China has taken an aggressive approach to melding the nation’s many groups into a national identity

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-accelerates-campaign-of-ethnic-assimilation-11609431781

SKIP TO MAIN CONTENTSKIP TO SEARCHSkip to…SelectSUBSCRIBESIGN IN

Enter News, Quotes, Companies or Videos

CHINA

Beijing Accelerates Campaign of Ethnic Assimilation

China has taken an aggressive approach to melding the nation’s many groups into a national identity

Images of Xi Jinping appear on a screen in Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang region, in 2019. GREG BAKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESBy Eva Xiao, Jonathan Cheng and Liza LinDec. 31, 2020 11:23 am ET

• SHARE
• TEXT
• 286 RESPONSES

To realize the China of his dreams, Xi Jinping wants to meld the nation’s dozens of ethnic groups into a singular national identity.

The program of aggressive cultural assimilation—or “ethnic fusion,” as it’s called in government documents and speeches—has gone to extremes in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, home to the largest mass detention of a minority group since World War II. The campaign has begun to spread and intensify in other ethnically diverse areas.

In Inner Mongolia, a plan to expand Mandarin-language education and mandate the use of national textbooks over local versions sparked protests and school boycotts among students and parents concerned that the Mongolian language was in danger of being erased.

Part of the assimilation campaign relies on security infrastructure built to keep watch on and control over the population. It includes the rollout of high-tech police surveillance in areas with large minority populations—a strategy used in Xinjiang to keep constant watch on Turkic Muslims. The local government has said the approach is necessary for security in the area.

Those methods have now spread eastward to sedate regions like southwestern China’s Guangxi, home to the country’s largest minority group, the Zhuang, who follow an animist-based faith, and have little recent history of ethnic conflict.TO READ THE FULL STORYSUBSCRIBESIGN IN

Continue reading your article with
a WSJ membership

VIEW MEMBERSHIP OPTIONSCustomer CenterSubscriber AgreementPrivacy NoticeCookie Notice© 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.