China has approved a sweeping new law which claims to help promote “ethnic unity” - but critics say it will further erode the rights of minority groups.

On paper, it aims to promote integration among the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, dominated by the Han Chinese, through education and housing. But critics say it cuts people off from their language and culture.

It mandates that all children should be taught Mandarin before kindergarten and up until the end of high school. Previously students could study most of the curriculum in their native language such as Tibetan, Uyghur or Mongolian.

    • ruuster13@lemmy.zip
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      16 hours ago

      Which is a false equivalency to a state forcing a minority group to learn the majority language.

      • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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        11 hours ago

        all minority groups in the us have to speak english. most states have a variation of this for that matter?

          • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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            11 hours ago

            sure. do ethnical minorities born in, say, spain not have to learn spanish?

            tell me of states where this isn’t true.

              • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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                12 minutes ago

                then put your money where your mouth is and fight it in your own country instead of acting all twisted up when some country starts doing it.

                spanish is the second most spoken language in the us, do you speak it?

      • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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        16 hours ago

        Forcing? Do you think parents should be allowed to remove the kid from those classes? Just send them out in the world unable to communicate with anyone outside their hometown?

      • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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        14 hours ago

        Yes, teaching english is what’s wrong with what was/is being done to indigenous communities. Absolutely nothing else.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Yeah …notice I said “learning”, not “being taught”. Maybe the rest of it that I left implied is what happens when you force people to learn your language? Didn’t think I’d have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children to make them learn English for you to understand an implied point, but here we are.

          How do you think they’re going to make these people learn Mandarin? Do you think they’re going to ask nicely? Or are they going to do the same thing every dominant colonial culture tries to do to its minorites?

          • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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            11 hours ago

            Didn’t think I’d have to spell out what the schools did to those poor children

            That is precisely why I referred to it that way, so you’d have to spell it out the dumb implication you’re making.

            How do you think they’re going to make these people learn Mandarin?

            Same way they teach math and science lmao.

    • rockerface🇺🇦@lemmy.cafe
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      12 hours ago

      It would be nice if we could speak a common language, yes. Then you’d be able to use it to read the article that was linked instead of a single paragraph excerpt and realize the new law is not just about the language.

      • cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml
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        9 hours ago

        It would be nice if you could read Mandarin. Then you’d be able to realize that the BBC is deliberately mistranslating whats in the law. How arrogant do you have to be to criticize someone for not reading an article when you can’t even read the document the article claims to describe?