this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026

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282

China tells its minorities to integrate or face consequences with sweeping new law (edition.cnn.com)

submitted 4 days ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.

Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.

The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

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[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 29 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Here's the wiki article on the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_Promoting_Ethnic_Unity_and_Progress.

Some stuff makes sense - like economic modernization of regions with many minorities (especially poor regions), teaching Mandarin in schools so that everyone can speak the majority language, and preserving cultural works and texts of minority groups.

Other stuff seems repressive, like the broad enforcement section, the extremely broad reach of the law into all public and private institutions, legislating what various actors can/can't teach the youth if it might "harm Chinese ethnic unity" which is left pretty vague. Very ethnostate-coded stuff on the whole, not great.

"Chapter I.... tasks the whole of government and society to achieve these goals, mandating general obligations on a wide range of public and private actors such as ... " [basically all imaginable institutions]

"Chapter II, titled Building a Shared Spiritual Home, lays out the ideological characteristics ... requiring fostering identification with 'the great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the Communist Party of China, and socialism with Chinese characteristics' through patriotic education ... and promotion of 'Chinese cultural symbols and image of the Chinese nation'. It also codifies the predominance of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) in public life ... and requires that Chinese characters be displayed more prominently than minority scripts if both must be used in public."

"It tasks the Ministry of Education and the National Ethnic Affairs Commission in developing textbooks regarding 'the community of the Chinese nation' ... It vows to support the standardization, digitization, and preservation of minority texts. It broadly requires media, internet service providers, families, among others, to promote the CCP's ethnic policy ... while prohibiting them from 'instilling in minors ideas detrimental to ethnic unity and progress'."

"Chapter V and VI concern the enforcement mechanisms ... permits citizens to report conduct that 'undermines ethnic unity and progress' ... Procuratorates may initiate public interest litigation when any such conduct also 'undermines national interests or the public interest'. It generally leaves penalties to be imposed under other applicable laws. It also asserts jurisdiction over foreign organizations and individuals that 'commit acts targeting the PRC that undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division'.[7] The law empowers the state to pursue those outside of China perceived as undermining notions of ethnic unity."

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 34 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's quite standard fascist discourse:

Point to real problem that everybody wants to solve; declare that some policy they want (almost always some kind of racism) is the only solution; do some genocide as the means of implementing the policy.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

it's even in the name of the law "ethnic unity" - like come the fuck on lol

[+] marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today -12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The reason this law is written this way is because of the US funded and armed East Turkestan movement that has killed hundreds of men women and children and dozens of police over the last 30 years.

That is the 'ethnic policy' that no, East Turkestan, a "country" invented in the 1990s by white people that were upset their spy networks in China kept getting executed, is not real and is not a part of Chinese history or culture. Because the East Turkestan movement used propaganda that said the evil Chinese Communists invaded East Turkestan (literally several millennia before communism came to China) randomly and out of the blue and stole away the people of turkey and their land (that just has happened to have been on every single western map of China ever made).

The "ethnicity" is Chinese. All people in China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Yue, etc are Chinese. There are sub ethnicities like Uyghur, but they are Chinese.

This law is to reduce racism and radicalism.

[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I am definitely sympathetic to the defense against foreign dissent-manufacturing. I don't doubt that is a serious issue.

But, ethnicity and nationality are separate things. Being a Chinese citizen does not make one ethnically Chinese - or in this case Han Chinese. I think what you are calling "sub-ethnicity" here is just what people mean by "ethnicity". And what you're implying is "ethnicity" is just "nationality".

Though I think the CCP is trying to establish the concept of a Zhonghua Minzu (中华民族) or "Chinese Nation/Ethnic Group" - which is an artificial category intended to create a unified Chinese national identity out of the 56 ethnic groups recognized in China - maybe that's what you mean? Either way, that doesn't fit the typical anthropological definition, in my opinion.

I think they walk a fine line with that concept - it'd be very easy for that national identity to represent the Han majority more than the small minorities. As evidenced by the language restrictions posed by the law. Given the Han majority is 90% of the country, I don't see how it could be otherwise.

To the extent that it reduces racism and foreign-sponsored dissent groups, that is good. To the extent that it limits free practice of culture and true, non-US-State-Dept sponsored, free speech, I'd say it's overly draconian. But, I can also appreciate the need for more "authoritarian" laws in a country that has been under attack by foreign powers for as long as China has.

I am not a Chinese legal expert and have not read the full law, nor do I fully understand the context. So I withhold full judgment and don't value my opinion too highly.

[–] no_name_dev_from_hell@programming.dev -2 points 3 days ago

Ethnicity is a crap word created by the western political discourse to undermine the developing countries.

In many regions of the world, people don't identify via their ethnicity l, but their tribes or their religion (e.g. middle east before 1930ish). You don't see the average westoid liberal defend those rights tho.