For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.
Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.
The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
Yes I know I’ve read your other comments. It’s the same logic though which is undeniable… The Canadians used exactly the same justifications for setting up the residential schools in the first place to “solve the aboriginal problem” as they saw it. An eerie parallel to China’s domestic “every other culture except Han problem” that they’re solving with this.
This method is tried and true across the world and its exactly how you stamp out other languages and dilute or destroy culture whether that’s the goal or not, just as a consequence of teaching the lingua franca.
The French academy is a good example. Thousands of dialects disappeared because of being required to learn “proper French” as the academy saw it. It worked, which is why there’s far less variation in accents and spelling across France than the UK which took a more organic approach, inadvertently preserving some of the local accents even if the English accidentally wiped out existing dialects due to incentives surrounding employment, along with rail, telegraphy, schooling, and urbanization.
Wiping out competing dialects and cultures is a consequence of industrialization and consolidating the land you have.
Edit: more context and parallels between the residential schools and China’s policy.
Dialects, sure, to some extent. I mean that hasn’t happened yet in industrialized China. The Chonqing accent versus Shenzen which is entirely different thanks to every single region sending people to shenzen over the last decade, but it absolutely can happen. But this is closer to the UK’s attempt to revive Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic wherein new students are taught English, their own language (usually two or three more as optionals) and their own local culture and history first with the country’s history secondary.
It’s not perfect and some specific words and dialects may be lost, but the only other option is balkanization which damns those regions to constant poverty and warfare, especially Xinjiang which is resource rich, on the border with the Terror Sponsor Turkey, and has been the victim of 30 years of US destabilization attempts.
I can understand the general caution, but what other actual solution is there for a country that is older than pretty much all other countries on Earth with a collection of cultures more diverse and region specific than any besides Africa? Modernizing everyone to at least understand the same language is essential for any hope of economic advancement to happen, as intracountry economic migration is essential for social mobility regardless of the economic system in place.
Xinjiang and Tibet have only been part of China 70 years, some of China’s most recent imperial acquisitions. China is trying to erase the cultures of the people of these regions. Standard imperial practice.
Funny you mentioned the UK and the Irish language (Gaeilge not Irish Gaelic). If you like I can educate you on how the imperial British erased our language as the common tongue of the country. It involved projects just like the one China is currently engaging in. We former colonies recognise your imperial playbook and will do our best to call you out on it.
You know China ended slavery and torture in Tibet, right?
Please learn some history. Pretty please.
The region now called Tibet has been under what is now the ‘Chinese’ country since 1231AD. Continuously. From 1912 to 1951 Tibet had de facto independence due to the incompetency of the Republic of China being unable to control all of the Qing dynasty territory, which was one of the causes of the People’s revolution.
Xinjiang has been a part of china since the second century BCE, however. Where you got “70 years” is a fucking mystery and I do actually want you to feel bad about that. Since no source ON THIS FUCKING PLANET even suggests that. The fucking Han Dynasty conquered it before English was invented.
The absolute cheek of you buddy, first you don’t answer any of my points on the imperial Chinese cultural genocide and then you tell me to learn some history. How about learning a bit yourself?
China hasn’t even been under consistent Chinese control for the last thousand years, you are forgetting all about the Yuan dynasty, Mongol rule over China right around the time you claim Tibet has been part of China since. Sorry buddy but you are just claiming Mongol history, unless you yourself are Mongolian?
After the Mongols we had the Phagmodrupa, the Rinpungpa, the Tsangpa, the Ganden Phodrang which takes us all the way up to about 1720 when the Qing established a suzerainty. Tibet gained full independence in 1912-51 then came Chinese defacto rule. So yea about 70 or so years being Chinese.
Xinjiang was under the rule of Turco-Mongol Khanates from the 9th-18th century. The Qing defeated the Zunghars to establish imperial control and named the area Xinjiang (which means “new frontier” even the name of the place is laughing at your lack of knowledge you fool!) on 1884. Then we all know after the fall of the Qing China was a mess with the place loosely governed until China officially took control again in 1949.
It’s almost like you forget that China has risen and fallen apart several times in its long history.
Now can we get back to China’s current cultural genocide in these regions that have clearly not always been Chinese?
Learn what the Yuan dynasty is maybe before saying this kiddo?
No, they didn’t gain full independence. No one on earth has ever said that that hasn’t fucked a kid.
Cool, a Chinese province was temporarily occupied a millennia after it became a Chinese province. Amazing.
Or, it’s like you forgot this fact and pretend these regions were ever independent because your owner paid a lot of money to make you believe that.
You are the one that brought this up. You are exclusively the one that spoke about this. I have already answered absolutely everything else that has been brought up. Read the fucking comments.
Why so cryptic, if you have something to say it just say it.
What do you want to know about the Yuan dynasty, you don’t seem to know much about it.
You quoted the whole paragraph but only addressed a tiny part, what about the other 700 years you fool!
You just brushed over the more recent milenia where is wasn’t a part of China. Which is why Xinjiang means new frontier and was given that name in 1884. You act like China has had uninterrupted ownership of the region. How is about 1000 years “temporarily occupied”? This is why current China is engaging in cultural genocide in the region, the people there are not Chinese, unless you count all of the recent Han imports to the region.
