In China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a reform to strengthen Chinese language teaching was announced before the start of the school year this fall, with subjects including history, politics, and language being taught in Mandarin in the region’s primary and secondary schools, and the Mongolian language being removed from the core curriculum. The event sparked massive local protests and international attention. It has been reported that Inner Mongolian officials, including the regional secretary-general and director of education, were recently removed from their posts, perhaps in connection with the controversy over the push for Chinese language instruction.
The Inner Mongolia Daily, an official newspaper of the Party Committee of the Autonomous Region, reported on November 27 that the 23rd meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region decided to remove Bao Zhenyu as Secretary General of the People’s Government of the Autonomous Region, Hou Yuan as Director of the Education Department of the Autonomous Region, Wang Junfeng as Director of the Emergency Management Department of the Autonomous Region, and to appoint Mu Yuan as Director of the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Department of the Autonomous Region. In a recent analysis, Hong Kong’s pro-establishment Sing Tao Daily reported that the original report did not explain the reasons for the removal of the three people, including Wang Junfeng, who was involved in coal corruption last month and “suspected of serious disciplinary violations,” and should have nothing to do with the Chinese language teaching incident. As for the removal of Bao Zhenyu and Hou Yuan, no new replacements have been appointed, and the newspaper quoted observers as saying that it is believed that they were “held accountable and stepped down” because of the Chinese language controversy.
It is worth mentioning that the Standing Committee of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Party Committee held a special democratic life meeting on October 23 to strengthen and improve ethnic work, and to “criticize and self-criticize” the problems in bilingual education reform. Shi Taifeng, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Autonomous Region and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, presided over the meeting and made a concluding speech. In the conclusion, Shi Taifeng said that this special democratic life meeting is a re-alignment of the important discourse of General Secretary Xi Jinping on ethnic work and the important instructions on the promotion and popularization of the national common language and script, a re-thinking and re-reflection on the bilingual education reform in our region, and also a re-pressurization and re-strengthening of the strengthening and improvement of ethnic work in Inner Mongolia.
Shi Taifeng said, we should take this special democratic life will be an opportunity to effectively learn and implement the Party’s ethnic theory and policies, focus on research to solve the deep-seated contradictions and problems in our ethnic work, and continue to create a new situation in the ethnic work of the region. It is necessary to take out the spirit of self-revolution and the courage to turn inward, to make a comprehensive and centralized rectification of all kinds of problems identified in the democratic life meeting to ensure that all problems are rectified in place. He also stressed the need to steadfastly promote bilingual education reform, so that people of all ethnic groups can master the national common language from an early age. It is worth mentioning that local government departments, enterprises, colleges and universities in the autonomous region have recently held “Democratic Life Meetings on Strengthening and Improving Ethnic Work,” which were presided over by relevant officials.
The Inner Mongolian Education Department announced in late August that, starting in September, local Mongolian-language classes for the first year of elementary school and the first year of junior high school will be taught in the national standardized “language” curriculum; political science classes for the first year of elementary school and history classes for the first year of junior high school will also be taught in Chinese. The new policy has caused dissatisfaction among Mongolian residents, who are worried that their traditional culture and identity will be affected. The public security authorities then offered a reward for the arrest of more than a hundred participants, saying that they were involved in “provocations and troubles.
According to the report, Hou Yuan emphasized at the press conference that the new policy would not affect the existing bilingual education system. The newspaper analyzed that the removal of Bao Zhen Yu should be related to “ineffective coordination”. It is believed that in addition to Hou Yuan and Bao Zhenyu, other Inner Mongolia officials will be held accountable, and even provincial and ministerial officials will be held responsible for the incident.
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