The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region has escalated its cultural cleansing campaign with a strong-arm push to teach Chinese language and an ideological review of primary and secondary school textbooks, with several sets of materials that failed to pass muster to be phased out within this year. The authorities’ move is believed to be a move to strengthen the political identity of Mongolians, and is believed to be the next step in targeting Mongolia.
The textbooks for primary and secondary schools in Inner Mongolia that went wrong include “Inner Mongolia History and Culture,” “History of the Mongolian People,” “Hulunbeier History and Culture,” “Hetao History and Culture” and “Horqin History and Culture (Trial).
The Department of Education of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region recently issued a document to a number of publishing houses, stating that it had earlier conducted a “special ideological investigation” of local and auxiliary teaching materials for primary and secondary schools in the region, as instructed by the National Teaching Materials Committee.
On January 8, 2021, the Education Department of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region issued a document ordering the discontinuation of five sets of history textbooks for primary and secondary schools. (Courtesy of Yang Haiying)
The document states that after a review, the authorities found that the five sets of textbooks had “insufficient common awareness” and deliberately emphasized individual “national identities” and “national consciousness”. The Inner Mongolia Education Department has decided to stop using these textbooks in phases starting from this spring semester.
Yang Haiying, a scholar of Inner Mongolia at Shizuoka National University in Japan, found the censorship standards of the Inner Mongolian authorities to be perplexing.
Yang Haiying: “Like ‘History and Culture of the Loop’ is basically written by Han Chinese about how to develop the Loop, that is, how to develop the history and culture on both sides of the Yellow River, and several other sets of textbooks are written by Mongolians together with Han Chinese, so they emphasize only local culture and local characteristics, local history.”
Communist Party renders local color as ethnic division
He said the authorities’ reasons for banning several sets of textbooks simply do not hold water.
Yang Haiying: “There’s no sentiment at all that Mongolians want independence or ethnic division, it’s just a very cute local color thing. What’s wrong with local cultural characteristics? There is no emphasis on Mongolian culture or Mongolian nationalism or the ethnic division that the Chinese Communist Party fears.”
Yang Haiying believes that the authorities are making sweeping cuts to the history textbooks in order to implement the policy of “Sinicized education.
On September 15, 2020, Mongolians rallied in Ulaanbaatar to protest the Communist Party’s policy of bilingual education in Inner Mongolia.
Yang Haiying: “The Chinese people you are talking about are actually the Han Chinese. You say that the integration of Mongolians, Tibetans and Uighurs into the Chinese nation is tantamount to assimilating them. The various ethnic groups also believe that the reality is that all ethnic groups coexist, but the Chinese government now does not even allow coexistence. It wants to elevate coexistence further to assimilation by emphasizing that Mongolians are to be infused into the Chinese nation, and the Chinese nation it speaks of is the Han Chinese.”
Communist China fears Mongolian culture infiltrating Inner Mongolia
The Mongolian Republic plans to unify the writing style, from the previously used Cyrillic Mongolian, to the centuries-old Mongolian language used in Inner Mongolia by 2025. Another Mongolian scholar living in Japan, Kubis, believes that Inner Mongolia’s increased ideological censorship of textbooks has something to do with this.
Kubis: “Mongolia has decided to restore the traditional Mongolian script, so the authorities are a little more wary of allowing live cultural programs on Mongolian television and so on. In the past, Inner Mongolia TV would invite Mongolian artists to perform at the Spring Festival Gala, but this kind of cultural exchange will definitely decrease in the future. The authorities are more cautious about the influence of Mongolian culture on Inner Mongolia. “
Kubis said that Inner Mongolia and Mongolia have the same cultural background, and the authorities are gradually reducing cultural exchanges between the two places so as not to affect the political identity of Inner Mongolians.
Recent Comments