A new report by Human Rights Watch argues that the compulsory use of Chinese as the primary language in schools in Tibet raises “serious concerns under international human rights law”.
Detailing the effects of the “Children’s Speech Harmonization Plan” five years ago, as well as more recent updates to the “National Common Language Law”, the organisation argues that measures are marginalising Tibetan identity to the point of erasure.
“International concern about these developments has grown,” said Jianli Yang in The Diplomat. These language laws fit into a pattern in recent years of “intensified policies” aimed to “reshape” Tibetan identity through “cultural control”.
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‘Eroding’ Tibetan culture
Both politically and legally, “China is steadily narrowing the space for minority autonomy in education, language, and religion”, said The Diplomat. In December last year, the National People’s Congress revised the “National Common Language Law”. It now requires Mandarin to be the “fundamental teaching language” and mandates standardised textbooks throughout the education system. The codification of assimilation policies “marks a new phase” in Beijing’s strategy: it seeks “not merely to manage ethnic diversity but to fundamentally reshape it”.
Videos from Tibet on social media have shown young children “not even able to say their names in Tibetan, pronouncing them as if they were Chinese”, said Kris Cheng in The Guardian. Children, who have been brought up speaking Tibetan stop speaking it within a year of beginning school.
Parents face a “dilemma”: education in Chinese improves employment and career prospects, but it often comes at the cost of associating Tibetan with “social disadvantage”. Some are sending their children to Tibetan language classes in the school holidays, but authorities have been “cracking down” by “banning unsanctioned schools and classes in many places”.
Perhaps the most “profound policy shift” from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Tibet was the 2021 “Children’s Speech Harmonization Plan”, said Human Rights Watch. For the first time, it mandated the use of Chinese language as a “medium of instruction” in all preschools. Though not explicitly banning Tibetan in educational settings, it effectively “downgrades” the freedom for minorities to develop and continue their language.
This law was not a “sudden rupture”, however, but the “near final step in a decades-long process” of “eroding the role of Tibetan as a medium of instruction”. It was a “key acceleration point” in the drive to reshape the “linguistic, cultural, and social foundations of Tibetan society”.
‘Narrowed’ tolerance
China’s stance “turned sharply against expressions of separate ethnic identity among minorities” when Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, said Josh Chin and Niharika Mandhana in the Wall Street Journal. Officials targeted Tibetan alternatives to state schools and expanded the boarding school system. Resistance since the uprising of 1959 has persisted under the current Dalai Lama, a “potent force despite decades of propaganda, political crackdowns and education drives aimed at undermining his authority”, living in exile in India.
During the earlier years of Communist Party rule China “espoused a certain notion of pluralism for non-Han people”, but the space for tolerance has “narrowed”, said Joe Leahy in the Financial Times. Look no further than Xinjiang, where more than a million Uighurs have been “subjected to mass internment”. China denies mass detentions of Uighurs and “blames unrest on terrorists”.
Recent years have seen a gradual transformation from a “first-generation ethnic policy” to the “second-generation ethnic policy”, said The Diplomat. The earlier framework, under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, “formally emphasised” ethnic and language autonomy. For instance, legislation in 1994 stipulated that all schools should “use Tibetan as the principal medium of instruction”, whilst “improving a bilingual Tibetan-Chinese education system”. Implementation was often “uneven”, but it at least “recognised the legitimacy of cultural pluralism within the Chinese state”.
Second-generation ethnic policy, however, marks a “significant departure” from this philosophy. It seeks to “minimise” the significance of ethnic distinctions, instead of preserving diversity. The Chinese state now sees minority languages as “potential threats” to Xi’s “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. Viewed more broadly, China’s current policies in Tibet represent “more than a shift in language education”, they reflect a “structural transformation” in how China perceives ethnic minorities.
