China is moving to approve a sweeping law to promote “ethnic unity”, a measure that critics say will further erode the rights of some minority groups as authorities cement a push towards assimilation.
The law, expected to be approved by the ceremonial national legislature on Thursday, is designed to foster “a stronger sense of community among all ethnic groups in the Chinese nation”, Lou Qinjian, a delegate to the National People’s Congress who introduced the proposal, said.
Delegates at the congress – regarded by analysts as a “rubber-stamp legislature” that almost always endorses policies decided by the Communist party leadership – have spent the past week discussing a package of proposed laws that are expected to pass with little opposition.
The proposed law lays out the need to promote ethnic unity by all public institutions and private enterprises, including local governments and state-affiliated groups, like the All-China Women’s Federation.
“The people of each ethnic group, all organisations and groups of the country, armed forces, every Party and social organisation, every company, must forge a common consciousness of the Chinese nation according to law and the constitution, and take the responsibility of building this consciousness,” it reads.
But rights advocates say the law formalises a broader political project championed by president Xi Jinping which seeks to integrate minority cultures more tightly into the dominant Han identity – a policy often described by officials as the “Sinicisation” of ethnic groups.
Mr Xi has previously said that China’s ethnic groups should be like “pomegranate seeds that stick together”, a phrase frequently used to emphasise unity under a single national identity.
Critics warn the proposed legislation could weaken the cultural and linguistic rights of China’s minority communities, particularly because it requires the expanded use of Mandarin in schools.
The majority of China’s population is of Han ethnicity and the official language is Mandarin. The country is also home to 55 minority ethnic groups, making up 8.9 per cent of the population.
The constitution states that “each ethnicity has the right to use and develop their own language” and “have the right to self-rule" while the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy promises limited autonomy to those groups, including allowing them to create flexible measures to develop their economy.
However, experts say the proposed law could effectively override those protections in practice by making Mandarin the default language in education and public life.
“It puts a death nail in the party’s original promise of meaningful autonomy,” said James Leibold, a professor at Australia’s LaTrobe University who has studied China’s changing policies toward its ethnic minorities. Mr Leibold described the measure a capstone of Mr Xi’s “major rethink” of ethnic policies.
China's United Front, which oversees ethnic minority policy, did not respond to a request for comment.
According to article 15 of the proposed law, Mandarin is mandated to be taught to all children before kindergarten and throughout the rest of compulsory education up to the end of high school.
Mandarin is already the primary language of instruction in Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang – Chinese regions with large ethnic minority populations – but the new law essentially states that minority languages cannot be the primary language of instruction nationwide.
Until recent years, ethnic minorities had some autonomy in what language could be used for teaching in schools.
In the past, students in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese autonomous region bordering Mongolia, could study large parts of the entire curriculum in Mongolian.
That changed in 2020, when new students found out their Mongolian language textbooks could no longer be used, and they could only use Chinese textbooks.
The policy change led to massive protests and an immediate crackdown, as well as later re-education campaigns, according to an essay co-written by Mr Leibold and a Mongolian former journalist.
Students in the region can currently only study Mongolian as a foreign language class inside schools, one hour a day.
Scholars also note the mention of pushing for “mutually embedded community environments” in the law, which they say may result in the break-up of minority-heavy neighbourhoods.
“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.
Many countries, including the US, pursue similar assimilation policies. China has said its approach is to bring development to ethnic minorities areas. But Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the law wasn’t really 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, Ms 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 organisations outside China if their actions harm the progress of “ethnic unity”.
The legal penalties for people abroad echo the clause in the National Security Law which China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020, which states that authorities can prosecute people based outside China over actions that Beijing perceives as secession or subversion. Hong Kong’s government later issued bounties for 34 overseas activists on suspicion of violating the security law.
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”.
Ms Asat said her younger brother, Ekpar Asat, was serving a 15-year prison sentence in Xinjiang on charges of inciting ethnic discrimination and ethnic hatred. Ms Asat said that her family never got any formal notice from the government about his arrest or a trial.
Her brother was an entrepreneur who built a social media platform for Uighurs. She said he was taken shortly after he visited the US as part of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program in 2016.
Ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim minority group, have allegedly been the target of a campaign of detention, and later incarceration by China. While the short-term interment camps were said to be closed in 2019, thousands ended up in prison, where experts said they were targeted for their identity and not for actual crimes.
Ms Asat said she hoped that US president Donald Trump would raise his case during his upcoming summit with Mr Xi.
She said she worried about how the new generation would define being Uighur.
“I think preserving any sort of Uighur identity would be impossible,” she said.
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