cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51758910
In the name of promoting inter-ethnic harmony, China is to force dozens of ethnic minorities within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to assimilate into Han-dominated society by enacting a landmark law during the upcoming fourth session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) which opens on Mar 5. The law will require ethnic minorities to use Mandarin Chinese as their main language of instruction, overturning decades-old policies that date back to the era of Mao Zedong, noted ft.com Mar 3.
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The sweeping law marks the latest effort in a signature “Sinicization” campaign under Chinese leader Xi Jinping and prescribes legal action against anyone, inside or outside the country, who undermines “national unity” or provokes “separatism”.
The so-called Han majority accounts for more than 90% of the PRC’s population of 1.4 billion and the country’s constitution recognises 55 ethnic minorities, and a dozen languages — some with their own written scripts — and hundreds of dialects.
Under the new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, while minority languages may still be taught as a second language, groups such as Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongolians will no longer be entitled to use their native tongues for core subjects in schools and universities, the report noted.
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The new law “overturns the multicultural promises upon which China was founded”, moving from “an idea of unity through difference or unity through pluralism, to one of unity through sameness, through the elimination of difference”, Benno Weiner, a historian of modern China, Tibet and Inner Asia at Carnegie Mellon University, has said.
“The conclusion that Xi Jinping and others seem to have come to is that diversity is dangerous.”
[...]
Worryingly, one clause in the new law is cited as saying only the state has the right to promote “a system of symbols of Chinese civilisation”, which can be used “in public facilities and architectural design, scenic area exhibitions, place naming and public activities”. Such policies, if enforced, meant there was “no way” that non-Han people would be able to safely express “any type of discontent without being accused of being essentially separatists or terrorists,” Weiner has said.
[...]
I mean... Belgium literally has three different full-fledged education systems in flemish, french and german; all of them with their own curricula, schools, universities, etc.
This is just flat out wrong??? Finnish and swedish are not similar languages and they're not mutually understandable. A finnish speaker cannot understand a swedish speaker. Swedish is a germanic language, Finnish is blood uralic, its not even part of the indo-european family. Perkele, mita vittua?!
Did you just go "oh, they're both in the north, they sound similar to me sooooooooooooooo"
By definition its not the ONLY official language if areas in the country have extra official languages.
The very constitution of the country allows for co-official languages.
And overall it makes sense that these minority-language schools are present only in particular regions. Why would you want to have schools for language X when there's not a consistent minority that speaks language X in that area in the first place? Complete waste of resources.
And naturally you can't have schools for every minority, especially with modern-day migration, but its not economically feasible to have a school where only 3 kids can attend.
If would've just said that not every minority in Europe gets its school, I would've agreed. That much is clear. But that is a very different point from the one initially made.
The dominant model in Europe is certainly not one similar to the one China is pursuing, in fact I'd argue that there's few EU member states that come close to that. And the ones that spring to mind are the Baltics - Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia - which is an entirely different bag of chips and a whole conversation to be had about how right or wrong they are to pursue something like that in their present geopolitical context.
Please, stop saying that. The two languages are not similar. That's not the reason for their status. Its because Swedish imperialism. They occupied Finland for centuries. To help you better understand, percentage-wise the similarity between Swedish and Finnish is CLOSE TO 0% (ZERO)
Strong push? I don't agree with this framing. It makes it seem like its just beginning, like only now we're moving in that direction. When the reality is that its completely normalized across most if not all EU member states.
Teaching at least one foreign language is a long-term standard of the education system of EU states.