- cross-posted to:
- slop@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- slop@hexbear.net
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.
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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:
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”.
If it were actually about language and communication, that bit wouldn’t be there.
There are restrictions on teaching the Tibetan language. This seems like an authoritarian move, not an educational one.
Imagine quoting “the Tibet post” seriously, an Indian tabloid whose official stance is the defense of the “Tibet government in exile”. This would be like using a Russian-based “Marie Antoinette post” defending monarchy in France as the legitimate system.
How do you feel about the guardian? I concede I didn’t vet the original link, but if you need to use “imagine” as an argument you aren’t capable of the very critical thinking you’re criticizing.
Two circular links in The Guardian without primary sources. I wonder why Zionist media would lie to me about China!
Firstly, they didn’t quote anything. Secondly, it’s very clear what they said is true no matter what they linked as proof of that. As per the other reply and if you’d have taken a few minutes to look up what other articles have said, it’s not wrong. I agree that it wasn’t a good choice but you’re apparently dumb enough to think that absolutely anything reported/said by something or someone bad must be untrue. Everything, no matter who and where it comes from should be looked at through facts and not “bad person/thing said something so it’s automatically untrue”.
Secondly, it’s very clear what they said is true
Source: Zionist media that would totally not lie to me
As per the other reply and if you’d have taken a few minutes to look up
Go ahead, tell me what’s the trend of Uyghur speakers in China versus Occitan speakers in France. Give me the fucking hard data if it’s so obvious
you’re apparently dumb
No need for ableism
absolutely anything reported/said by something or someone bad must be untrue
“Noooo how could the Zionist war machinery be lying to me :((((”
Everything, no matter who and where it comes from should be looked at through facts
Facts: pre-communist Tibet was a literal feudal kingdom in which Tibetans were serfs legally bound to the lands of their lord, with outrageously low life expectancy, close to zero literacy, amd massive poverty. Now it’s a thriving province in a multiethnical country and even has a higher degree of autonomy under the Chinese system due to belonging to the Tibet Autonomous Region. You’re quoting the fucking spiritual heir or Buddhism, not any fucking serious source
Catalan here, always funny to see monolinguals be shocked when China does it but turn around and see nothing wrong with Spain imposing Spanish to all its regions in the same way
If Spain doesn’t get in line on the Iran War, I’m confident we’re going to start getting stories about how we need to liberate Catalonia soon enough
Shit.
Does Spain prosecute Parents that teach about catalan?
Spain routinely kidnaps Roma children from their parents.
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.
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.
Except they literally won’t allow non-Mandarin families to teach their own cultures’ languages or histories. That’s not something I read second hand either, that’s from talking one-on-one with a Uyghur linguist that was given special recognition by an international linguistics organization for his efforts to save the language.
Yeah, I covered that in the edit. That’s horrible and alarming.
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?
You are misunderstand it (and the BBC article is also very unclear about it). Learning Mandarin was already mandatory, it’s now about making Mandarin the default.
I’m Basque, we are “forced” to learn Spanish too since it’s a co-official language in out autonomous region of Spain
All co-official languages of the Spanish state are co-official in all of the state, this is state policy and not just in specific autonomous regions.
Your critique comes from a good place as a people whose culture and language have a history of repression under fascism, but you need to understand that the history of China is the polar opposite of that: the communists won the civil war against the fascist Kuomintang. They’ve had and still enjoy a level of cultural diversity unseen anywhere in Europe for the past century, especially Spain as I say because of our fascist history.
Trying to extrapolate the centralist repressive policy of Spain to a country as different, huge and diverse and China is simply bad analysis based on unfortunately wrong starting points. As a silly example, ethnic minorities in China were exempt from single-child policy.
If you want an Uyghur person’s perspective on this, I suggest you watch this short video. Please listen to actual minority voices within China instead of listening we western-manufactured hate campaigns.
You didn’t read past my first paragraph man. You completely misunderstood the point I was making in the first half of the comment. I’m clearly making a similarity to then expand by saying that I don’t feel like it’s a problem for the official language to ALSO be learnt, and that for any multilingual person such a thing being complained about sounds silly.
Your “alarming edit” is the thing I’m mainly responding to. What do you have to say to that Uyghur national?
