【Translation】27 Questions about Bilingual Education in Inner Mongolia

Original: Bilingual Education in Inner Mongolia: An Explainer

Author: Christopher P. Atwood

Translation: Google Translate , Blockflöte and its friends

The title has been changed, and the serial number and link are all added by the translator. The translation is not authorized by the original author and is for reference and communication only.

Translations available on the Internet (with which this translation has nothing to do): Bilingual Education in Inner Mongolia: A Note

China today is ending a three-quarter-century experiment. The experiment is about minority language education for some specific ethnic groups: Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Kazakh and Korean. A legacy of China's decentralized past and the Soviet model, minority language education is now being replaced by a new model of "bilingual education" in which Chinese is the language of instruction and minority language is at best a subjects, one hour a day. The new model was brought to Inner Mongolia this summer, sparking what could be the biggest wave of protests in nearly three decades. What is this new model of "bilingual education"? Why is Inner Mongolia now the center of resistance?

1. Policy changes

1. Q: What is the problem of "bilingual education" in Inner Mongolia?

A: This summer, the Inner Mongolia Education Bureau announced a plan to make changes in Inner Mongolia's nine-year compulsory education. The plan will begin the transition to nationally compiled textbooks on "language", "morality and the rule of law (politics)" and "history". The point is that these courses will be taught in the country's common language, Mandarin. The policy will be officially implemented on September 1 this year, starting from the first and seventh grade "Chinese". Next year, it will expand to "morality and the rule of law" and then to "history" in 2022. Therefore, starting in 2022, if all goes according to plan, all students in Inner Mongolia will study these three courses exclusively in Chinese, based on the Chinese nationally compiled textbooks. Previously, in many schools in Inner Mongolia, all these subjects were taught in Mongolian until high school.

2. Q: What practical impact will this policy have on schools?

A: Currently, schools in Inner Mongolia have classes for six to seven hours a day. In a typical Mongolian-taught school, all courses in the first two years are in Mongolian, and all language courses have an emphasis on Mongolian language and literature. One hour of Chinese per day will be added from the third grade, and one foreign language will be added from the sixth to the tenth grade.

The practical impact of this reform was to change three taught subjects to Chinese-taught courses. Language courses in Mongolian have been committed to continue with "Chinese" (Chinese) and the remaining courses (currently math, science, art, music and physical education) will continue to be taught in Mongolian. But the policy document envisages that the new subject will be more prominent in the curriculum and taught at lower grades. At the same time, it also promises not to increase class hours. As a result, the share of weekly class time for the "local course" was reduced to increase the time for the "national course", which had to reduce the time spent in Mongolian.

An area of immediate concern is the job security of existing teachers. According to official documents, most teachers who are teaching in Mongolian should be able to switch to teaching in Chinese in the summer after some additional training. In some areas, they envisage having to hire current or recently retired teachers with Chinese teaching experience to assist in the transition period. Official documents also strive to assure teachers that the changes will not affect their work seniority or pensions, and that they will have the opportunity to retrain if needed.

In the long run, this policy will have knock-on effects for universities. Currently, universities in Inner Mongolia have courses in history and other social sciences taught in Mongolian. What will happen if there are no more students trained in these subjects in Mongolian in primary school? Likewise, employment opportunities for those trained to teach history, ethics and the rule of law, and the language in Mongolian will only plummet.

3. Q: What is the basis for the stated policy?

A: According to official theory, the main benefit of this change is that the new national textbooks and curriculum standards for the three courses of "language", "morality and rule of law" and "history" are of the highest quality. The textbook has been implemented in ethnic schools in Xinjiang since 2017, and in ethnic schools in Tibet since 2018 - schools taught in Tibetan and Uyghur have previously been phased out, and the law mainly affects Mongolian and Uyghur languages in these areas. Xibe language school. The document insists other classes will not be affected, nor will ongoing Mongolian (and Korean) language classes.

At the same time, the documents prominently cite Chinese President Xi Jinping's emphasis on using a common language as a key link in communication, thereby promoting mutual understanding and "common identification." They also propose that improving mastery of the country's common language is the basis for greater success in "employment, acceptance of modern scientific and cultural knowledge, and integration into society."

The unanswered question is: why can't the new textbook just be translated into Mongolian? In fact, the courses on morality, politics, and history in Mongolian schools in Inner Mongolia are all translated from Chinese, and there is no special Inner Mongolian content. The only exception currently is the Mongolian language.

4. Q: Isn't "bilingual education" a good thing for minority languages?

A: In many countries, one hour a day of minority language study in schools would be considered a major step forward in multicultural education. However, in Inner Mongolia, it represented a sharp decline in the educational status of the language. Until now, in Mongolian-taught schools in China, Mongolian was used in all courses up to the twelfth grade, while courses in Chinese and foreign languages were added from the third grade onwards.

