China tells its minorities to integrate or face consequences with sweeping new law | CNN
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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.

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.

  • treesartlife@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    26 days ago

    Define integrate. I live in a country that I wasn’t born in. Obviously, I follow the laws, but I don’t owe anyone to change my personality. I eat whatever the fuck I want, dress the way I want, etc. I’m allergic to narrow-mindness because it implies low intelligence, among other things

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      26 days ago

      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.

      Some sections I thought were noteworthy, taken from wikipedia, shortened with DeepSeek. There is lots more stuff in there.

      "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.”

            • FlyingCircus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              25 days ago

              And not just “dealing with it.” Ending it by increasing regional economic opportunities, infrastructure projects, increasing access to healthcare and education, and thereby effectively eliminating poverty, the root cause of most crime, including terrorism. Oh, and all of that without impacting the Uyghur peoples’ culture or religion.

              At least, that’s what the rest of the world outside of America, Europe, and Israel say.

              https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang?rq=Xinjiang

              • HM King Charles III DG FD@feddit.ukEnglish
                01·
                25 days ago

                And not just “dealing with it.” Ending it by increasing regional economic opportunities, infrastructure projects, increasing access to healthcare and education, and thereby effectively eliminating poverty, the root cause of most crime, including terrorism.

                As far as I am aware, that’s what China has been doing for decades… Possibly even better than the west, although we did have a head start and healtchare and education is still better in places here than some parts of China. But they’re progressing.

                Oh, and all of that without impacting the Uyghur peoples’ culture or religion.

                Depends how you define impact. Islam is protected under the Chinese constitution. Uyghur culture is still celebrated, I’ve even seen Uyghur food stalls and restaurants with signage in the Uyghur language well away from Xinjiang. Whenever I watched it, state media seemed to make a point of telling everyone that the day of that reporting was a special festival for the Uyghur people and detailing some of their traditions. It seemed like a far cry from what I heard from western media.