During the recently concluded “Two Sessions” annual legislative meetings, the National People’s Congress (NPC) passed a new “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress” that many scholars and educators fear will threaten the survival of languages including Tibetan, Mongolian, and Uyghur, and further undermine cultural identity among non-Han communities in China. Strongly promoted by Xi Jinping and other CCP leaders, the law was passed with 2,756 votes (and just three opposing votes and three abstentions) and is scheduled to take effect on July 1 of this year.
It contains wide-ranging provisions that encompass education, housing policy, entertainment, and other areas. The law formalizes assimilationist policies including the strict promotion of Mandarin as the “national common language” in education and public affairs. Schools and universities will no longer be allowed to teach core subjects in languages such as Tibetan, Uyghurs, or Mongolian. It also contains language suggesting restrictions on freedom of speech and potential penalties for those outside of China who "engage in activities that undermine ethnic unity" or incite "ethnic separatism."
At AP, Huizhong Wu interviewed scholars and rights advocates who worry that the new law will further erode ethnic identity and cement assimilationalist policies:
Scholars also note the mention of pushing for “mutually embedded community environments” in the law, which they say may result in the breakup of minority-heavy neighborhoods.
“The intention is to encourage Han and other minorities to migrate into each other’s communities,” said Minglang Zhou, a professor at the University of Maryland who studied China’s bilingual policies.
[…] Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the law is not about ensuring equality.
“The question was never so much about ensuring their participation in the economy in an equitable manner, more inclusive manner,” because the policies are being forced on Tibetans, Wang said. “And a truly inclusive model does not preclude the ability of children to speak two languages.”
[…] The law also creates a legal base for the Chinese government to prosecute people or organizations outside China if their actions harm the progress of “ethnic unity.”
[…] Rayhan Asat, a legal scholar at Harvard University, said “the law serves as a strategic tool and gives the pretext to government to commit all sorts of human rights violations.” [Source]
A piece by Changhao Wei at the NPC Observer noted the powerful political backing behind the new law, summarized its key provisions, and described the significance of its legislative path:
The Law’s high-profile legislative journey demonstrates its importance. The Communist Party expressly called for its enactment in the 2024 Third Plenum Decision. Last August, the Party revealed that the full Politburo had discussed a draft of the Law—the first such disclosure in almost four decades. In December, the NPC Standing Committee decided to refer the bill to the NPC on the ground that it qualifies as a “basic statute” [基本法律] on ethnic affairs that constitutionally must be approved by the full legislature.
The Law’s political salience is also evident in two atypical features. First, it begins with a rare narrative preamble of over 800 characters. Only three other statutes include a preamble: the closely related Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law [民族区域自治法] and the Basic Laws of Hong Kong and Macao. Second, the Law uses Party-speak drawn from the “Twelve Musts” as the headings of three core chapters (II–IV): “Building a Shared Spiritual Home,” “Facilitating Interactions, Interchanges, and Intermingling,” and “Promoting Common Prosperity and Development.” Far from being descriptive and dry, as headings typically are, they incorporate key prongs of Xi’s doctrine and organize the Law around them. [Source]
Writing for The Diplomat, Sophie Richardson explored the broader implications of such language restrictions, and documented some specific cases of political repression aimed at language advocates:
Language restrictions are especially pernicious, eroding multiple aspects of community and identity with a goal of eradicating these communities’ distinct culture. A January 2026 report by the United Nations special rapporteur on minority rights cited Chinese government policies of language erasure as a form of “extermination,” and argued that such practices “should be qualified as genocide and be treated as such by the international community.”
The human cost of these policies is already apparent. Renowned Uyghur scholar and Xinjiang Folklore Research Center founder Rahile Dawut is serving a life sentence for “separatism” after authorities subjected her to enforced disappearance in 2017. The same year, Tibetan language activist Tashi Wangchuk was sentenced to five years in prison for advocating for greater Tibetan medium instruction in schools. In October 2024, a public security bureau in Qinghai Province detained him for 15 days for videos he posted on social media advancing his language rights activism.