Educational theorists refer to language as the "medium" (the language in which it is taught) or the "discipline" (the language in which it is being taught). The key issue here is that under the new policy, the number of subjects that will be taught in Mongolian as a medium will be drastically reduced.

Technically, even now, Mongolian-taught schools are "bilingual" from third grade onwards because they also teach Chinese. Therefore, some people in China say that the current "Mode 1" bilingual education is the opposite of the new "Mode 2" bilingual education. But in general, activists reject the term "bilingual education" as a way to prioritize Chinese over Mongolian. The historical experience of Xinjiang and Tibet shows that this is a real fear.

5. Q: Can Mongolian language skills be preserved under "bilingual education"?

A: There is reason to doubt that this is possible.

First of all, there is a clear trend - going from taking all courses in Mongolian to only a few courses is a big downgrade. This is because of the central government's policy of increasing proficiency in the "national language"; are further de-escalations in the pipeline? In Xinjiang, the policy of "vigorously promoting" "bilingual education" began in 2004, and by 2006, in some rural areas, pure Chinese education was implemented to the kindergarten level.

Second, as numerous studies of Mongolian-medium schools in Inner Mongolia have shown, even there, the "implicit curriculum" clearly places Han knowledge and Han institutions more important than Mongolian knowledge and Mongolian institutions. Because of this implicit curriculum, even Mongolian children in Mongolian-taught schools often ignore the Mongolian-led curriculum—a omission that often leads to regret after the heightened ethnic awareness in college. The heavy emphasis placed on the three national courses makes them clearly important subjects—the implication that the really important subjects need to be taught in Chinese will not go unnoticed by Mongolian students.

Third, such a change would impair the ability of Mongolian children in Mongolian-taught schools to express themselves in their native language in a variety of subjects. Literacy is not all-or-nothing, but occurs in a range of social functions and must be practiced to be successfully mastered. Removing politics, morals, history from the range of subjects that Mongolian children will be trained to read, write, listen to and talk about in their native language will further weaken the language, bringing it closer to a "kitchen language" that can only be used for conversations within the family , while lacking vocabulary and rhetorical skills for common written and oral usage.

In China, the discourse of development is absolutely ubiquitous - all aspects of society can be classified as "developed" or "backward", and all movements should be directed from "backward" to "developed". As far as language is concerned, this view implies that language can "evolve" and that all Chinese people have a constitutional right to "evolve" their native language. Article 4 of the Chinese Constitution states: "All ethnic groups have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages." School education is a key site for this development. A central policy that said Mongolian language could no longer serve as a medium for important disciplines such as language, politics, morality, history, and when it was implemented, the message was clear in the context of China's development: Mongolian language is backward and cannot be develop.

6. Q: Is Mongolian banned? Is Mongolian script banned?

A: Of course not. Even those who are staunchly opposed to the planned changes acknowledge that Mongolian will continue to be taught as a subject in Mongolian schools in Inner Mongolia — although critics say it amounts to treating Mongolian's native language "like a foreign language" treat. Nor is there any ban on the use of Mongolian outside of public spaces or school classrooms. Mongolian-language radio and television continue and are unlikely to be diminished given their importance in presenting a good image of China to the independent Mongolian state. The restrictions on Mongolian-language social media platforms like Bainu appear to be temporary, and they're apparently back in action.

2. Policy Background

7. Q: How long has this policy been implemented?

A: The policy document mentioned that the nationally unified three-subject curriculum was first introduced in September 2017. The policy was first implemented in Xinjiang in 2017, followed by Tibet in 2018. There are reports that the Xilingol League, one of the Mongolian flags (counties), also tried to implement this policy in 2018, but it was fruitless after encountering silent resistance. Official documents say the new curriculum is being expanded to schools in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Jilin, Liaoning, Qinghai and Sichuan this year. The main focus of this policy seems to be the surviving Mongolian language schools in China, since all of the above-mentioned areas, except Sichuan (where Tibetan is the main minority language), have Mongolian autonomous areas and education in Mongolian. . However, there are not many details about the implementation of the policy in the other five provincial administrative regions.

As far as the current situation in Inner Mongolia is concerned, this policy appears to have been disclosed for the first time in June 2020 in Tongliao City (a place with a large Mongolian population in southeastern Inner Mongolia). Relatedly , on June 4, 2020, a delegation led by Ge Weiwei, Deputy Director of the Department of Ethnic Education, Ministry of Education of China, including a subordinate who traveled with him as a "researcher", the Ministry of Education's Department of Ethnic Education, Teaching Guidance Division III. Chaogebayer, a senior researcher (in 2017, he served as the deputy director of the Office of the Bilingual Teaching Leading Group in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region; in 2018, he served as the deputy director of the Bilingual Division of the Department of Ethnic Education) visited the place.

