I mean I know western media outlets never tried to hide their bias, but this is like bingo night. Let's see how many hits we get:
Use of the word sweeping:
"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."
Use of the word rubber-stamp:
"The law was approved on Thursday as the annual rubber-stamp parliamentary session drew to an end."
So-called expert using emotionally charged language:
"The law is consistent with a dramatic recent policy shift, to suppress the ethnic diversity formally recognised since 1949," Magnus Fiskesjö, an associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University said in a university report.
"The children of the next generation are now isolated and brutally forced to forget their own language and culture."
Again use of absolute language:
"The law was voted and passed on Thursday at the National People's Congress in Beijing, which has never rejected an item on its agenda."
Suspicious anonymous monk quotes:
When the BBC visited a monastery that had been at heart of Tibetan resistance in July last year, monks spoke of living under fear and intimidation.
"We Tibetans are denied basic human rights. The Chinese government continues to oppress and persecute us. It is not a government that serves the people," one of them told us.
Again some no-name "professor of government", lmao i mean truly bottom of the barrel:
"The Communist Party says it embraces different ethnicities. The country's constitution states that "each ethnicity has the right to use and develop their own language" and "have the right to self-rule".
But critics believe this new law will cement Xi's push toward assimilation.
"The law makes it clearer than ever that in Xi Jinping's PRC non-Han peoples must do more to integrate themselves with the Han majority, and above all else be loyal to Beijing," Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government at Cornell University said, referencing China by the initials of its official name.
It's possible that the law has something bad, but they don't explain this being anything more than mandating everyone be taught Mandarin, which is a good policy to have because as many people as possible in a country should have at least one language in common.
As-expressed, this is a good policy, but then the next sentence (of the two-sentence paragraph) says:
Which does not contradict the previous claim? Being taught a language is not the same as the rest of your schooling being taught in that or another language, unless they are complaining that classes teaching Mandarin will not exclusively be taught in e.g. the Uyghur language because it will need to use Mandarin in order to teach it, which is a bizarre and worthless complaint.
Also, even then they say "most of the curriculum," which should logically still be true unless "most" meant "a slim majority" and this is pushing it over, something they never explain, let alone substantiate.
This is never substantiated.
Accused by who? This is a great example of the passive voice actually being used for propagandistic purposes.
Aside from the UN in the Xinjiang case, the article just goes on to cite other reporting by the BBC, so I guess they mean "Beijing has long been accused by us"
Also OP, you left out another classic buzzword:
Alaskaball linked to the actual draft, which explicitly states that all schools should use Mandarin as the default language for teaching.
The thing is that this isn't new, a few years back the BBC liked to report on this exact thing causing protests in Tibet and Inner Mongolia. So either these were regional policies being enshrined in national law or they're only now actually finalising the switch.
Okay, that does suck. Obviously not on par with active repression but I do think people should be able to have their, and their kids', education in their own language. Obviously including mandarin in the curriculum is also extremely good but my understanding is that, previously, eg a Uyghur could attend a Uyghur language school so long as mandarin is on the curriculum, and I think that's a better state of affairs.
The on and off suppression of minority languages in the USSR is one of the saddest black marks against it, and it sucks to see China seem to fall into those pitfalls. Hell you go back to the early 2000s late 2010s and even lib outlets are writing semi-positively about China's encouragement of minority languages.
Also this linguist wrote a paper that I now really want to read but cannot actually find but the abstract is
Colin Mackerras who's work seems to be very pro-China from a glance.
This paper goes into more depth though is broader in focus.
https://sophia.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/2015079/files/200000015345_000011000_1.pdf
Edit ok this guy is so based, when Xi visited Australia for the first time he specifically thanked him
Maybe email Colin and ask him about it? My understanding is that academics usually love to send copies of their work. I've never contacted anyone about a paper, specifically, but every time I have reached out to someone about their research they have been downright giddy:)
Thanks for pointing this out. The BBC can't even articulate their grievances very well, I guess.
I don't understand why China would do this when it also has made an effort at supporting the preservation and promotion of Tibetan.