In China, the Mongolian language is threatened by a reform of school curricula. It is the great fear of thousands of students and parents of students who have demonstrated in recent days in the prov ...

In China, demonstrations in defense of the Mongolian language

In the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, students and parents of students demonstrate against a reform of school curricula that threatens the Mongolian language.

BYAMBASUREN BYAMBA-OCHIR / AFP

Text by: Stéphane Lagarde Follow

4 min

In China, the Mongolian language is threatened by a reform of school curricula.

This is the great fear of thousands of students and parents of students who have demonstrated in recent days in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia.

Very rare events in the country, a few days before the start of the school year.

Publicity

From our regional correspondent

“

Mongolian is our mother tongue.
We are Mongolians until death,

”chant these students in blue tracksuits, on one of the videos that survived the censorship scissors.

The traces of the protests that started a few days before the start of the school year have mostly disappeared from Chinese social networks.

But the misunderstanding, even the anger are still there.

In question, a reform launched in the hollow of the summer, indicates Christopher Atwood, professor in the department of languages and civilizations of East Asia at the University of Pennsylvania on the site

Made in China

Chinese-speaking ocean

This change in curricula aims to replace Mongolian as the language of instruction in three subjects in elementary and college, notes

Julian Dierkes

, sociologist and specialist on Mongolia at the University of British Columbia.

The mobilization of recent days driven by hashtags and slogans "

save our language

" plastered even on the two wheels of delivery men, but also

petitions stamped in red

with the fingerprints of the signatories.

There are two critical changes

, explains this young Chinese of Mongolian ethnicity reached via an encrypted messaging and who wished to remain anonymous.

First, they want to introduce Mandarin in literature class a year earlier.
Then Chinese is expected to replace Mongolian for history and politics as early as next year.

“

If most Mongols think that it is necessary to reinforce the learning of Mandarin in order to find a job,”

he continues

, “they do not agree that textbooks should be 100% in Chinese from primary school.
Because if we lose our language, it will be very difficult to find it in a Chinese-speaking ocean.

New education policy

Like many, what this young thirty-something fears most is losing his identity.

The new educational policy is considered by some as a new campaign of sinization, while the Mongolian language is already weakened.

Less than 40% of parents choosing to enroll their children in bilingual schools.

“

I think that this new regulation goes against the previous policies of the Chinese government,

adds this witness

, which, on the contrary, encouraged the development and prosperity of minority languages and cultures.

The Mongols would thus find themselves, according to the demonstrators of recent days, on the same footing as the Tibetans, the Uyghurs, the Kazakhs, and the Koreans victims, to varying degrees, of the policy of assimilation into the majority Han culture. , initiated by the Chinese president since 2012.

"However,

they do not have to worry about the fact that the children will speak Mandarin,

" a mother told the

New York Times

“

When you turn on the television, everything is Chinese, even cartoons are in Chinese.

#China Students in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are protesting today as the Chinese government abolished Mongolian-medium education at schools, requiring all subjects other than the Mongolian language to be taught in Chinese.pic.twitter.com/EoxEXG8ubX

In China, demonstrations in defense of the Mongolian language

In China, demonstrations in defense of the Mongolian language

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