During that visit, the research team highlighted the inadequacy of the decree and the need to improve it in the mastery of the "national common language". At the end of June, reports began to emerge that teachers in Tongliao had to use Chinese to teach the first of three nationally unified courses (language) starting in September. By Monday, July 6, the first batch of petitions against the policy began to circulate on WeChat in the Tongliao region, with little response from the rest of the region. On August 17, the Education Department of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region first announced at a closed-door meeting that the policy would be rolled out across Inner Mongolia, and ordered all subordinate administrative units to plan and implement it from August 18. On August 23, posts related to "bilingual education" on social media in Inner Mongolia were systematically deleted. Still, Han Chinese outside the region are reportedly still able to discuss the topic.

8. Q: Is this a local policy, or a policy from Beijing?

A: The involvement of Chinese national education policy makers such as Ge Weiwei, and the emphasis on state-approved curriculum and steady implementation suggest that the policy is driven by the central government in Beijing, and that the state-level planners also include Ruchao Some Mongolians in Gebayer. The specific implementation details are being worked out by the city of Hohhot, but the overall initiative will undoubtedly come from the central government. At the same time, local officials were pushed to the forefront, spearheading the high-profile implementation of the plan.

9. Q: Is this related to the Xinjiang and Tibet issues? Is it related to the ideological centralization policy of the Xi Jinping administration?

A: To promote the impetus behind the national push for this policy - to revise and publish new central curricula and textbooks in "language", "morality and rule of law" and "history", there is no doubt that there is a shift to Chinese nationalism under the Xi Jinping government and ideological shift tendencies.

However, for now, even if local conditions still hinder the full implementation of Chinese-medium education in the more remote areas of Xinjiang and Tibet, education in Uyghur and Tibetan as the medium of instruction has almost disappeared in Xinjiang and Tibet exhausted. Although, at least in theory, Mongolian and Korean are the only remaining minority languages in China that continue to be used as languages of instruction, but if such policies are implemented in the ethnic Korean areas of Jilin and Liaoning, it is very likely that It has the same impact on Chinese education with Korean as the medium of instruction.

10. Q: Does this have anything to do with the "second-generation ethnic policy" proposed by Beijing's policy academia?

A: Yes, many in the non-ruling party believe that the new policy is a covert implementation of a "second-generation ethnic policy". Hu Angang, a professor at the China Studies Center, one of Tsinghua University's think tanks, Hu Lianhe , an official of the United Front Work Department of Tsinghua University, and Ma Rong , a professor of anthropology at Peking University, have been advocating the "second-generation ethnic policy."

These people claim that it was a mistake to retain Soviet-style ethnic autonomy in the Chinese constitution and should be replaced by references to "depoliticized" American-style ethnic policies. Under this framework, ethnic groups have separate equal rights, but do not have territorial autonomy and state-supported education or cultural preservation, and transform China's autonomous regions, states, and counties into ordinary land units, transitioning to pure Chinese education. Ge Weiwei spoke positively of these ideas when he visited Tongliao in June.

At China's "Two Sessions", which was postponed to May 21 this year, a representative of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy, one of China's eight recognized democratic parties, submitted a proposal based on the "second-generation ethnic policy" point of view. Claims that based on the new legal basis of the "national common language", China's current laws cannot meet the needs of economic and social development and national development under the new national conditions.

Specifically, the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy believes that the ethnic education policy in Inner Mongolia is out of step with the implementation of the common ethnic language. Although Chinese parties other than the Communist Party do not have much political power, they often speak in the tone of public intellectuals in so-called "advanced" coastal areas. This proposal of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy has many similarities with the new proposal in Inner Mongolia in terms of wording. For example, it does not mention "Chinese", but "the national common language".

Clearly, Inner Mongolia's new policy is in line with the thinking of many in China's wealthier, more cosmopolitan regions, where ethnic autonomy is viewed as an outdated legacy under the guidance of the former Soviet Union, as well as in China's relatively poor, remote west the burden of regional development.

