"Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about." So said the late American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. China's Communist Party seems well ahead of the game.
On October 19th, Tibetan students in Eastern Tibet, many barely in their teens, took to the streets to protest plans to force local schools to adopt a Chinese-language only curriculum. The protest took place in the town of Tongren (Tib. Rebkong) in Qinghai (Tib. Amdo) province. The rights group Free Tibet received reports from local residents that between one and seven thousand students from six different schools marched while chanting slogans and raising banners reading, "Equality of People" and "Freedom of Language".
The protest mirrored another in Guangzhou in southern China this July, when 1,000 people turned out to challenge a local politician's proposal to force a local television network to stop broadcasting in Cantonese and switch instead to Mandarin, the country's official language.
Most of the Guangzhou protesters were in their 20's and 30's. Interestingly, it is not the elderly that are at the vanguard of the language rights movement in China and its occupied territories--but the young. Reports creep in of Tibetan youths engaged in a new kind of high brow graffiti--correcting Tibetan grammar on shop signs and changing Chinese signs into Tibetan.
It is worth noting that the students who participated in Tuesday's protest were taking an extraordinary risk. Political protest is not legal in China except in rare circumstances. They would all have been acutely aware that Tibetans have been arrested and even shot for doing less.
Rights groups claim that Chinese authorities inside Tibet are keeping Tibetans who aren't fluent in Chinese economically marginalized, by passing laws to minimize the teaching of Tibetan in schools and by replacing Tibetan language with Chinese in many spheres of public life.
"The Chinese are enforcing reforms which remind me of the Cultural Revolution," Free Tibet quoted one unnamed former Tongren teacher as saying. "This reform is not only a threat to our mother tongue, but is in direct violation of the Chinese constitution, which is meant to protect our rights."
This is technically right. But as many Chinese citizens know, the law and its enforcement don't always add up to the same thing. The 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law (REAL) entitles minorities to use and develop their own spoken and written languages. The law also states that minorities should use textbooks written in their own languages "whenever possible" and use these languages as the medium of instruction. The current plan to replace Tibetan language textbooks with Chinese versions appears to openly contradict this provision.
A 2005 report by the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China found that, "Upward social, economic, and political mobility is increasingly dependent upon one's ability to use Mandarin Chinese." The report also notes that while many minority groups welcome the opportunity to develop their Mandarin skills, they also believe it important to have the right to preserve their own languages.
The parallels between China's policies towards its ethnic minorities and the "Americanization" polices by US lawmakers towards Native Americans that were in place until 1920, are starkly obvious. But modern parallels to language issues in today's America fall short, since these are concerned with immigrants who came to settle in America from other countries, not large indigenous populations.
The pressurizing of ethnic groups to speak Mandarin is part of a wider policy that Beijing has been pursuing for several decades, though its efforts have intensified in recent years. The Uighur language is also under threat in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. In May 2002, the Xinjiang government announced that Xinjiang University would change the medium of its instruction to Mandarin Chinese. This was followed two years later by the forced merger of minority schools with Chinese-language schools. The then Secretary of the CCP Xinjiang Committee, Wang Lequan, described the promotion of Mandarin language use as "an extremely serious political issue."
The argument is that a common language helps to unite the country. The CCP views language as a "splittist" agent that could crack China along linguistic lines during times of social upheaval. However, China's one-language policy has been pursued particularly vigorously of late. What the policy-makers in China know is that just as it was in Guangzhou, the recent protest of Tibetan students is not just about language, but about the larger issue of cultural and ethnic identity.
Sociologists have long observed the link between language and group identity as well as how language helps social groups resist encroachment by other groups. Anything that encourages ethnic identity is regarded as a problem for Beijing, since it promotes a sense of cultural uniqueness and pride that the state is trying hard to dilute. But it could more easily be argued that if the central government would allow for more cultural autonomy in places like Tibet and Xinjiang, these regions would have less reason to resist the greater unity that Beijing craves.
The CCP seems to find it hard to understand that a people can feel both distinct and loyal and are more likely to feel loyal if given the freedom to express their uniqueness.
Examples of this can be seen all over the world such as the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh--one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions in Asia with an ethnically distinct population--where the people unequivocally view themselves as Indian citizens.
This September, a Beijing art exhibition showcased the work of some 50 Tibetan artists. In a poignant metaphor, one of the artists had encased two foot tall wooden Tibetan letters in glass coffins. But judging from this Tuesday's protest in Rebkong and the support it has inspired, the Tibetan language is not going to go down without a fight.
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Where is the progress they've been claiming?
Even a moderate such as Liu Xiaobo is silenced.
One must define terms carefully. One man's criminal is another man's Nathan Hale.
