China’s five-year-old Children’s Speech Harmonization Plan and more recent updates to the National Common Language Law are marginalizing Tibetan identity to the point of erasure, according to Human Rights Watch. And the compulsory use of Chinese as the primary language in Tibetan schools raises “serious concerns under international human rights law,” the organization said in a new report.
Both politically and legally, China is “steadily narrowing the space for minority autonomy in education, language and religion,” said The Diplomat. In December, the National People’s Congress revised the National Common Language Law. It now requires Mandarin to be the “fundamental teaching language” and mandates standardized textbooks throughout the education system. This codification of assimilation policies “marks a new phase” in Beijing’s strategy, seeking “not merely to manage ethnic diversity but to fundamentally reshape it.”
Videos from Tibet posted on social media have shown young children “not even able to say their names in Tibetan, pronouncing them as if they were Chinese,” said The Guardian. And children who have been brought up speaking Tibetan stop speaking it within a year of beginning school.
During the early years of Communist Party rule, China “espoused a certain notion of pluralism for non-Han people,” but the space for tolerance has “narrowed,” said the Financial Times. The Chinese state now sees minority languages as “potential threats” to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Viewed more broadly, China’s current policies in Tibet represent “more than a shift in language education,” said The Diplomat. They reflect a “structural transformation” in how China perceives ethnic minorities. |