3. Education and Mongolians in Inner Mongolia

11. Q: How long has Mongolian education existed in Inner Mongolia?

A: Formal education in Mongolian has existed since the creation of the Mongolian alphabet in 1206. Since 1581, Mongolians began to convert to Gelugpa (Yellow Sect) Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibetan language education began to become mainstream, especially among Mongolian children who accounted for 40% or more of the monastery-educated children. However, even after Mongolia came under the control of China's last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty (1636–1912), autonomous Mongolian leagues, ministries, and banners continued to use Mongolian as the official administrative language in addition to Manchu (Chinese was not allowed in administrative used in). The local government also needs to train a certain number of students every year. In 1901, Beijing turned to a new settlement colonial policy (Translator's Note: When referring to the opening of "Mongolian prohibition" , all Mongolian ministries gradually recruited inland farmers), replacing Mongolian herdsmen with Han farmers, except for the existing Tibetan monasteries, A new Chinese school was established. In response, a "new school" movement arose, which promoted secularized Mongolian language education, coexisting with Chinese language education, as a new path for development and liberation. Since 1931, these schools have been part of the Mongolian-language education system that was widespread in Japanese-occupied Inner Mongolia. During the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in 1945, the Chinese Communist Party seemed to be better able to "understand" the Mongolian people's desire for Mongolian cultural development than the Kuomintang. They affirmed this policy of Mongolian language education, and thus won vital support from the Mongolian people. Although this policy has become more and more limited in form, it has continued to this day.

12. Q: What is the education policy of the People's Republic of China on teaching in minority languages? How have these policies changed?

A: From the founding of the People's Republic of China to the 1980s, five minority languages were used as the language of instruction, namely Mongolian, Uyghur, Tibetan, Kazakh and Korean. These languages are used not only to learn languages and corresponding literature, but also to teach mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, and history. This policy continued in rural areas of Inner Mongolia even during the Cultural Revolution. After 2000, Tibetan and Uyghur language education was increasingly restricted due to political turmoil and the government's perceived need to monitor non-Chinese speakers. Since 2001, Tibet has advanced the starting age of Chinese language learning from the third grade to the first grade; since 2010, the so-called "bilingual education" has been regarded as a label to promote the change of teaching language, from "Tibetan for teaching, The transition from "Chinese as a subject" to "Chinese for teaching and Tibetan as a subject". A similar transition is more dramatic in Xinjiang. Between 2002 and 2005, Uyghur and Kazakh language teaching in Xinjiang was replaced by Chinese language teaching, leaving only a maximum of a few hours per week for ethnic languages. At present, only Mongolian and Korean still retain the mode of teaching all subjects in ethnic languages.

13. Q: Many dialects in China, such as Cantonese and Hokkien, cannot meet even one class hour per day. In contrast, shouldn't Inner Mongolians be grateful for this?

A: Mongolian is completely unrelated to Chinese, not even very closely related to any other language, but in many respects it is very similar to Turkish and Manchu. Its text is also written vertically with a unique set of letters, originating in the Middle East. The Mongolian literary tradition started with the "Secret History of Mongolia" and then continued into poetry, history, philosophy, novels and other works, which were completely unrelated to the Chinese tradition. Therefore, Mongolian cannot be compared with Chinese dialects such as Shanghainese (Wu dialect), Hokkien (Min dialect), Cantonese, etc. In terms of writing, literati and writers in different dialect areas have always written in common classical Chinese throughout history, which is also completely different from Mongolian.

14. Q: Why is Mongolian language education so important to Inner Mongolia?

A: Even as steppe nomads, the Mongols still value education. Regardless of other nomadic conquerors, the Mongols valued culture, education, and religious and philosophical traditions. Claims that the Mongols destroyed the libraries in Baghdad or elsewhere are just legends and have no basis in fact. Before the 20th century, studying Buddhism was highly regarded as the traditional history and customs of Genghis Khan and his successors. Mongolian schools are small in size but numerous in number. Owen Lattimore said in the 1920s that, in his experience, nomadic Mongols were more literate than Han Chinese farmers who settled on the steppe.

Because of the "New School" movement in the early 20th century, school education had far-reaching significance for Inner Mongolians. The movement was also closely associated with Mongolian nationalism, and its supporters also frequently participated in the Pan-Mongolian movement, which pushed Inner Mongolia to join the independent Mongolian state (then the Mongolian People's Republic). Despite the subsequent stalemate of the nationalist political movement, education was still valued by the Mongolians. For many, cultural nationalism and educational revival have become substitutes for political nationalism. Enlightenment and education became the way to protect the future of the Mongolian people. Therefore, public schools that teach Mongolian are of far-reaching significance to Mongolians, just as Buddhist monasteries are to Tibetans, and Islamic festivals are to Uyghurs.

15. Q: Don't all Mongolians speak Chinese?

A: The prejudice that the Mongolians have been completely assimilated (sinicized) comes down to several reasons: 1) Unlike the Uyghurs and Tibetans, the Mongolians in Inner Mongolia have no significant urban traditions, so urban areas do not have a distinctly Mongolian heritage Ethnic urban residential architectural style - Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Hohhot and some other cities are special cases. 2) Mongolians in urban areas are usually employed by Han enterprises and work units, and they tend to speak fluent Chinese. 3) Since the infrastructure of the tourism and communication industries in Inner Mongolia is monopolized by Chinese, and Chinese is used as the medium language for foreigners, foreign tourists often take it for granted that local Mongolians meet people outside Inner Mongolia (whether Chinese or foreigners) At that time, except for some very rigid Mongolian idioms, they can only speak Chinese.

