative action policies for these groups were being scaled back to promote integration into the majority Han Chinese group.

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Mongolians fear loss of languages as China pushes Mandarin at school

Mongolians fear loss of languages as China pushes Mandarin at school

Tibetan and Uygur minority language schools have mostly been eliminated since 2017 and replaced by Mandarin Chinese instruction, in tandem with a Beijing crackdown on dissent and mass detention of protesters and opponents.

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