Watch as Americans without a shred of irony decry this and then demand people in our country speak English.
dude, I knew an old German woman who immigrated after WW2 to the US.
she straight up started yelling at the Mexicans speaking Spanish that it’s disrespectful to not speak English in the US.
it’s not just Americans doing it…
Did you know German was the second most spoken language in the USA until ww1? Victims of opression often opress others.
Spanish is an American language (as is French, and lots of indigenous languages, also the Amish might disagree with her).
It’s because we’re living in a post American assimilation world and they don’t realize that happened. But my grandparents would talk about how they’d be slapped on the hands with rulers for speaking Cajun French and now it’s a dead language. This law feels like the first step to a similar cultural assimilation.
See, China’s peacefulness and benevolence are on full display providing conquered peoples free education, and re-education!
Anything can be true when you read Zionist media and take their word!
Slow genocide.
So basically like all of history
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.
Yes, we should criticise France’s capitalist government for this, you’re right. Go ahead and make posts on .world about it. How’s that related to China though?
Sarcasm isn’t getting anyone anywhere, if you want to communicate do so in good faith
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.
I find it funny how the people who claim to care the most about Muslims in China are also the same people who celebrate the murder of civilians in Iran
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?
the end result is the same
Is it, though? Please provide us data on minority language usage over time in China, that would definitely show us
There’s no way to define “ethnic unity” that doesn’t involve racism and ethnic genocide.
Well good thing then that China’s laws aren’t written in English yeah? The actual title of the law does not carry the connotations you think it does.
“bUt In ChInA iT’s CaLlEd ThE cUtE fLuFfY pUpPy LaW!”
Idgaf what they call it, it can’t change the purpose and inevitable effect of the law, which is to further the ongoing ethnic genocide.
Requiring schools to teach the national language is genocide. But bombing children before they’re even school age is not genocide.
- Western hypocrites
The purpose of the law is quite literally the opposite of what you’re suggesting. Have fun living in in your sinophobic fever dream.
Then why is it “ethnic unity” and not “language/linguistic unity”? I’m pretty sure the Chinese have terms for "language/linguistic " as they have for “ethnic”…
The original poster’s point is precisely that it isn’t “ethnic” because it’s originally in Chinese (民族) without a direct obvious translation. The linked translated text has a note on their chosen translation:
“民族- ethnic, ethnicity. Official translations are fond of translating this as nationality, which is confusing because it can confuse statehood/citizenship with ethnic identity. In most situations, we use forms of ethnic.”
https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/ethnic-unity-and-progress-law/#Notes
For what it’s worth, Firefox’s translator (bergamot) also translates this as “National Unity”. The definition on pleco seems to imply more of an ethnic nation, as in a nation of peoples as opposed to a nation state.
Translation is not a one-to-one mapping between words. The act of translating a text will always distort the meaning a bit. It’s good to consider what may have been lost in the process of translation, especially when a contentious translation seems to align with a position that is geopolitically convenient.
Genocide is never convenient, you really gotta go out of your way to make it happen.
Fair
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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
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.
The reason I thought they were using it as justification, was because their comment was a reply to a comment that said something like “justify that tankies”
Is it not obvious to you that “justify that tankies” is not a serious request? It’s a flippant way to dismiss any alternative opinions. It’s kind of absurd to assume that anyone replying to that request is taking it seriously. If you think otherwise, ask yourself if you really believe the person you replied to sincerely self identifies as a “tankie”?
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.
The assumption here is that we should take CPC pronouncements as fully truthful. Ask tibetans about language rights.
Tibetan is legally required to be used as a language of instruction in Tibet. That’s literally the opposite of banning a language. Nobody is really disputing that. Mandating that mandarin be taught in schools as well is not the same a banning Tibetan and it’s disingenuous to pretend that it is.
The difference between how China is handling these classes compared to how the US (and Canada) handled tribal cultural and linguistic genocide generally is not even close to comparable. You have absolutely no clue. It is disgusting that you are attempting to compare the severity at all just to lose an internet argument.
You do understand that the widely recognized genocide in North America is and has been criticized for this
Yes, but China hasn’t genocided its ethnical minorities though and isn’t on the process of doing so. Conjuring hypothetical genocides is not useful for political analysis.