However, those who actually speak Mongolian, whether tourists from independent Mongolia or the occasional Mongolian-speaking expert in Mongolian studies, will find that urban areas in Inner Mongolia and some cities outside Inner Mongolia, such as Beijing, There are subcultural circles composed of Mongolian speakers. Inner Mongolian social media such as Bainu provide the opportunity to communicate in a purely Mongolian environment.

16. Q: Mongolians only make up 17% of the population of Inner Mongolia. Is it possible that they would consider keeping the Mongolian language in the long term?

A: While this does show that Mongolians make up a small percentage of the entire population of Inner Mongolia, this statistic is extremely misleading. Except for a few large cities and densely populated agricultural counties, there are a large number of banners (counties) in Inner Mongolia, where the population is concentrated for grazing or mixed farming. Among them are ten banners, and Mongolians make up the vast majority of the population. In another five banners, the Mongolian population also exceeds one-third of the total population. Even in flags with a small proportion of Mongols, they often lived in groups, forming a local majority. However, because these areas, where Mongolians are the majority, tend to have lower population densities, they are easily overlooked in overall statistics.

That is to say, the process of urbanization has undoubtedly accelerated the residential integration of the Mongolian and Han populations. The general trend of urbanization in China has been accelerated in pastoral areas by targeted programs such as "Ecological Migration," which respond to grassland areas (actual or alleged) overgrazing. Although relocation has had varying results in different regions, it has always been accompanied by the closure of rural schools (usually monarch schools). At the same time, the expansion of the mining industry has also led to the establishment of new communities, almost entirely Han, in many once Mongolian settlements.

What followed was an increase in intermarriage between Mongolians and Han Chinese. In 1982, about 14 percent of marriages were mixed marriages between Mongolians and Han Chinese; today, as many as 40 percent of marriages among newly married Mongolians are with a Han partner. However, this number is still very uneven, and there are few Mongolian-Han intermarriages in most Mongolian inhabited areas.

17. Question: What percentage of Mongolians in Inner Mongolia still speak Mongolian?

A: This question is difficult to answer due to disagreements over the definition of "who is Mongolian" and "what counts as using a language". In the early 1980s, many people who were previously considered to be Han nationality successfully changed their ethnicity to Mongolian, claiming for various reasons that their grandparents' generation was Mongolian. However, most of them do not belong to Mongolian social circles, and almost no one speaks Mongolian. Therefore, for the purpose of sociolinguistics alone, it is very likely to be wrong to treat all Chinese registered as "Mongols" as Mongolians. Likewise, when faced with native language-related questions, people often respond according to how they think they should answer, or hope to be able to answer.

As of 1988, it was estimated that nearly 80% of Mongolians were native speakers of Mongolian. Currently, that percentage has dropped to about 60 percent. As with intermarriage and demographic data, this figure is of little reference, and the Mongolian language skills of local residents in different regions vary greatly.

18. Q: Do Mongolian parents still want to provide Mongolian education for their children?

A: After China announced the implementation of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics (free market economy) in the 1990s, the previous model of minority language education encountered new problems: although the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region employed a considerable number of minority cadres who valued minority languages, Educators and cultural workers, however, tend to speak Chinese in business and industry, especially in privately owned enterprises dominated by the Han Chinese. Such businesses are less likely to hire talent from Monterey schools.

As a result, the number of Mongolians who choose to enroll in schools has dropped from 60 percent in 1990 to around 30 percent today. There are also some new opportunities opened up for Mongolian speakers, represented by Chinese investors operating in Mongolia or Mongolian companies operating in China. Now, many students from Inner Mongolia also choose to study in Mongolia, and the Chinese government also provides generous scholarships for students from Mongolia to study in Inner Mongolia.

19. Question: Some people think that the "second-generation ethnic policy" is necessary to solve the problems of the backwardness of ethnic minorities, the high illiteracy rate and the lack of communication. How to refute it?

A: Schools based on the "Second Generation Ethnic Policy" are built on stereotypes of all ethnic minorities in China, namely "poor" and "backward". In China, even the Mongols themselves generally have this impression. Therefore, there are still many people who believe that maintaining the mode of teaching in minority languages will inevitably lead to the backwardness of education quality and hinder development. Such an argument is very tenable in the context of China, but cannot stand scrutiny.

If the illiteracy rate is used to measure backwardness, the impression of Inner Mongolia is wrong. In fact, Mongolians in Inner Mongolia have a higher literacy rate than Han Chinese in Inner Mongolia. According to the statistics of illiteracy over the age of 12 in Inner Mongolia in 1982, the illiteracy rate of Mongolians was 24%, while that of Han Chinese was 26%.

