[lg policy] As Tibetan students call for equality of ethnicities, China to reconsider language policy

[Harold Schiffman]

China to reconsider language policy
Ananth Krishnan


As Tibetan students call for equality of ethnicities

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.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article845240.ece

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