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.
idk if this would be considered reactionary but I'm kind of against language barriers. I do think it's better when more people speak the same language. And if everyone in the world has to learn one language, it should probably be Chinese I guess
People are right to be concerned about minority languages... And according to the translated document, so is the chinese government.
The media is trying to portray the law like its promoting north amrerican style reservation schools, or like the brits tried to extinguish the irish language.
The issue isn't all speaking one language, that's great, but it's the marginalisation of other languages. I agree it'd be cool for everyone could speak to each other, but minority languages also carry a lot of history, culture and new and important ways of thinking about the word and relating concepts. The attitude should be a lingua franca, rather than replacing native languages.
I'd go so far as to suspect that a multilingual world, where people primarily think about things in different grammar structures, is borderline essential to good scientific progress.
Everyone should strive to know more than one language, and in China this is most often what happens with ethnic minorities with local languages, unlike Occitanians in France for example, who are severely repressed and whose language is endangered.
Absolutely, border cities and ports throughout the world tend to be extremely rich culturally due to all the culture clashes, ironically Xinjiang Uyghurs are a great example of this.