Education in Inner Mongolia is also of high quality. In response to the current crisis, one or more writers using the pseudonym "Red Horse Reading Club" pointed out that there are only 1,268 people in Shabagh village in eastern Inner Mongolia, all Mongolians are educated in Mongolian, but the village has trained ten reading Or graduated doctoral students, 17 masters and more than 290 university graduates. As he concludes: "This ethnic education system in Inner Mongolia is a successful realization of the CCP's ethnic policy", it has not been destroyed and therefore needs no revision.

4. Opposition to the New Policy and Future Prospects

20. Q: How did Inner Mongolian activists respond to this new policy?

A: At present, Mongolians in Inner Mongolia are actively petitioning. In the two days after the policy was announced on July 6, 4,200 petitions circulated. No doubt many more signed up after that. Following the usual practice in China, petitioners stamped their hands in red ink and sometimes wrote and signed their ID numbers. Many such petitions have been shared on social media. Opposition is said to be particularly strong in the Xilingol League, a region in central and eastern Inner Mongolia against which the Mongolian dialect standard was developed. Some people shared videos in which Su Mu (a township-level unit) displayed a petition claiming to be signed by every household.

A petition widely circulated on social media was signed by 85 teachers from the Mongolian primary school in Zhenglan Banner, Xilin Gol. They imitated the famous Duoguilun resistance movement in pre-revolution Inner Mongolia, and signed a circle to prevent the leader from being singled out and killed. Many other schools have followed suit. Nine of Inner Mongolia's most popular bands also shared a petition against the new teaching proposal on social media.

Anonymous leaflets were also widely distributed calling for demonstrations in all twelve major administrative centers in Inner Mongolia. They also advocated a strike by teachers and students starting with the start of school on Tuesday, September 1. In the leaked video, parents from the countryside can be seen gathering outside the township boarding school to bring their children home. Although it is difficult for outsiders to tell exactly, the call for teachers and students to strike out seems to be gradually attracting attention.

The overwhelming emphasis of the petitioners is that education in the Mongolian language has been successful and has existed in the People's Republic of China for 70 years. So they claim to simply defend existing successful policies and do not demand any new rights or changes in China's constitutional structure.

The petitioners accuse the new policy of violating the Ethnic Autonomy Law and China's constitutional guarantee of the right to use and develop its own ethnic language, as well as the spirit of Xi Jinping Thought and undermining ethnic unity between Mongolians and Han Chinese. The slogan for the planned demonstrations should be "apolitical" and solely focused on defending the language rights promised by the law. There is no doubt that this gesture is full of rhetorical considerations and a sincere commitment to upholding the existing institutional framework. It's hard to say how many pragmatic trade-offs (to mitigate the severity of the political risks) and how many sincere endorsements there are.

It should also be noted that many Mongolians see advocates of the "second-generation ethnic policy" as the source of the policy, and these advocates do believe that the constitutional framework of China's ethnic policy is fundamentally flawed and needs to be revised. From this perspective, it is not an exaggeration to say that the opponents (rather than the supporters) of the new policy are more representative of China's current constitutionally-based ethnic autonomy policy.

21. Q: How did the authorities react to this?

A: From the publicity of the petitions and demonstrations, it is clear that Mongolian cadres and their sympathetic Han colleagues must have provided considerable support behind the scenes to the movement. Despite the "under the rose" (i.e. secrecy) nature of the policy, discussion of the issue on social media was not initially banned. But as a harbinger of the storm to come, renowned historian Qimud Dorji — who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bonn and is director of the Mongolian Studies Center at Inner Mongolia University — criticized the new policy in August for making a 9-minute hit film. was dismissed on the 7th.

On August 23, the Mongolian-language social media app Bainu shut down, while WeChat and other Chinese sites also removed discussions of "bilingual education." Many ethnic Mongolians said they received late-night calls from police asking them to stop participating in the movement and threatened to be expelled for participating in subsequent demonstrations or school strikes.

On August 28, Hohhot police began breaking up public gatherings to collect petitions, and activists were invited to the police station to "drink tea" (a common warning in China).

The next day, state media, in the name of Shi Taifeng, Secretary of the Communist Party of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Committee, made a high-profile assurance that five things remained unchanged:

• The curriculum of other subjects in primary and secondary schools taught in ethnic languages remains unchanged.
• The use of teaching materials remains unchanged.
• The language of instruction remains unchanged.
• Mongolian language and Korean language class hours remain unchanged.
• The existing bilingual education system remains unchanged, and other courses in Mongolian primary and secondary schools remain unchanged.

The slogan "Five Constants" merely reaffirms commitments already made in official documents; importantly, it anchors the party's power behind the new language policy.

22. Q: Is this the first attempt by the Inner Mongolian government to curtail or eliminate Mongolian-language media education?

