On Inner Mongolia and Bilingual Education in China

Students at a class in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in May 2020. [Xinhua]

Changes to Inner Mongolia’s bilingual education policy have hit Western China-watching circles, prompting dramatic and misrepresentative claims of forced assimilation.

We investigate government documents from the autonomous region to set the record straight on bilingual education in Inner Mongolia and the broader internal debate over language preservation in China.   

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Recently, news of small changes to Inner Mongolia’s bilingual education policy has hit Western China-watching circles, prompting dramatic and misrepresentative claims of forced assimilation, cultural erasure, and ideological indoctrination in the autonomous region. This article adds to clarifications offered by local officials as well as a debunking by the Global Times to set the record straight on policies of bilingual education in Inner Mongolia and the broader internal debate over bilingual education and language preservation in China.   

Bilingual education remains the policy in Inner Mongolian schools using Mongolian or other minority languages as the language of instruction. More broadly, bilingual education remains the bedrock for China in its education of minority nationalities, a policy which guarantees minority students the right to be educated in their mother tongues while also receiving education in Chinese (and English), with the intent of allowing them to communicate with the rest of the country and interface with the international community. 

In 2017, the National Textbook Commission introduced three new textbooks to be introduced for common use across the country: Chinese Language and Literature, Ethics and Law (Politics), and History. These textbooks were implemented into use across the country starting the fall term of 2017, but autonomous governments in China have jurisdiction to introduce these textbooks on their own terms pursuant to their local circumstances.

In the summer of 2020, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s government announced that it would begin introducing these three textbooks among schools in Inner Mongolia which used minority languages as languages of instruction. Importantly, it decided to introduce one textbook a year, starting with Chinese Language and Literature in the fall term of 2020, Ethics and Law the following year, and History the year after. This fall term, only those in the 1st and 7th grades will begin using the new textbooks. This change is a far cry from what Western media has claimed is a “push by Beijing to wipe out Mongolian culture.”

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This fall term, only students in the 1st and 7th grades of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will begin using the new textbooks. This change is a far cry from what Western media has claimed is a “push by Beijing to wipe out Mongolian culture.”

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In the official government correspondence explaining the change in policy issued on August 31st, the Inner Mongolian government emphasizes that the bilingual education system is not going away. In fact, “Other subjects and the curriculums of other students in different years will not change their arrangements, textbooks will not change, the language and script of instruction will not change, and class times for Mongolian and Korean language classes will not change. After the comprehensive introduction of the three standardized textbooks, primary and secondary education taught in minority languages will not change their arrangements in other subjects, will not change their textbooks, will not change the language or script of instruction, and class times for Mongolian and Korean language will not change.” In addition, students will begin studying Chinese language from the 1st grade instead of the 2nd grade. 

In other correspondences, this was summarized as the “five no changes”: 

• the teaching system and curriculum arrangements of schools that teach in minority languages will not change; 

• the content of [other] textbooks will not change; 

• [the format of] other subjects will not change; 

• the language and script of instruction will not change; 

• the class time for (Mongolian, Korean) language will not change. 

The August 31st explanatory correspondence was made in response to protests and concerns about the change of textbooks, as well as concerns about preferential policies in the future, particular in the gaokao college entrance examinations. Western news media was quick to report on the scene, with Reuters in particular misreporting the policy as “[requiring all of] history, politics and language to be taught in Mandarin beginning on September 1,” and citing the New York City-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, whose backers include the National Endowment for Democracy. Indeed, one of the forerunning articles on this issue, published in late July, was written by two native informants dressed up as “Tiananmen Massacre survivors”. Other news platforms—many of them likely unwittingly using photographs from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia—called the move part of the Communist Party’s “intensified push for ethnic assimilation,” pointing to unsubstantiated claims of mass internment in Xinjiang as “proof” of “what the future might hold.”

Autonomous governments in China, which constitute roughly 64 percent of China’s total territory, have a wide array of prerogatives, including the prerogatives to “determine their [own] educational plans, establishment of schools, educational system, forms by which schools are run, curricula and methods of enrollment, in accordance with the principles concerning education and legal provisions of the state,” as outlined in the 2009 Chinese white paper “China's Ethnic Policy and Common Prosperity and Development of All Ethnic Groups.” The white paper continued by stating “by 2007, in the country there were altogether over 10,000 schools using 29 scripts of 21 ethnic minorities to carry out bilingual teaching, and the total number of students attending these schools was over six million.” Regional policies substantially subsidizing students of minority backgrounds, including free tuition and free meals, continue to be today’s practice, as explained to Daniel Dumbrill on his visit to Xizang (Tibet Autonomous Region). 

