China approves 'ethnic unity' law requiring minorities to learn Mandarin
(www.bbc.com)
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 13 Mar 01:44
https://lemmy.world/post/44186892
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 13 Mar 01:44
https://lemmy.world/post/44186892
China has approved a sweeping new law which claims to help promote “ethnic unity” - but critics say it will further erode the rights of minority groups.
On paper, it aims to promote integration among the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, dominated by the Han Chinese, through education and housing. But critics say it cuts people off from their language and culture.
It mandates that all children should be taught Mandarin before kindergarten and up until the end of high school. Previously students could study most of the curriculum in their native language such as Tibetan, Uyghur or Mongolian.
#world
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Everyone being able to speak a common language is good actually.
Which is a false equivalency to a state forcing a minority group to learn the majority language.
Forcing? Do you think parents should be allowed to remove the kid from those classes? Just send them out in the world unable to communicate with anyone outside their hometown?
all minority groups in the us have to speak english. most states have a variation of this for that matter?
sure. do ethnical minorities born in, say, spain not have to learn spanish?
tell me of states where this isn’t true.
I don’t know where it isn’t true. I know it isn’t right - anywhere.
then put your money where your mouth is and fight it in your own country instead of acting all twisted up when some country starts doing it.
spanish is the second most spoken language in the us, do you speak it?
You’re putting so much energy into justifying China’s repression of Uyghurs. You must really hate them.
you’re putting so much energy throwing mexicans in concentration camps, and palestinians in coffins.
but sure, Bad Country people have to learn Bad Country language now. so repressive.
can you speak any spanish at all though? do you put your money where your mouth is?
You’re making up so many scenarios in your head. Somehow you think I support the bad shit being done by a country not involved in this discussion and want me to speak in spanish to prove something. Get help… if that’s allowed where you live.
Ask the indigenous people how much they liked learning to speak the common tongue
Yes, teaching english is what’s wrong with what was/is being done to indigenous communities. Absolutely nothing else.
Yeah …notice I said “learning”, not “being taught”. Maybe the rest of it that I left implied is what happens when you force people to learn your language? Didn’t think I’d have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children to make them learn English for you to understand an implied point, but here we are.
How do you think they’re going to make these people learn Mandarin? Do you think they’re going to ask nicely? Or are they going to do the same thing every dominant colonial culture tries to do to its minorites?
That is precisely why I referred to it that way, so you’d have to spell it out the dumb implication you’re making.
Same way they teach math and science lmao.
It would be nice if we could speak a common language, yes. Then you’d be able to use it to read the article that was linked instead of a single paragraph excerpt and realize the new law is not just about the language.
It would be nice if you could read Mandarin. Then you’d be able to realize that the BBC is deliberately mistranslating whats in the law. How arrogant do you have to be to criticize someone for not reading an article when you can’t even read the document the article claims to describe?
In the US, all children are required to take English classes from kindergarten and up until the end of high school. There are no alternatives offered, if a student can’t speak English, then they are at the very least offered ESL classes in addition to their regular English courses, but they still must take those courses and pass in order to get a diploma
That’s your best comeback?
While I don’t actually think that mandating the official national language as a class in schools is at all a problem (or a new idea), your argument is blatant whataboutism. Something cannot be justified merely by comparing it to somewhere else (especially the US, I might add).
It’s not whataboutism when there’s a clear bias in terms of what country the BBC is criticizing. Having a national language and requiring it to be taught in schools is incredibly common for many states including the UK. Why is China singled out so often for things almost every state does?
So call out the journalistic bias, or hypocritical behaviour of the BBC. But if the topic in general is brought up in conversation, just pointing to the US as some kind of justification, is definitely whataboutism. It sidesteps actual critical thinking by playing to familiarity: “well if this country does it, then it must be fine!”, which is clearly a logical fallacy.
All countries actions should be criticized equally. No countries actions should be justified by being the same as another country.