Well we can disagree about genocides that are clearly under way, as defined by the UN.
Believe the authoritarians instead of the victims and researchers. There is no war in… or is it we have always been at war with… oh whatever. Yay, shiny boots.
the victims
Let’s liste to an actual Chinese Uyghur then, instead of BBC
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That’s your best comeback?
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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.
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 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?
Pattern recognition, this is how it starts
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.
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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.
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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.
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
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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?
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.
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Its not an english word lmao would you rather I spell it using the alphabet they use?
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.
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I don’t know where it isn’t true. I know it isn’t right - anywhere.
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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?
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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?
Didn’t think I’d have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children
That is precisely why I referred to it that way, so you’d have to spell it out the dumb implication you’re making.
How do you think they’re going to make these people learn Mandarin?
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?
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Don’t the US, Canada, and Australia have similar laws? Kinda crazy China took so long to stoop to our level
EDIT: I have since learned that public schools in the US are not required to teach in English, so you can cross the US off that list! My bad!
EDIT2: I just googled it, and it turns out it is required. Back on the list it goes!
EDIT3: I’ve had to explain multiple times in the comments that I’m not talking about teaching immigrants the local language, but teaching the native population the language of the colonizers. The US, Canada, Australia all arrived somewhere where there were already people, like Polynesians, Inuits, and Aboriginals, and in their public school, they’re all taught in English. It’s disheartening to see how little people think of the native population of these countries, and it shows how effective the native American genocide was.
No, it’s actually a very important point that there is no national language in the US.
And no, the EO from 2025 is not legally binding and is more symbolic than anything.
it doesn’t but good luck dealing with any authority if you don’t speak english or speak it with a foreign accent
At multiple government offices I have seen them bring out someone to match the language spoken when someone has no or poor English.
It is far easier to speak English because practically speaking English is most prevalent, but it’s not like inability to speak English is a crime (though with this administration…)
Yeah I’m not talking about gov offices I’m talking about dealing with any cop
My local DMV has forms in all sorts of languages. What are you smoking?
cool I’m not talking about the DMV
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but teaching the native population the language of the colonizers
And you don’t think China is a colonial empire that expanded its borders in the exact same way the US or Russia did? Just how exactly do you think China ended up being a majority Han nation ruling over a bunch of ethnic minorities? Skin color or ethnicity is not a prerequisite for imperialism.
You’re putting words in my mouth.
I keep mentioning, over and over, Polynesians, Inuit, Aboriginals AND Tibetans AND Uyghur as examples of native populations forced to learn the tongue of their colonizer. I keep mentioning, over and over, how the situation of colonization in the US, Canada, and Australia is SIMILAR to the one in China. It’s deeply frustrating how much I have to re-explain here. Am I that bad at writing?
What do you even do think Han is? lol To think that this law is a tool of Han supremacy is to ignore that it doesn’t actually encompass the idea of ethnicity as it exists in the West. Most people that would be identified as Han do not share an identical culture or even language. What this law talks about ie “the common language” is a construct created by many people who spoke other Chinese languages first. It’s wild how ready you are to speak with such authority about a country you seemingly know next to nothing about.
And do you think “white people” in the West are a monolith as well? The concept of “Han” sounds pretty damn similar to the concept of “white” in the United States.
White people aren’t a monolith because race is a pseudoscientific construct. It has no meaningful relationship with ethnicity or ancestry. If you don’t know the difference between race and ethnicity in America what gives the confidence to speak on how ethnicity works in China? lol
Don’t the US, Canada, and Australia have similar laws?
Yes, but all these countries have politicians who say they feel bad about it
EDIT: I have since learned that public schools in the US are not required to teach in English, so you can cross the US off that list! My bad!
Don’t apologise too soon, it’s the basis for their lingual homogeneity, and is a common theme since its inception. For example:
https://daily.jstor.org/when-american-schools-banned-german-classes/
https://hawaiianflair.com/blogs/news/the-history-of-hawaiian-language-suppression-and-revival
And check the history section of the
No, fundamentally the USA does not.
In Canada we don’t legally force people to learn English. Legally the federal government MUST provide services in English AND French. Meanwhile, they also offer their many of their services in other languages depending on need and logistics.
