China’s National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Chairman Wang Yang made it clear during his recent research in Inner Mongolia that he wants to speed up the popularization of the “national common language and script” and the implementation of “national unified textbooks”. Last year, Inner Mongolia was the scene of a mass protest over the government’s push for a unified textbook.
A research team led by Wang Yang visited several places in Inner Mongolia, where he held individual meetings with officials, scholars and people at all levels. He also said at the seminar that Inner Mongolia should consolidate the “sense of Chinese national community”, speed up the popularization of the national language, and do a good job of implementing the unified textbooks so that people of all ethnic groups can better integrate into the “modern society”.
At the end of August last year, primary and secondary schools in Inner Mongolia started to use the unified Chinese language teaching in the new semester, triggering massive protests and strikes by Mongolians. Many local people fear that the teaching of Chinese will lead to the slow demise of the Mongolian language, one of their remaining unique cultural markers.
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