Curbs on Mongolian language teaching prompt large protests in China | via nytimes
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians in northern China have gathered outside schools to protest a new policy that would reduce the teaching of their language in favor of Chinese, according to rights groups, a rare display of mass discontent in the border region.
“We Mongolians are a great race as well,” Dagula, a 39-year-old mother of two, said in a telephone interview from her home in Xilinhot, a city in Inner Mongolia. “If we accept teaching in Chinese, our Mongolian language will really die out.” Under the new policy, classes would also rely on Chinese textbooks compiled and approved by the government, part of a broader government effort in recent years to standardize curriculum in schools. While the new policy states that the Mongolian language would still be taught to students, the role of Mongolian as a language of instruction would effectively be diminished in many schools.
For decades, China’s ruling Communist Party maintained policies intended to keep ethnic minorities, especially Tibetans and Uighurs, under political control while giving them a degree of autonomy to preserve their own languages and cultures. But the new policies have also stirred anxiety and fears, with some arguing that the measures will quickly erase their own native cultures and identities.
The party has also pushed a greater emphasis on the Chinese language in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, in far western China. Education has been just one part of a sweeping crackdown in the region in recent years, in which as many as 1 million ethnic Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities have been detained in internment camps. Across schools in Xinjiang, Chinese is replacing Uighur, a Turkic language, as the main language of instruction.
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