Ethnic Mongolian dissident Hada disappeared over a year ago, when he was reported to be in ill health. A writer and advocate for Mongolian identity and culture, Hada spent 15 years in prison, starting in 1995, for protecting and promoting Mongolian culture, and endured round-the-clock surveillance after his release. [Source]
CDT Chinese editors have archived some past content critical of restrictions on bilingual education, particularly in Inner Mongolia, where there were mass public protests in 2020 about curriculum reform and online censorship about the end of the Mongolian-language gaokao college entrance exam in 2024. Our editors have also noted some ongoing cross-platform censorship of sensitive word combinations related to Mongolian-language suppression, such as “bilingual + education + Mongolian.” Past CDT English coverage about assimilation and language suppression includes pieces about the purging of Uyghur language books in Xinjiang; the removal of Tibetan and Uyghur language content from language-learning app Talkmate and video-sharing platform Bilibili; and interviews on the expansion of Tibetan boarding schools where students as young as four or five are forced to speak only Mandarin, and the various threats to Tibet’s minority languages.
A recent article by Zhang Zisong, first published by the freelance journalism collective Aquarius Era and archived by CDT Chinese, describes the “language gap” that now exists in Inner Mongolia and other Mongolian regions five years after textbook and curriculum changes curtailed the teaching and public usage of the Mongolian language:
In Inner Mongolia’s public spaces, one can observe the linguistic remnants of three distinct eras existing side by side. The first dates back to the decade-long Cultural Revolution, when Mandarin Chinese was dominant and Mongolian subordinate. The second era, which lasted until 2022, saw Mongolian and Chinese displayed together, with Mongolian generally given priority: "Mongolian on top, Chinese below," or "Mongolian on the left, Chinese on the right." Mongolian enjoyed clear legal status and visibility as one of the region’s official languages, and was included in ubiquitous bilingual signage ranging from the smallest shop signs to the largest public spaces and facilities.
From 2022, new public signage either followed a layout that put "Chinese on top, Mongolian below,” or used Chinese exclusively. Meanwhile, some existing Mongolian signage has been physically erased: Mongolian inscriptions have been chiseled off stone carvings and sculptures commemorating place-names have been removed, leaving only the faintest traces behind.
Perhaps the most striking example is the trilingual stone plaque at the Xanadu ruins [a UNESCO World Heritage site commemorating the remains of Kublai Khan’s legendary capital city]. Prior to 2022, the stone plaque featured inscriptions in three languages, with Mongolian at the top, followed by Chinese and English. After 2022, the Chinese inscription was moved to the top position. Uneven white scars where the original text inscriptions were scraped away remain visible.
[…] When the curriculum reform policy reached Harqin County [an autonomous Mongolian county located in Liaoning province] in 2021, Ruofeng [a pseudonym] had just entered high school and barely registered the change. But after becoming interested in ethnology at university, she began to feel that something "wasn’t quite fair." While working on a research project related to language policy, she found she couldn’t locate any official government documents on the policy change: even when the policy had first been enacted in her county, her teachers had only given the verbal explanation, “We’re not teaching Mongolian anymore.” Although the Harqin County government website still claims that Mongolian is being taught there, in fact “they stopped teaching it long ago," a discrepancy that Ruofeng finds puzzling.
Studying ethnology prompted Ruofeng to think more deeply about her own ethnic identity. In the past, lacking immersion in that cultural tradition, she had never been conscious of being Mongolian; learning the Mongolian script had only been a means to an end, a way of passing exams. Now she has begun to appreciate the importance of Mongolian script, and her sense of ethnic belonging has steadily deepened. For her, language is the only thread still connecting her to that identity.
"My younger brother is in the second year of middle school,” she says. “He probably stopped studying Mongolian by third or fourth grade, and by now he’s basically forgotten all of it. Later on, when he goes out into the world, will he still say he’s Mongolian? I wonder about that sometimes. If he leaves home, where will his sense of ethnic identity come from?"
As for those young people who are still fluent in their mother tongue, they have responded to its growing marginalization by clustering together for warmth and support. Many add "Mongolian" tags to their social media profiles as a way of recognizing one another. Most of them live in cities where, drawn together by their shared language and cultural background, they often gather for meals and conversation. [Chinese]