The person you initially replied to did not say anything about was or wasn’t justified. They just stated a simple fact. Their wording did not give any clear indication about how they actually felt. What does give you an indication of what they believe is the context under which they provided that fact.
To me, knowing the history of the BBC and other western media outlets, it seems clear that their comment is calling out the hypocrisy and bias of the BBC. I imagine it only appears to you as whataboutism because you do not share a perspective which encompasses the prior behavior of the BBC.
You do understand that the widely recognized genocide in North America is and has been criticized for this, right? The language deprivation has mostly wrapped up in political terms but a linguistic rebirth is still struggling financially and in many nations/tribes will never fully recover.
China is not being singled out, but called out based on historical familiarity with the process.
You’re right. There is no difference between banning native languages and ensuring children get taught the skills they need to succeed in life. Totally the same.
I’m not ML by any means, but I don’t really see the problem here? Schools are for learning useful life skills, etc. Surely learning the official language of your nation is a very useful life skill to have? Mandating that kids be taught a language does not mean forcing them to unlearn their native language.
Bold move, criticizing someone you never heard’s pronunciation of a language whose people you’ve never met.
If you wanted to change that, anybody can go to xinjiang or kazakhstan and talk to the people. Its really easy unlike Tibet, you can just go there.
The actual struggles of the uhigurs is entirely alien to either what western media makes up or just imagining China is copying western imperialism despite having different material pressures.
Its not an english word lmao would you rather I spell it using the alphabet they use?
<img alt="" src="https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/06eba7fe-8227-467c-bdbd-515cc7a8f3c2.mp4">
The person who lived in Urumqi is more credible.
I have pictures<img alt="" src="https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/0b3659dc-6269-411b-9bfc-09c4651781ca.mp4">
Continue closing your eyes and covering your ears lmao
“No u” doesnt really make sense when you’re talking to someone who saw with their own eyes
<img alt="" src="https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/3cf4be70-1b6e-42ab-81e1-fa3dbb34b04e.jpeg">
You are making some wild jumps in logic.
Learning another language is not “destroying a culture”, this is a dog whistle of hardcore conservatives who are afraid of diversity. What would be destroying a culture, would be forcefully restricting the use of the native languages, such as forbidding the use of the native languages in schools. But I am not aware of this happening, nor was I arguing in support of that in any way.
Also, justifying a curriculum choice in schools is a far leap from justification of colonialism. I am very much against the forced subjugation of native peoples, but that is not the topic.
Did you read my messages at all? As stated, I very much oppose the colonisation and forced subjugation and assimilation of native peoples, including in Australia. But I do not think that English being a mandatory subject in Australia is a bad thing.
Is the idea of someone knowing more than one language, so foreign to you?
overall good points, but I’d like to expand on the one about forbidding languages at educational institutions:
a ban isn’t even necessary to expediate the decline of a language; it’s often enough to simply defund it.
teachers need funding, and simply not giving any to other languages or other cultural curriculum is effectively the same as a ban.
few schools and administrations would shoulder the costs of “extra” curriculum, because few have the funds to do so, particularly when it comes to minorities…
source: am part of such a minority (in central europe though) and our state actually sponsors extra language classes, courses, and cultural clubs, activities, and events in order to preserve our unique identity and culture.
it’s still trending towards extinction though, as such minorities tend to do…
tl;dr: no need for a ban, just withhold a bit of funding and it will die out within a few generations…
That’s fair, but it assumes that mandating one language means that the other language will be defunded. Is that happening here? I think ideally both languages (national language, native language) would be funded and studied
Somehow I doubt China is funding or encouraging any kind of ethnic difference.
oh, that wasn’t really the point; i just pointed out that a ban isn’t the only way to undermine a culture or language!
it was in addition to what you wrote, not meant as a counterpoint.
I’m not sure how the Uyghurs and Mongols came under Chinese power, but Tibetian people were captured by force. They have autonomous states each, where they could decide to just collectively learn Mandarin if they thought it was something they wanted.
