China’s ethnic policy chief says minority artists must focus on common national identity
- Pan Yue criticises one unnamed Tibetan-language film for not giving the Communist Party enough credit
![Chinese President Xi Jinping, pictured on a visit to a Tibetan Buddhist temple in Qinghai earlier this year, has stressed the importance of the “community of the Chinese nation” in policies towards minorities. Photo: EPA-EFE](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1020x680/public/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/05/27bb17dd-de9a-4259-85ef-b79328d05cdc_e201886f.jpg?itok=0xpSPie0&v=1722849498)
China’s top ethnic policy official has criticised “self-centred” artworks about ethnic minorities and said that they should focus on the common national identity.
As an example, he criticised an unspecified Tibetan-language movie for only focusing on the spiritual world while not giving Communist Party credit for building the region’s infrastructure.
Pan Yue, director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, made the remarks last month in a speech at a meeting of the Junma (or Steed) Ethnic Minority Literary Awards.
The speech was published on Friday at China Minzu News, an official outlet focused on Beijing’s ethnic policies.
Pan, who is ethnically Han, said he had observed a “disconcerting trend” in recent years where ethnic minority artworks were swayed by “Western multicultural theories”.
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