[lg policy] China to reconsider language policy

[Harold Schiffman]

Date:24/10/2010 URL:
http://www.thehindu.com/2010/10/24/stories/2010102455511700.htm Back

International

China to reconsider language policy

Ananth Krishnan

As Tibetan students call for equality of ethnicities

BEIJING: The Chinese government said on Saturday it would reconsider
its plan to promote the use of Mandarin, the language spoken by the
majority Han Chinese ethnic group, as the sole language of instruction
in universities after hundreds of Tibetan students in western China
and in Beijing protested the move this week. On Tuesday, more than
1,000 university and high-school students marched in Tongren (Rebkong
in Tibetan) in western Qinghai province, calling for “equality of
ethnicities” and “freedom of language”.

The protest was sparked by reported comments from the Communist
Party's Qinghai chief, Qiang Wei, calling for the use of “a common
language” in schools and suggesting that the province would introduce
Mandarin as the language of instruction over the next decade. Protests
spread to other towns in western China last week after videos of the
Tongren protest spread through the Internet. The official Xinhua news
agency reported protests in at least four prefectures in Qinghai, with
students “expressing their dissatisfaction”. There were no reports of
arrests or clashes between police and the students, who appear to have
been allowed to carry out the protests.

On Friday, 400 students at Minzu University, a school that specialises
in education related to China's minority groups, marched in their
campus in north-western Beijing, echoing the call to ensure the
freedom of language. The government moved on Saturday to calm fears of
the introduction of the new language policy. Xinhua quoted Wang Yubo,
director of Qinghai's education department, as saying changes would
not be enforced in areas where “conditions are not ripe”, though he
did not say what those conditions were.

Woeser, a prominent Tibetan writer in Beijing, said it still remained
uncertain whether or not the government would suspend the policy. “In
view of the protest in Qinghai, the government has said it would
somehow suspend the language policy, but I cannot see if this will
really happen,” she told The Hindu. In recent years, the Chinese
government has introduced a “bilingual education” policy to promote
Mandarin in ethnic minority areas. The government argues that
spreading Mandarin would help bridge the income gap between Han
Chinese and the country's 55 minority groups.

In Tibet, and other areas such as Xinjiang, widening income
disparities have been blamed on higher-income jobs, for which Mandarin
is often a prerequisite, going to Han migrants from other provinces.
The government introduced bilingual education in Tibet and Xinjiang,
but Tibetans and Uighurs fear the neglect of their languages will
erode their cultures. Ms. Woeser said many Tibetans viewed the policy
as a move “to marginalise the Tibetan language.” “On the one hand, the
government's objective is to advance its objective of unifying the
country,” she said, also pointing to recent protests by students in
southern Guangdong province following efforts to promote Mandarin in
place of the local Cantonese in television programming.

“The second objective,” she added, “is their political intention. The
government is trying to weaken Tibetans' identity as an ethnic
minority.”

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