If the autonomy of these states are being infringed by this law, then that is a problem. In that case, I think the reduction of autonomy is far more concerning than the particular curriculum change.
It’s not like they are separate problems, but both part of the same push where minority nations are being assimilated and stripped of indentity.
It’s giving me native boarding school vibes. First they separate you from your language and force you to use theirs
I mean that’s clearly very bad, but the bad thing in particular in that scenario is separating you from your language, which afaik isn’t happening here? At least not yet?
See, China’s peacefulness and benevolence are on full display providing conquered peoples free education, and re-education!
I’m Basque, we are “forced” to learn Spanish too since it’s a co-official language in out autonomous region of Spain.
This post might sound alarming to monolingual people, but for any multilingual that had to learn both official languages AND english, watching people complain about schools requiring extra languages is embarrassing.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the post, it doesn’t imply that most lectures need to be in Mandarin, only that the kids need to be taught the language, right?
Edit: I read the post. The language thing doesn’t matter, what’s alarming is actually this:
If it were actually about language and communication, that bit wouldn’t be there.
I think it varies in parts of Xinjiang, but in at least part of it, along with most of the rest of China, most school instruction is in Mandarin.
Everyone still speaks their native languages, but they speak mando to chinese from other places. The kids know a few english phrases too for some reason.
There are restrictions on teaching the Tibetan language. This seems like an authoritarian move, not an educational one.
thetibetpost.com/…/china-imprisons-tibetan-monk-f…
It’s rarely about the actual letter of the law and more about the vague wording and standards that allow it to be enforced in a bigoted way.
Can we please stop with the scare quotes around terms that don’t have the same connotation in their original language? The BBC is deliberately misleading its readers by translating 民族团结 to mean “ethnic unity”. A better translation in this case would be “national solidarity” but that wouldn’t sound as scary would it?
It’s also not unreasonable for a country to require schools to teach children the common language. Knowing 普通话 (the common language) is a critical skill for any Chinese national who wants to succeed in the modern Chinese economy. Almost every state with a national language does this in some way.
Instead of falling for deliberate mistranslations, maybe look up what was actually said in Mandarin next time.
I get that this is China fearmongering, but it’s also how France eroded and almost killed off the regional languages…, by stigmatizing their use in schools, posting exclusively french-speaking state workers in administrative roles, etc. under the guise of “national unity” or some other variation of it
This seems quite different.
Rather than stigmatizing their use in schools, they actively encourage them. China maintains dual language education in these languages. Literacy rates have gone from low single digit percentages to above 90 for every minority language in China I’ve checked.
It’s closer to how kids all over Europe were taught English. There are certainly many local dialects that are dying off but it’s by choice. When I was a kid in Austria, the “Waldviertler” dialect was generally considered low-class, as was my own “Ottakringer” dialect. Those have mostly died off but there are a bunch of people who keep “Wienerisch” alive because they think it’s cool.
Almost all the people I knew growing up in Austria speak English. It’s the language of business, TV, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. My dad thinks it’s cool when he can speak Shanghainese or Cantonese to people but he likes that he can speak Mandarine with people who natively speak one of the many other dialects.
There are serious practical benefits for people in China to learn Mandarin. It doesn’t seem to interfere with their ability to learn their native languages.
That’s great, thanks for sharing your experience. The value that mandarin or french or hindi or english have as a vehicular within their own borders (or beyond, in the case of english) is immense. Independentist velleities are not always a consequence of strong regional identity in my experience
What do you mean by “certain dialects are dying off by choice” ?
I can’t help but be reminded of my own Provençal (dialect of Occitan) when reading your bit about Waldviertler & Ottakringer being considered lower class. In the case of Occitan (in all its varieties), its “peasant” perception was encouraged if not manufactured by the state. The generation of my grandparents (early 20th) was physically reprimanded if they were caught using it.
That’s great if China is not going this route. For such a big country, levelling the cultural field would be such an immense loss
I’ve lived in the US for a really long time so a lot of this is out of date.