Answer: No. There have been sporadic attempts to limit Mongolian-language media education since the 1990s. This proposal was put forward in 1993, but it failed due to the backlash of cadres, especially the opposition of cadres in eastern Inner Mongolia, which has a particularly strong tradition of Mongolian education and where many Mongolian cadres were born. Another attempt in 2018 seemed to have failed again with the mobilization of cadres in Inner Mongolia. These episodes set a paradigm: defending the Mongolian language by working within the system. The support of Mongolian cadres is crucial in this strategy. Although Mongolians make up only 17 percent of the population of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, they make up more than one-third of the cadre, including the chairman of the autonomous region's government and several vice-chairmen (though the autonomous region's party secretary is not).

23. Q: Who is leading the protest? Is it someone outside of Inner Mongolia?

Information about the new policy and the protests spread outside Inner Mongolia from the very beginning through social, local and relative networks. In these networks, the Ji-Mongols play a key role. Until recently, for historical and linguistic reasons, Japanese was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolian-language intermediate schools in Inner Mongolia - the replacement of Japanese with English in these schools is another aspect of a broader national educational orientation that dominates Inner Mongolian education . Many Inner Mongolian scholars, such as Yang Haiying, have had successful careers in Japan and have been key figures in petitioning and spreading the message of this campaign. The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center in the United States played a similar role. Overseas Mongolians often package news of the protests in Inner Mongolia more radically, viewing the new policy as the culmination of a long-standing Chinese language assimilation program. It is unclear to what extent such views resonate within Inner Mongolia.

24. Q: We hear a lot about Xinjiang and Tibet, but not so much in Inner Mongolia. How similar are these two? How different is it?

A: Compared to Uyghurs and Tibetans, China's Mongolians are sometimes referred to as a "model minority"—a definition that is more commonly used for Chinese Koreans. Mongolian nationalism existed in Inner Mongolia, which was a powerful force from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, and continues in an underground state today. By 1952, however, the vast majority of anti-communist Mongolian armed resistance had been suppressed. Refugees fleeing to the independent state of Mongolia are uncommon, and there are no examples of large-scale, high-profile ethnic conflicts like the 2008 Lhasa unrest, the 2009 Shaoguan smuggling, and the corresponding demonstrations in Urumqi that followed.

Mongolian nationalism has been highly secular since its inception in the late 19th century. This secularism, along with widespread participation in the Moscow-led international communist movement, formed the basis for a strong alliance between the Mongolian nationalist movement in eastern Mongolia and the Chinese Communist Party. During the "Cultural Revolution", the Mongolians suffered massive and brutal ethnic cleansing, and the alliance was severely damaged as a result - this is the so-called "Inner Party" case, Luo Zhi built on a secret Mongolian nationalist party that still exists And on the allegations of manipulating the policies of Inner Mongolia. In the words of one writer, the feeling of many Mongolians after the "Cultural Revolution" was: "In return for the kindness of our milky whites, we were cursed. These words were originally written about the "Gang of Four", but were often used by the Mongolians later People are used in the Chinese government as a whole.

Even with these grievances, Mongolian nationalism's focus on secular education, a state-controlled and funded area of cultural life, makes the partnership of well-educated Mongolians with the party-state relatively easier than in Tibet or Xinjiang. harmonious. The social culture of Inner Mongolia is still "easy to understand" by the Han Chinese, while the social culture of the Uyghurs and Tibetans is not so from the perspective of Islamophobia and secularist narratives about "ignorance and superstition".

Inner Mongolia does have nationalist ideas outside of the Chinese legal framework, but there are far fewer overt expressions of Mongolian nationalism radical, and the Chinese government is far less repressive in Inner Mongolia than in Tibet or Xinjiang - Mongolian nationalists outside of China Often lamented about this. And when dissent arises, such as the 2011 spate of protests sparked by the killing of a herder by a coal mine truck driver, the "stick" of repression comes with a "carrot" that is often waved in the name of funding Mongolian cultural and educational institutions.

More importantly, even among those who have adapted to the system, there is a strong sense that the Mongols are an ethnonational collective with common interests that may be reinforced or betrayed by the Chinese government. The "model minority" position that the Mongolians often accept is unconditional loyalty to the Chinese government, but at the same time it has the opportunity to turn into an indictment of the Chinese government's bad faith. Activists' claim that the new policy endangers "national unity" is an implicit threat that such betrayal sentiments can be reintroduced in response today.

25. Q: What is the reason for implementing the new policy now? What are the long-term drivers?

A: Mongolian-taught education has been shrinking over the long term, with the proportion of school-aged children speaking Mongolian dropping by about half since 1990. "Ecological migration" and other policies have accelerated urbanization and reduced the separation of residents of different ethnic groups. The changing labor market makes it increasingly difficult for Mongolian-language secondary school graduates to find jobs. At the same time, the rise of Chinese nationalism, the perception that Uyghur and Tibetan nationalist movements threaten China's geopolitical interests, and the nascent "second-generation ethnic policy" movement suggest that there is a shortage of space for open expression of ethnic diversity in public life. .

