Saturday, March 6th, 2021
Mandarin as the national language
Xi urges Inner Mongolia to assimilate
Inner Mongolia belongs to China, but has linguistically close ties to the northern state of Mongolia. This is a thorn in the side of China's head of state Xi. He urged the relevant authorities at the National People's Congress to "solve the ethnic problems".
China's head of state Xi Jinping is pushing for Mandarin to be enforced as the national language among minorities in the country. Inner Mongolia authorities need to "persist" in promoting Mandarin and correct "misconceptions" of nationality and culture, Xi said at the National People's Congress in Beijing, in view of major protests against a new language law in northern China's province.
According to the Chinese state media, Xi said in his speech that Mandarin could promote national cohesion in the country. The authorities in Inner Mongolia should "solve the ethnic problems" and enforce the use of textbooks that are widely used throughout China.
In Inner Mongolia, a controversial ordinance came into force last year aimed at completely replacing Mongolian in textbooks with Mandarin. Tens of thousands of people took part in demonstrations and school boycotts in protest against the law. The authorities threatened parents who, in protest, no longer wanted to send their children to school with dismissals and fines. In one district, the authorities even offered children financial rewards if they succeeded in convincing their classmates to return to class.
Authorities should "do a good job"
There are close ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties between the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia and the neighboring state of Mongolia to the north. Critics accuse the Chinese leadership of forcibly integrating minorities into the majority population of the Han Chinese through their rigorous assimilation policy and of wanting to suppress or even abolish their cultural, linguistic and religious peculiarities. The government in Beijing has come under massive international criticism, particularly because of its actions against minorities in the Xinjiang province and in Tibet.
Xi said that the people of Inner Mongolia "need to learn by heart that the Han ethnic group cannot be separated from the ethnic minorities and that the ethnic minorities cannot be separated from the Han ethnic group". The provincial authorities would have to "do a good job by" popularizing "the nationally common language" – that is, Mandarin. The state broadcaster CCTV showed video footage of the People's Congress showing delegates from Inner Mongolia applauding Xi as he spoke on Friday.
During the People's Congress, the Chinese Communist Party sets its economic and political priorities for the coming year. Taken legislative proposals are almost always adopted by an overwhelming majority by the thousands of delegates.
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