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 really hard to parse through the article wether this is actually a rare China L or just typical bad reporting
From what I've read so far, it falls in the category of "at its absolute worst, it will be the same as policies in almost every other large, diverse country."
A lot also seems to come down to the implementation. Consider two policies:
You could write the same BBC article about both policies.
What’s an L about this? Everyone should be taught the dominant language of the nation they live in. Frankly everyone wants to learn the language because life without it is objectively more limited and difficult, so this won’t even really change much.
This is absolutely untrue. Plenty of people, especially in colonized nations, do not, in fact, want to learn the dominant language of the nation-state they live in. Especially when there is a history of violent repression of indigenous languages. Linguistic hegemony is an integral facet of socio-cultural hegemony.
Enforcing dominant language education is most often a way to supplant the socio-cultural makeup of indigenous groups. This was a key policy in residential schools on Turtle Island, for instance.
Providing minority language education is crucial for safeguarding indigenous linguistic cultures. That's not to say that you shouldn't also offer national language education, but to demand it at the expense of minority language education is a form of indigenous cultural erosion.
"Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam."
I'm being China-specific. All the Tibetans and Uyghurs and other Chinese minority people I've known learn Chinese because it gives them opportunities that they otherwise would not have. Don't know about other countries so I won't comment.
The difference being teaching a national language and all teaching being in the national language are not the same. The latter destroys languages.
This is not a China-specific comment, which makes the following sentence seem more broad as well. But, frankly, it is also incorrect even in a China-specific context. Firstly, because this is a law that mandates national-language education, and secondly, because you cannot possibly speak on behalf of every minority language speaker in China. there is nothing frank about that claim, just a claim to encompass entire populations based on the people you personally have met.
It would be just as wrong for me to claim that no minority language speakers want to learn Chinese because I have met Hakka Chinese who are bitter about needing to learn Mandarin.
As far as giving them opportunities: sure, this is true. But it could be just as possible a solution to expand minority-language opportunities as it is to legislate away minority-language education. It's a narrow-minded solution to a large problem that is easily brushed aside as a minority concern.
Just because your indigenous group's region is encompassed into a larger governing body does not mean you should need to learn another language. Why shouldn't the people governing you presume to learn your language if communicating with you is so important? If they are representing your group at a national level, if they lay claim to your ancestral territory, why aren't they able to take an effort to ensuring that your integration into a wider society doesn't come at the cost of your cultural identity?
This effort is what leads to reciprocal language exchange--and ultimately, inspires people to learn the dominant language out of choice, rather than coercion.
godisdog was clearly speaking about what the article says, which only specifically cites there being mandatory Mandarin classes rather than all classes being taught in Mandarin (which unfortunately appears to be the actual content of the law). Of course both we and many national minorities (etc.) object to the latter.
Between this thread and the immigration one we can see that the colonial mindset is alive and well in the minds of many users.
Yeah, it seems dumb having part of your population unable to communicate with another part of the population. Having a common language does not delete minority languages (although some measures to protect those minority langs, like making mandatory for any public servant to be able to communicate in them when working in their respective regions, should be put in place).
Edit: I skimmed the translation someone posted and I'm less favorable to this. Making education use the dominant language will erase the minority ones. Daily life should be in the minority language, and both should be taught in school.