So the Inuits get to choose between two European languages. I don’t see how this is better.
Spanish speaking kids get an education too. It’s not malicious. We’re not all monsters here. Just half of us.
Yep, in English, which is what this thread is about. Also, the Spanish kids are not the right comparison. When you think of Uyghurs or Tibetans, what demographics in the US come to mind?
Hint: Public schools in Hawaii teach in English.
Good point. I forgot about that guy going to jail for teaching his language recently. I think he was Tibetan.
But when Spain or France does the same to its own minorities nobody cares
Ah but the difference is they’re white and as we know it’s ok when white people do anything actually evil but when nonwhite people especially from the global south does anything it’s always evil.
The difference is that Spain, or especially so France (Occitan isn’t even an official language), actually carry out this policy, whereas this is manufactured bullshit that people are taking at face-value from Zionist media.
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The law literally prohibits ethnic discrimination and the specific passage being referred to here is saying that parents do not have any legal protections that would allow them to freely indoctrinate their children with bigoted beliefs. How you people have decided that the law actually means the exact opposite of what it means is beyond me.
.ml at it again.
Oh no! Facts! Whatever will you do???!!
Language and cultural history are not “bigoted beliefs,” but Uyghurs aren’t allowed to teach them to their children. Sounds pretty discriminatory to me.
Language and cultural history aren’t bigoted beliefs and Uyghurs are allowed to teach their culture and language to their children. You’re deeply misinformed if you think otherwise.
Believing that makes you no different from MAGA. Blind followers.
The law in the US prohibits pedophilia and there you have the president and plenty of people around him. Hell, its constitution itself prohibits discrimination, yetwe all know how rampant discrimination is at every level.
The law only applies to average citizens. Anyone with enough power, and likely anyone who agrees with them, is exent. So ethnic discrimination will be prhibited as long as it isn’t the “right” discrimination or isn’t done by a non-powerful person.
terrifying
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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.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ASA1741372021ENGLISH.pdf
You don’t need to be a “tanky” to deny this. You just need to care about sources. Do they have any?
Whenever I dig into the sources for these reports they come down to the same handful:
- Adrian Zens - the crackpot who believes he’s on a mission from god to destroy China.
- Gordon Chang - the guy who’s been predicting the imminent collapse of China for nearly 3 decades.
- A law student from Canada who claims you can see barbed wire in satellite photos.
- Various anonymous “whistleblowers”.
- The “Xinjiang Cables” - you can easily find English translations of these and see that they contain scary stuff like minimum amounts of times that detainees must be allowed visitors and prohibitions around guards having any weapons around minors. (The Amnesty article claims to mostly use this source)
I stopped believing in the Xinjiang genocide when I realized I couldn’t find a single source that I could independently corroborate and most of the “sources” I was able to find receive over 90% of their funding from the US government or were created by the US government.
Just about every Muslim country in the world denies on this claim. It seems that the only countries that try to claim a “Xinjiang Genocide” are the same ones that cheer every time the US bombs another Muslim country.
Yeah, I will trust Amnesty International over China any day. There are, of course many other sources.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/xinjiang-police-files-uyghur-mugshots-detention/
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/14/the-faux-anti-imperialism-of-denying-anti-uighur
https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/chinese-persecution-of-the-uyghurs
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/4899186
https://www.rferl.org/a/china-strict-rules-islam-xinjiang/32798502.html
The dramatic decline in births, restrictions of practicing their faith, sterilization, and internment all point to a slow burn genocide like the Native Americans experienced once they were put onto reservations.
When I was in grade school I would have gotten reamed for trying to cite any of these as sources. It should go without saying that they should be primary sources, not periodicals.
Does a single one of those links cite even a single reliable source?
You don’t need to trust China. Just use the basic critical reasoning we we taught in school.
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That’s not critical reasoning. It’s just bigotry.
So your evidence of genocide is a report which never makes the claim that what took place in Xinjiang was a genocide? 🤦♂️
I think the claims of genocide are closely tied to sterilization, interment, and the dramatic drop in births as a result of these practices.
Are you denying the first hand accounts of all these people. I hope not.