All these factors make the implementation of the policy more feasible. Even at this step, however, keep in mind that the executive document foresees the possibility that a large number of new and temporary teachers may be required to make up for the shortage of existing Chinese teachers. Mongolian language education may lack vitality, but it will never die.

Here a comparison can be made with the Buryat Mongols in Siberia. After the Soviet Revolution, the Buryat Mongols, with the help of the Russian Communist government, created a school education system with the Buryat national language as the medium—this was one of the templates for the school system adopted in Inner Mongolia in the 1940s. one. It survived Stalin's purges and Khrushchev's thaw. But the number of courses taught in Buryat was gradually reduced from the mid-1960s, and eventually phased out in the mid-1970s, leaving Buryat as a separate subject and an empty shell for radio and television. Although there are no market economic factors in the Soviet case, many of the long-term factors used to explain the changes are similar to what is happening in Inner Mongolia: urbanization, labor market diversification, and a pullback from earlier liberalization trends. As a result, the ethnolinguistic abilities of the Buryat people declined further, to the point that Buryat is now almost a purely rural "kitchen" language, rarely spoken in public, and most Buryat city dwellers even in The family doesn't talk about it anymore.

26. Q: Is there any specific short-term motivation?

A: It is not yet known what the specific short-term motivation for the implementation of the new policy will be. The centralization and control of education and value systems in recent years has clearly become a regulatory focus of the Xi Jinping government. Looking at the process of the same curriculum and teaching materials, we can see that since 2017, the central government has been hoping to implement greater unity of language, education and ideology in ethnic autonomous regions. The Covid-19 pandemic has dispelled a major cause of indecision: the growing social ties between Mongolia and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The closure of China’s border with Mongolia and the severance of private travel to Inner Mongolia by the Japanese-Mongolian diaspora removed at least one possible source of uncertainty about the consequences.

27. Q: How likely is the protest to be successful?

A: The successful protests of 1993 and 2018 are perhaps a model for this movement. The push for change was not strong at the time, so the scope of popular mobilization was not broad. A series of demonstrations took place in Inner Mongolia in 2011 after a truck driver killed a herdsman during a demonstration against a mining company's occupation of local grasslands. The result was some new environmental regulations, the removal of local party and government leaders, and the execution of truck drivers.

But the best precedent for this movement may be the large student marches of 1981-82, when Mongolian students in Inner Mongolia protested against the continued supremacy of planting over animal husbandry, and the government's sponsorship of Han migrants into Inner Mongolia. These demonstrations ended in partial victory. The policy gave priority to grazing and conditionally pardoned demonstrators. This is probably the most realistic positive outcome of protests today: the withdrawal of new policies, the maintenance of the status quo, and the absence of persecution of participants and leaders.

Unfortunately, even though the actual policy implementation was at the regional level without the direct involvement of the central authority, the news broadcasts announcing the policy explicitly mentioned the central support. So it seems unlikely that there will be concessions, such as the leadership of the autonomous region taking the blame for a wrong policy and then returning the situation to the hard-earned equilibrium.

Besides, the current timing is not good for you. The global disruption of interpersonal ties caused by the pandemic, the apparent crisis in China's engagement with the outside world, and the ongoing repression in Xinjiang and Tibet: all this makes it hard to imagine that the Chinese government will openly concede at this juncture. On September 1st, I am afraid there will be a massive crackdown, fines, and the stillbirth of the demonstration. Several leaders will be singled out for punishment, and people will swallow their voices with a sullen face.

In the short term, the "five constants" slogan put forward on August 29 will block the transition from "Mode 1" bilingual education (Mongolian as the medium and Chinese as the subject) to "Mode 2" (Chinese as the medium; Mongolian as the subject). subjects) in the middle of the transition. Even if this were the end, the fact that reassurances from the major door that no further changes would be required suggests that only continued protest can slow the decline of Mongolian language teaching.

The call for demonstrations on September 1 specifically warned: "Because the protests may have to last for many days, please be prepared." If mass demonstrations and/or school strikes by teachers and students do occur, the The public objections expressed in the petition will undoubtedly provide the authorities with plenty of targets if they decide to crack down on a massive scale. If the strike does attract attention, and the authorities take further action and practice the threat of expelling the striking Mongolian staff, the authorities will have the need and opportunity to renovate the Inner Mongolian schools overnight. Such a response may be feasible in the short term, but it would mean a fundamental change in the relationship between Mongolians, especially educated elites, and the Chinese government.