[lg policy] China reasserts language policy as Tibetan protest spreads

[Harold Schiffman]

China reasserts language policy as Tibetan protest spreads

(TibetanReview.net, Oct24, 2010)

The Tibetan protest against the compulsory switch to Chinese medium
teaching in schools in Qinghai Province was more widespread and began
earlier than has been reported in the outside world recently,
according to China’s official Xinhua news agency Oct 22. The report
cited the provincial government as confirming that middle school
students in the Tibetan autonomous prefectures of Huangnan (Tibetan:
Malho), Hainan (Tibetan: Tsolho), Haibei (Tibetan: Tsojang) and Guoluo
(Tibetan: Golog) prefectures had “expressed their dissatisfaction”
from Sunday to Wednesday (Oct 17 to 20).

And the Tibetan protest against compulsory Chinese medium teaching in
schools that was first reported in the outside world as having began
on Oct 19 in Rebkong (Chinese: Tongren) County of Malho spread to
Tsolho and numerous other places over the following days, provincial
authorities have sought to reassure the teachers and students in an
open letter Oct 22 that education in their ethnic language won’t be
neglected. Significantly, however, the letter justified the move to
newly introduce the putonghua (mandarin) Chinese medium teaching, the
cause of the protest.

However, the Xinhua report cited Wang Yubo, director of the provincial
department of education, as saying that in places where conditions are
not ripe, the authorities won't forcefully push the reforms. The
education authorities will follow teaching rules and listen and
respect viewpoints and advices from students and their parents before
carrying out the reforms, he was cited as saying.

It was not clear, however, whether this assurance amounted to anything
and whether it would be enough to satisfy the students when the
province’s mid- and long-term plan (2010-2020) for reform and
development of education, released in Sep’10, clearly mandates
putonghua as the teaching language. Wang’s claim that the new policy
calls for bilingual education is therefore inconsistent with this new
policy mandate.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times online Oct 22 reported that between
200 and 300 students at the Central University for Minorities in
Beijing staged a rare public protest that day against the new
education policy in Qinghai. "Chinese law says that ethnic minorities
have the right to study their mother tongue first in school — that's
why the students are angry," Xiong Kunxin, a professor at the
university was quoted as saying.

The report said the protest lasted about two-hour around midday, after
which the president of the university and teachers called them into
classrooms and asked them to write out their complaints in Chinese.

The report said that On Sept 30, People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s
mouthpiece, ran an article quoting Qiang Wei, the party secretary of
Qinghai Province, as saying in a speech at a Sep 13 education
conference that mandating Chinese language instruction was crucial.
“Officials at all levels must overcome all your worries, overcome the
wrong idea that to adopt common language education for minority
students will hurt minority people’s feelings or affect the
development of minority culture or affect social stability,” he was
quoted as saying. The article was reported to have provided tinder for
the protests.

Protests were reported to have broken out at numerous other places as
well, both in and outside Qinghai. The New York Times online Oct 22
cited posts on the Internet as saying 400 Tibetan students held a
rally on Oct 22 on the campus of Minzu University of China in Beijing
which train students from ethnic minority regions who might then
return home and work for the government. It was reported to have more
than 600 Tibetan students. The report said photographs showed a large
group of students gathered on a concrete walkway lined with shrubs.
Other photos were reported to showed uniformed guards milling around
some students.

In China, even giving greater prominence to Mandarin in areas where
that is not the language spoken by the majority of the people have led
to protests. In July, people in the city of Guangzhou, where Cantonese
is the traditional language of the majority, assailed a local
politician’s proposal to force prominent programmes on a local
television network to stop broadcasting in Cantonese and switch to
Mandarin ahead of the holding of the Asian Games there in Nov’10.

Other places in Qinghai where protests were reported to have taken
place included Chabcha (Chinese: Gonghe) on Oct 20, where about 2,000
students from four schools demonstrated, shouting "We want freedom for
Tibetan language", reported the Guardian online Oct 22, citing the
Free Tibet group. The New York Times online report said that on Oct
21, students in the town of Tawo (Chinese: Dawu), also protested, with
the police preventing people from going out into the streets.

Tsigorthang (Chinese: Xinghai), Mangra (Chinese: Guinan), Trika
(Chinese: Guide), and Xining being some of the places mentioned in
various reports.

Although no security clampdowns have been reported so far, Radio Free
Asia online (Washington) reported Oct 21 that large numbers of
security personnel had been dispatched to Tibetan areas following the
large-scale student protests.

http://www.tibetanreview.net/news.php?&id=7525

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