Idk, maybe I’m just skeptical of interviews conducted by a guy who doesn’t speak the language, is associated with nutty right wing organizations, and who claims he was ordained by god to battle the communist party of China? You understand that listening to a guy like that is basically the same as listening to people who claim they have evidence that Biden stole the 2020 election right? Just because the AP reported on his claims and Amnesty cites them doesn’t make them a reliable source of truth.
It’s also not like anything say idk, economic development could lead to a drop in birth rates. No, that’s never happened. I guess Han Chinese people are also subject to a genocide then. Even more so because while it’s a well known fact that the one child policy didn’t apply to Uyghurs, it certainly did apply to Han Chinese.
I personally don’t care for any of the current fascist superpowers. That makes it easy to criticize and not make up excuses.
Okay so let me get this straight, you don’t like any of the current fascist superpowers. However, you’re so eager to believe a guy who’s funded by fascist organizations. You know, fascist organizations that openly support the incredibly well documented genocide Israel is currently committing. Make that make sense. Being skeptical about what fascists say has no bearing on whether or not you have to care about China!
the claims of genocide are closely tied to sterilization
Source: anonymous interviews
interment
The reeducation camps have been closed since 2019, you’ve had 7 years to educate yourself but you’d rather repeat reddit comment propaganda because it suits your “China bad” mindset
dramatic drop in births
The Uyghurs were explicitly exempt from single-child policy, you uneducated twat, they attained majority-status in Xinjiang as a consequence… The largest predictors for fall in birthrates are female educational level and economic development, both of which have surged in Xinjiang over the past 20 years
They experienced an almost 60% drop in births compared to the average of about 10% according to the most dramatic report I read.
The reason you are so against this truth is because it proves that China is without a doubt a fascist entity enacting genocide.
Credit where credit is due China lifted a lot of people out of poverty by embracing capitalism. This is all part of their fascist journey.
The reason you are so against this truth
I’m not against any truth, in fact I explained to you the reason why birthrate dropped in Xinjiang: massive rise in Uyghur female education and massive rise in Uyghur economic power
Yes they are overhanded when addressing terrorism with “education camps”, but I don’t think their intent is to erase their culture. If Israel acted like the Chinese towards their minorities then the world would look very different.
Fair enough. Yes, they are definitely no Isreal shudder
Well if the west is doing something clearly the east must be doing the same thing but significantly worse, this is because people from the global south are inferior beings to my high IQ shitlib intellect.
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Okay then do it already. You’ll spare me from having to see whatever empty insults you think constitute a rebuttal.
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It’s non-violent cultural erasure, the more popular kind in the 21st century.
Yeah sure, guaranteeing protections for minority culture is cultural erasure. 🙄
A single unified culture, the stated intent of this law, means erasing the minority cultures. It’s no secret that Beijing does not let Tibet do what Tibet wants, just ask the 14th Dalai Lama.
Nowhere does the law imply the creation of a single unified culture. You’re just making that up. Only fascists think that national unity and multiculturalism are in conflict. What’s actually in this law suggest that China thinks the exact opposite, that national unity requires the protection of minority cultures.
Also why do you take this self proclaimed theocratic in exile to be the representative of the people of Tibet? It genuinely makes no sense.
People love to conflate the Dalai Lama with the people of Tibet.
He was plucked from a rural Chinese village as a child and turned into the head of Tibet’s theocracy. At the time Tibet was a miserable feudal backwater. The vast majority of the population were oppressed, illiterate peasants. It may not have been as bad as the Chinese government claims, but every account from outside observers talks about the deprivations in Tibet.
Today Tibet has almost all children in compulsory bi-lingual education and the people have many more job options than tenant-farmer. The fact that the Dalai-Lama lives in a temple in India instead of Tibet makes no difference to the lives of Tibetans.
Well then it’s a good thing China swooped in and saved them from savagery!
Nah. It’s fucked up when Western colonial expansion absorbs people against their will and it’s fucked up when China does it.
You still seem to think that the will of the Dalai Lama is at all related to the desires of the people of Tibet.
Aside from a CIA funded uprising half a century ago, there’s no evidence at all that China “absorbs people against their will.”
This is very similar to the Native American genocide.
The one where Colonial European settlers were literally marching into Indian communities and massacring them?
