The local government in Inner Mongolia has recently ordered that all Mongolian elementary school will be taught in Chinese from the third grade onwards, and that all party secretaries in Inner Mongolia schools will be Han Chinese. Overseas Mongolian scholars have criticized the Chinese Communist Party’s move as a brutal policy of ethnic assimilation and a total rejection of its vaunted “regional ethnic autonomy.
After a massive anti-Chinese language teaching movement in Inner Mongolia erupted in late August and mid-September this year and was suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the CCP authorities have recently begun to accelerate the push for Chinese language education in Inner Mongolia.
According to Radio Free Asia, the Inner Mongolia government has recently ordered all Mongolian elementary schools to end instruction in Mongolian ahead of schedule and to implement an “all Chinese” curriculum starting in third grade.
The report quoted Timurun, a member of the Southern Mongolian Great Hural parliament who lives in Japan, as saying that all cultural units and school party secretaries in Inner Mongolia will be Han Chinese from 2021, while the ethnicity of the principals has yet to be determined. Currently, all Mongolian school secretaries and principals are of Mongolian ethnicity. In addition, the Communist authorities have asked Inner Mongolia TV to add programs on the history of the Communist Party to its Mongolian-language channels, among other things.
The report also revealed that the Inner Mongolia authorities have issued a notice to all cultural units of Mongolian schools, asking Mongolian cadres to hold a so-called “democratic life meeting” at the end of this year, so that ethnic minority cadres can expose and criticize each other.
Timurun said he received information from the right banner of Bahrain that the local education department requires all Mongolian secondary schools to integrate half of their Han Chinese students, mixing them with Mongolian students in classes. He lamented that “the pure Mongolian schools in Bahrain Right Banner are going to disappear.”
Azhcha, an ethnic Mongolian, also told Radio Free Asia that Mongolian junior high schools, high schools and elementary schools were originally located in every banner government in Inner Mongolia, but it is expected that many Mongolian schools in the banners will be merged with Han schools starting next year. The Chinese Communist Party wants to gradually eliminate Mongolian schools in this way.
Yang Haiying, a Mongolian university professor now living in Japan, expressed his anger and helplessness. He said that the Communist Party now wants to make all primary and secondary schools and all units in Inner Mongolia headed by Han Chinese, which shows that the Communist government does not trust other minorities at all. In doing so, they are in fact “completely denying the regional autonomy that [they] have been boasting about.
The chairman of the Southern Mongolian Parliament, Xi Haiming, now living in Germany, pointed out that the Chinese authorities have implemented a “very brutal policy of ethnic assimilation” and that they no longer need to “hide” their actions.
In late August and early September of this year, the Inner Mongolia Education Department ordered all Mongolian elementary school to add Chinese to their Mongolian language curriculum starting in the first grade, followed by Chinese politics in the second year and Chinese history in the third. The announcement of the relevant policy quickly sparked a widespread backlash in all sectors of Inner Mongolian society, with hundreds of thousands of Mongolians and students from home and abroad rallying and striking in protest. However, all protests were ruthlessly suppressed by the authorities. Some overseas Mongolian organizations have revealed that thousands of people have been arrested in Inner Mongolia and many, including rights lawyer Hu Baolong, are facing prosecution for resisting the Chinese language education model imposed on Mongolian schools by the Chinese Communist government.
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