Try existing in America not being able to communicate in the "mother tongue" - English.
Many people in the United States speak their native language at home and English in the workplace.
As you obviously speak English, you should appreciate this.
are textbook in US public schools are in spanish or other language or in english? china want make all their public school have the same language. tibetan can learn their language in tibet class or there are plenty private school and tibet minority schools that only teach tibetan native tongue.
it doesn't matter tibet was part of china before or not and china invasion of tibet was wrong or not, it is part of china now, people has to adapt this new changes otherwise they will be left out. In a competitve country such as china today, every bit of skill help them land a job, especially when millions of college grad han chinese can't even find a job right now.
tibetan certainlly allowed to learn their own language just not in public schools.
I'd see native American going independent and getting their lands back first.
Assimilation is the only solution. The Dalai 14 is going to die soon (he is 70), and the next Dalai will be chosen just like all of those before, with the final say in Beijing.
Thanks for the great article, it is indeed inspiring to see such a number of young Tibetans, realizing how language holds the very root of their identity and protest against the regime's schemes. It is a policy of complete annihilation of identity.
I believe this is the practical (and sensible) context one should view Tibetan-in-China. Of course, as a diaspora, you could view Tibet/Tibetan-independent-from-China; but, isn't it far from reality and unlikely to happen?
The author of this blog is just transferring her GUILT about what Westerners did to the natives everywhere they went - as in the U.S. - HOW MANY of the native tribes had their language preserved in writing. China had tribes that have no written language, and Beijing spent millions to create one for them, using phonics to transcribe and preserve the spoken heritage.
Nothing is changing. The natives have access to Tibetan language classes. But it is silly to suggest teaching physics or calculus in Tibetan script, or to hold University entrance exams. in Tibetan script.
As for literacy "before New China," what was the literacy rate in RURAL China before the mid-20th Century? Lousy. Tibetans, who are largely rural, lived in similar circumstances, so why would their literacy rate have been better? But do you seriously think that Tibetans in the second half of the 20th century and up to the present wouldn't have had increased literacy if the Chinese hadn't invaded? What a joke! Tibetans in exile have better literacy rates than the 70% you report for those living under Chinese rule (and this number is far too high: it's actually under 40% for men and only about 15% for women). If the Dalai Lama's "policy on education" is to keep people illiterate, it's odd that he has established an extensive school system in India and Nepal, that turns out students who regularly qualify for positions at top universities in India and elsewhere.
By the way, natives in America have a lot more autonomy in the US than Tibetans have in their own occupied country Tibet. I am sure that if Tibet was not occupied by China, it would have developed into a wonderful country with its own culture, language and traditions. Now, Tibet has been turned into a foreign-occupied militarized police state. If it is so nice in Tibet, why are Tibetans risking their lives to flee in exile? Why is there police and military in every city? Why are the Chinese occupiers so afraid of the Tibetans that they have to guard them everywhere?
The Tibetans have a RIGHT to their own thousand-year-old language and culture. No one has a right to take that away from them.
I'm sure you would of agree for Tibetan-Chinese to reach economic parity w/ rest of Chinese population, they have to master subjects such as math, science, English, and Mandarin.
And I have a practical question for you.
Of the four, where can you find Tibetan textbooks for math and science (i.e. physics, chemistry, and biology..etc.)? Or, pardon my ignorance, how do Tibetan-diaspora learn math and science, in English or Tibetan?
Does not sound like it would be very hard to translate math, science and other textbooks into Tibetan? But this is not the question. As a student of Chinese history, I am well aware of Chinese Government directives to assimilate "minorities" under a "chinese" umbrella, to destroy their cultural identities and to homogenize them into "Han Chinese". If that does not work, demographic destruction and dilution is the second option. This is exactly what we are seeing in Tibet starting with Tibetan areas such as Amdo (Qinghai) and moving to the rest of TIbet. Mongolia, East Turkestan and other occupied areas are good examples.
It is never too late to start. The worldwide norm is assimilation. Just do what the Westerners do, not what they say. What is good is universal. Tibet is part of China, and native Tibetans are Chinese, even if just one of 56 tribes.
over here at midwest, i know the company i work for never hired someone who can't speak english doesn't matter what position they apply for, unless its Very low skill type job such as janitor, even then the person need to speak some english.
And, yes, Tibetan is used as the medium of instruction for all subjects in Tibetan schools that have been set up in India and Nepal. Do you think Tibetans are too stupid to produce such textbooks?
History is written by victors.
If Beijing had done what America did since the founding of New China, there would not have been any of these ethnic tensions. Everyone would be just plain "Chinese", much like all races are expected to be "American".