Umm for the most part that was just the colonialists and later on the US when it was created. The actual Europeans were not always that horrible (except the Spanish ofc)
That China is following these same genocidal blueprints is no surprise considering their embrace of fascism.
The actual Europeans were not always that horrible (except the Spanish ofc)
What makes the Spanish worse than the Dutch, English or French? All enacted genocide where they arrived, brought in slaves from Africa, and funnily enough there are more native people left in the Spanish regions (Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala) than in the English-controlled ones, the Anglos were more thorough in their genocide.
We were talking about the Native American Genocide specifically. The US was absolutely genocidal whereas other European countries were actually respecting treaties and not always trying to steal lands like the US and British.
US is of European origin though, but sure
The actual Europeans were not always that horrible
Trying to explain this in Cherokee.
The Cherokee Genocide was almost exclusively attributed to the US. I do understand that the US came from Europe of course.
This is very similar to the Native American genocide.
In China it was the Communists who walked the death march.
In North America, unlike South America and Tibet or Xinjiang, the people don’t look native. It’s not very similar.
In China it was the Communists who walked the death march.
I was unaware communists were an ethnic group. But I guess if their predecessors had a hard time in a civil war 80 years ago it means they can’t be racists now.
In North America, unlike South America and Tibet or Xinjiang, the people don’t look native. It’s not very similar.
Ah yes, let’s set state policy based on what people look like.
it means they can’t be racists now.
It means they didn’t do death marches to genocide their population. It’s just a historic curiosity that they did one to themselves.
There were famines which could be used for genocides. Maybe you find something there.
set state policy based on what people look like.
The logic works in the other direction. The look shows past policies. But looking at prison numbers, race still seems to be an issue.
The same people who scream “speak American” will have a problem with this.
Yeah, I have huge doubt that this law won’t be used to crush any cultural diversity to make a mono culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system
Despite current views that might define the system of residential schools as racist or genocidal, many scholars contend that they were seen as progressive at the time, a form of state intervention.
The school system was created as a civilizing mission to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture.
During their stay many students were forced to assimilate to Euro-Canadian culture, losing their Indigenous identities and struggling to fit into both their own communities as well as Canadian society.
These acts assumed the inherent superiority of French and British ways, and the need for Indigenous peoples to become French or English speakers, Christians, and farmers.
In 1894, amendments to the Indian Act made attendance at a day school, if there was a day school on the reserve on which the child resided, compulsory for status Indian children between 7 and 16 years of age. The changes included a series of exemptions regarding school location, the health of the children and their prior completion of school examinations.[
The introduction of the Family Allowance Act in 1945 stipulated that school-aged children had to be enrolled in school for families to qualify for the “baby bonus”, further coercing Indigenous parents into having their children attend.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission list three reasons behind the federal government’s decision to establish residential schools.
- Provide Aboriginal people with skills to participate in a market-based economy.
- Further political assimilation, in hope that educated students would give up their status and not return to their reserves or families.
- Schools were “engines of cultural and spiritual change” where “‘savages’ were to emerge as Christian ‘white men’”.
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 country known for acting solely in the interest of the ethnostate.
Glances at Japan
Yeah… pretty sure South Korea is very xenophobic as well.
It’s China. The ethnostate. The country known for acting solely in the interest of the ethnostate
Meanwhile, in China there are entire regions with extra political autonomy like the Xinjiang autonomous region or the Tibet autonomous region, with a higher degree of political freedom than most Han-majority regions. But knowing this would require that you base your criticism of China on actual reading and not reddit comments
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Garbage journalism from the BBC. They provide no link to the primary source i.e. the text of the law: Ethnic Unity and Progress Law
(my bold)
Article 46: Religious groups, religious schools and religious activity sites shall carry out publicity and education on forging a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people, persist in the direction of sinicization of our nation’s religions, guide religions to adapt to socialist society, guide religious professionals and believers to carry forward the tradition of patriotism, and promote ethnic, religious, and social harmony.
Will children be punished for speaking languages other than Mandarin in schools?
I assumed this was always the case in China, didn’t they create mandarin with the sole purpose of making everyone learn it
Historically, it’s been a largely regional split with Cantonese in the West and Mandarin in the East.
China’s been something of an outlayer in supporting as many languages as it does.