Waldviertel is a region near Vienna. They were poor farmers. When we used to visit family friends there, we’d pass the giant manure pile in the courtyard on the way into the living area. We’d walk right into the entrance/eating nook. There was one door to the kitchen, one to the bedrooms, and one that went directly to the pig stalls. You could hear and smell them while you were eating. They spoke a really thick Waldviertler dialect. I could not understand their grandmother at all. After the fall of the USSR that whole village slowly moved up the agriculture supply chain (ie storing grain, agricultural insurance, etc). Now they’re rich. The grand kids of those farmers converted the farm into a mansion and they all speak High German now.
Ottakring only became part of Vienna in 1892. For a long time it was an industrial working class neighborhood. My relatives and everyone I knew in the area went to “Volksschule”, that’s essentially vocational school. While a working class background is often romanticized, many people from that background want to disassociate with it.
I can’t understand old people when they speak Ottakringer but I still have enough of it that some people can identify me as coming from the 16th district, AKA Ottrakring. It’s kind of fun to dip into it when I speak with my family but there’s little reason to use it with other German speakers. Living in the US I have barely any reason to use German at all. Even when I run into people from Austria we usually find it easier to switch to English for actual work discussions.
This would be true if it weren’t for the biggest unrecognised genocide taking place against the Uyghurs
It’s not recognized because there was never a genocide. You can still be critical of China. You can say they carried out a heavy handed de-radicalization program where innocent people were forcibly imprisoned. That’s likely true. However, calling it genocide when the evidence is just not there to make such a claim just waters down the utility of the term, especially when a genocide that is recognized by the UN is ongoing in Gaza.
Who cares what they call it, the end result is the same.
The end result is not the same. The article is purposely misconstruing the intent of that which changes how a reader might imagine it will be enforced. There is a big difference between forcibly suppressing ethic culture and identity and instead trying to better integrate China by ensuring children learn the tools they would need to communicate with their peers across the country.
This same law contains provisions that actually protect minority languages. It guarantees the right to learn and use minority languages. It also contains provisions to help keep them alive by directing the government to help archive minority language texts and support the standardization of minority languages. There are also provisions that explicitly outlaw ethnic discrimination and suppression. Do you think these aspects of the law would have been included if the actual intent was to suppress minority identity?
This is very similar to the Native American genocide.
“The law also provides a legal basis to prosecute parents or guardians who may instil what it described as “detrimental” views in children which would affect ethnic harmony and it calls for “mutually embedded community environments” which some analysts believe could result in the break up of minority-heavy neighbourhoods.”
Definitely genocidal.
For fucks sake why do you trust the BBC to accurately report on this law? It literally guarantees the right to learn and use minority languages and it even has provisions to help archive and standardize them. It also outlaws forms of description and ethnic suppression. But sure, it’s the same thing as violent cultural erasure 🤦♂️
Well for one there is an ongoing genocide in China. Unless you are tanky there really is no denying this. This is exactly the same sort of laws the US passed under the same pretenses. So yeah, genocide.
www.amnesty.org/en/…/ASA1741372021ENGLISH.pdf
Yeah, I have huge doubt that this law won’t be used to crush any cultural diversity to make a mono culture.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc…
It’s China. The ethnostate. The country known for acting solely in the interest of the ethnostate.
You should just assume it will be used to crush cultural diversity.
The One Chinese Policy, everyone is Han Chinese now. Your individuality and your history is to be erased.
This law literally outlaws discrimination on an ethnic basis and provides support for the learning, archival, and standardization of minority languages but okay…
Actually don’t have a problem with this. I think all countries should have one primary language that is used across the entire country and that everyone in the country knows the language.
No, I’m not saying you should suppress the native languages or do things like only allow that language to be used in government offices, but for schooling and general communication, I think it’s best if everyone in the country is using one language. That helps keep everyone linked culturally, which is a crucial part of having a unified country.
Slow genocide.