This means that although the national government can set a general direction for educational policies, autonomous governments have wide discretion as to the implementation of those directives and control the curriculums within their jurisdictions. This results in a wide range of methods and designs that can be generalized into “models”. (see Zhou Qingsheng, “Lun woguo shaoshuminzu shuangyujiaoxue moshi zhuanxing,” Journal of Xinjiang Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences), 35, No. 2 (2014), available at Baidu Wenku)

Bilingual education has been conceptualized as an important instrument for poverty alleviation by the central government since at least 2013. The same document identifying bilingual education as an instrument for poverty alleviation identifies minorities using their languages in education as a right, and emphasizes minority cultures and arts as special heritages that should be emphasized in vocational education.

Allowing minorities to take the gaokao college entrance examination in their own languages (民考民 minkaomin) is also a longstanding practice. Although it creates administrative difficulties and controversies over fairness, regional governments have devised their own methods in order to provide for better opportunities for minority students. (see, for instance, this 2016 petition in Qinghai Province concerning scoring of the minkaomin, and this 2020 Gansu Province newsletter about scoring of the minkaomin; see also generally this Zhihu answer covering the gaokao examinations available in minority languages for 2020)

The three textbooks introduced in 2017 have already been introduced in Xinjiang in 2017 and in Xizang in 2018. In both regions, bilingual education remains the standard educational model, with ample room for minority-language education, including class times in minority-language literature and arts, as witnessed by a recent CGTN visit to Sakya Middle School in Sa’gya County, Xigazê City, Xizang.

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Interestingly, Inner Mongolia’s largely successful language preservation efforts now serve as a reference for those of Mongolia itself, which adopted a standardized Cyrillic alphabet in the 1940s but is currently working to re-introduce the traditional script still in use in Inner Mongolia.

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Interestingly, Inner Mongolia’s largely successful language preservation efforts now serve as a reference for those of Mongolia itself. Having adopted a standardized Cyrillic alphabet in the 1940s, recent Mongolian efforts to revive the traditional, vertical Mongolian script have led to speculation that the close ties between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia—which continues to use the traditional script—will facilitate an easy re-introduction of the writing system to Mongolia.

China’s bilingual education system is not a perfect one. The system itself has to balance many priorities and considerations. Some material considerations include lack of qualified teachers who can teach in minority languages, particularly in the natural sciences, and pathways to universities for minority students who undertook bilingual education (see generally this Zhihu answer). Others identify the difficulty of the fissure between school and broader social contexts, causing some minority students to undervalue the study of minority languages and others to ignore the study of Chinese. 

But the above makes clear that the Chinese national government and its autonomous governments continue to prioritize bilingual education and the teaching of minority languages, a marked distinction as against other economically more developed countries that do not similarly prioritize the teaching or preservation of indigenous or minority languages. 

Assuming that the Chinese people are not extensively dialoguing over a longstanding and deeply-felt policy such as bilingual education is the height of chauvinism. In addition to the protests and the sources linked above, a recent hit movie popular with Chinese audiences post-pandemic, A First Farewell, directly explores the difficulties of bilingual education as part of its story, in the context of poverty alleviation programs and the changes they bring. 

China’s people continue to explore ways both to improve the education system and to better preserve languages and cultures, including intangible heritages and arts. A Chinese company iFlytek is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to build corpora for 23 Chinese dialects (see this article for more on iFlytek’s work in Suzhou, and their website for the “Dialect Protection Plan”). AI is also being used to construct bilingual educational tools for schoolchildren of the Yi nationality in the interests of achieving greater equality in historically underserved communities.

It is misguided and dangerous to attempt to understand the complex linguistic and educational circumstances in China using only Western lenses in cherry-picked ignorance of the extensive Chinese dialogue. Trying to analogize the Mongol nationality in China to China’s “model minority,” as several U.S. outlets do, is at best a reckless statement made in disregard of the complex circumstances and history of the “model minority” in the United States, and how this differs from the ground realities in China. (for more on the weaponization of the “model minority” and Asian Americans against communism in the geopolitics of the Cold War, see the chapter “America’s Chinese” in Ellen D. Wu’s The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority Myth, and the chapter “The Propaganda of Occupation: Statehood and the Cold War” in Dean Itsuji Saranillio’s Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawaiʻi Statehood)

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It should be clear that the complex topic of bilingual education in China and its contradictions are dialogues that will be decided and resolved by Chinese people.

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Anti-imperialists must always remain cognizant of the context of their observations and criticisms, particularly those who occupy imperialist core and settler-colonial countries when learning about the complex and imperfect socialist projects of Global South countries. It should be clear that the complex topic of bilingual education in China and its contradictions are dialogues that will be decided and resolved by Chinese people, and that anti-imperialists living in the imperial core should have ample energies to address similar concerns in their home societies.