I’m not American, I’m Irish you fool. Just because you lick the jackboot of your owners doesn’t mean we all do like you. How does that boot taste by the way? Rubbery?
No you haven’t my evasive friend. I was specifically addressing the parallels between imperial Britain and modern imperial China and how both engage in strikingly similar programmes designed to take away the mother tongue of the local people.
The part where Tibet was under control of the Yuan (Chinese) empire? Or before that when they were just another province?
The reason the UK needs to try to revive those dialects and languages is the key here. Having a common language is a necessary part of consolidating your land as an industrialized nation, so I’m not surprised China is doing it. You’re right about balkanization happening if you don’t force people to use the lingua franca.
They know exactly what they’re doing and the consequences though. I think it’s disingenuous to say they don’t. The Chinese aren’t stupid so they know even if they teach both languages, when all of the official print, your own work, clients, friends, messaging apps, government forms .etc use Mandarin it eventually becomes the language primarily spoken at home which is where you can begin to break the link between one culture and the next.
Once that happens it’s possible to drop the local language requirement and a minority of people are mad about it at that point (generations later.) Same concept as second or third gen immigrants here in Canada who can’t speak their parents or grandparents language at all unless they pay for private schooling in an immersion school. I’m not saying China will drop the local language 20-40 years from now but eventually they can if they want and people aren’t going to be as strongly opposed once they’re integrated after decades of forced schooling in Mandarin.
They’re following a well tested method for homogenizing their nation. Canada tried and failed at it for the same reasons the Chinese are trying to prevent balkanization. In the end it’s going to destroy these cultures and it won’t be an accident…
Except all government forms are available in over 50 languages, including Uyghur. Nearly all apps have moved on from the “traditional (taiwan)/Simplified (mainland Mandarin)” split and offer at least 4 or five. qq and Baidu at least are offering translated pages in Tibetan and Uyghur now, and it’s really up to their friend and family group with what language they use.
Except China is just doing what every country that fucked up is now doing. They literally learned the lesson from Canada, France, the US, UK, et al who now all have local languages and culture taught along side the business culture and language. As someone who is both Choctaw Indian and Chinese, I can tell you the former is taught in the US along side English on Choctaw lands. There was period where this wasn’t true. China is just skipping that period and allowing that culture to continue while also not destroying their future.
I think we both agree China needs to avoid balkanization and excessive pluralism if they want to remain stable long term. I think that’s the Chinese view of their own situation as well.
Even if you teach the local language people leave due to urbanization and don’t teach their kids. Your community grows smaller and smaller and eventually it’s just hundreds of people speaking that language or practicing that culture, or nobody at all because they all grew old and died.
It is going to happen, it’s not theory here. This policy is a lot more fair than residential schools in Canada or forced spelling and accent training from the French Academy to homogenize France. The end result is broadly similar though and so is the intention behind it.
It’s going to eventually be like the UK with hundreds of dead dialects and a dozen dead languages spoken by a tiny minority of people.
Minorities in China are going to have a choice to speak their language at home in much the same way that I have a choice about being employed.
So all modern attempts at ‘reviving’ or spreading local language and culture should be stopped, since it’s clearly a lost cause and useless. We should inform Ireland immediately that their their record spread of Irish has been a lie and they should just give up and learn English only and abandon their cultural roots because a lemmy.zip user said all attempts at preserving language is doomed to fail unless you have ten bazillion micronations that never trade…
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just being realistic here… Plus is reviving these old languages in the UK going to threaten English? Absolutely not, which is why it’s allowed. If at any point a secondary language threatened the primary trade language of a nation somehow, there would be policy to resist it. Are Londoners going to learn Gaelic? Well that’s how the Irish felt when they were colonized by the British. The Irish certainly aren’t going to speak only Gaelic. They’ll know English as well, which is good enough for the British.
Also an understated part of this whole debate I haven’t focused on too much is how dialects are culture. Each region or town had its own dialect and local customs even if they were ruled by the same king or emperor in premodern times. It’s not a coincidence that European separatist movements can be divided among dialects of a language, like Catalinian separatism from Spain.
That’s also what lead to literal Balkanization as well. Shared languages and dialects deciding cultural borders when a nation fractures.
Even the revival of Gaelic or Welsh doesn’t undo the destruction of industrialization homogenizing a nation. You’ve already permanently lost the regional or local culture of each town and it’ll never come back. There wasn’t a single “Welsh” or “Gaelic” language prior to English replacing it, just like there wasn’t one version of English prior to industrialization. The concept of a universal national language only practically became a thing with the advent of railroads. Otherwise people didn’t move around enough to need a nationwide common tongue. One of the few exceptions to this is ironically China, which had a strong centralized bureaucracy and education system that taught the Imperial language.
It’s just a natural consequence of modernization. It just happens, and now China is making a concerted effort to accelerate it and guide it. They teach simplified Mandarin so everyone reads and speaks the same trade and work language. It’s what every other nation has done, and it’s going to happen the same as how French, English, German .etc all displaced local or regional dialects and cultures into extinction.