A Law Framed as “Unity” but Built for Control

China has introduced a sweeping proposal called the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress. Submitted to the National People’s Congress on September 8, 2025, the law is presented as a way to ensure the “common prosperity and development of all ethnic groups.” Yet beneath this language, critics see a dangerous attempt to eliminate cultural diversity and force minority groups into a single national identity under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.

Human Rights Watch warned that the bill provides a broad legal justification for repression. Maya Wang, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said, “The Chinese government’s draft law on promoting ethnic unity seeks to mobilize the bureaucracy and society to unite people under Chinese Communist Party leadership at the expense of human rights. Tibetans, Uyghurs, and others who speak out for minority populations can expect even greater government repression.”

The preamble of the bill ties the People’s Republic of China to a 5,000-year-old civilization that it claims has always been unified under the leadership of the Party. By doing so, the law erases the distinct cultural and historical identities of the 56 officially recognized ethnic minorities in China and replaces them with one state-approved story of national belonging.

Articles That Reshape Daily Life

The draft law is made up of 62 articles, each designed to create a uniform ideological and cultural framework across China. These rules are not abstract principles but specific directives that will reshape daily life for millions of minority citizens.

• Public Spaces and Symbols: Article 14 requires officials to establish and highlight Chinese cultural symbols in public facilities, tourist sites, and even in the names of places. This means traditional ethnic designs or language could be replaced with symbols approved by the Party.
• Urban Development: Article 23 demands that housing and city planning reflect “ethnic unity.” Critics argue this will be used to break apart traditional communities and relocate minority groups into settings that strip them of their identity.
• Marriage and Customs: Article 40 promotes “the transformation of customs and habits” around marriage. Officials will work to prevent ethnic or religious traditions from interfering with unions, effectively overriding cultural practices.
• Education and Children: Article 20(2) requires parents to raise children to “love the Chinese Communist Party.” It also bans parents from teaching minors anything the state sees as harmful to ethnic unity. Article 12 gives schools the responsibility to guide all students to adopt the “correct views” of history, culture, and religion.
• Language Rights: Article 15 reduces protections for minority languages. It requires Mandarin to be given prominence and calls for preschoolers to begin learning Mandarin so they “basically master” it by the end of compulsory education. This reverses earlier guarantees from the 1984 Law on Regional National Autonomy that allowed children to be educated in their own languages.
• Industry and Religion: Article 44 orders businesses, religious groups, and even foundations to spread Party-approved ideology, turning every institution into a tool of assimilation.
• Overseas Reach: Articles 17 and 61 extend the law beyond China’s borders. They call for spreading the Party’s ethnic policies through exchanges with foreign academics and organizations, and they warn that individuals abroad who “incite ethnic division” will face legal consequences.

Tibet as a Case Study

The most visible example of how these laws play out is Tibet. Independent UN human rights experts reported in 2023 that roughly one million Tibetan children have been separated from their families and placed in state-run boarding schools. These schools eliminate Tibetan language and history from the curriculum and immerse children in Mandarin Chinese and Han culture.

The experts said, “We are very disturbed that in recent years the residential school system for Tibetan children appears to act as a mandatory large-scale programme intended to assimilate Tibetans into majority Han culture, contrary to international human rights standards.”

These schools are often far from home, making family visits rare. Children lose their ability to speak their mother tongue fluently and even struggle to communicate with parents and grandparents. The result, according to the experts, is “the erosion of their identity.”

Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa, a representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Taiwan, explained the damage clearly: “Before, 70% to 80% of those who live in Tibet can speak the Tibetan language fluently. Now, among young Tibetans, 9 out of 10 don’t know how to write our own language.”

German anthropologist Adrian Zenz also documented how the Tibetan education system has eliminated teaching in the Tibetan language. He found that since 2015, no new Tibetan-language teachers have been hired. The traditional arts and cultural instruction in schools have been replaced with images and teachings centered on Xi Jinping.

The Uyghurs and Mongolians Face the Same Pressure

The Uyghurs in Xinjiang have endured similar policies for years. The government’s Strike-Hard Campaign has branded basic religious activities as threats to ethnic unity. Peaceful acts such as studying the Quran without state permission have been treated as “ideological viruses.”

Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, director of Chinese Affairs at the World Uyghur Congress, described the results: “In big cities, few young people are able to speak the Uyghur language. We are working hard to preserve our language and culture overseas, and we need other countries and allies to help us stop the CCP from destroying our cultural heritage.”

In Inner Mongolia, the shift came through new bilingual policies that replaced Mongolian textbooks with Mandarin. The move sparked a boycott in 2020 that involved thousands of parents and students. Temtsultu Shotsood, chairman of the Southern Mongolia Congress, said, “The CCP thinks that after the arrests the situation is stable now. But the truth is that Mongolians are angry. They might have no channels to express their dissatisfaction for now, but on the international stage, we are reasoning with them, we are telling them this is cultural genocide.”

Language as a Target

Language is at the core of China’s assimilation strategy. In 2021, Beijing removed protections for minority languages from its national blueprint for childhood development. Instead, the policy emphasized “promoting the common national language.” Pan Mei-Lin, a professor in Taiwan, described the impact: “From the perspective of the Han Chinese, it is to increase national unity, but its real consequence is a kind of cultural extinction.”

Yang Haiying, a cultural anthropologist in Japan, noted that Beijing no longer pretends to respect minority language rights. “Now you see they are really speeding up these efforts, they don’t even bother to say that ‘we respect the rights of the minority groups’,” he said.

The United Nations has long recognized that destroying language is an act of cultural genocide. Its 1948 convention defined “any deliberate act committed with intent to destroy the language” as a crime against humanity. By that standard, China’s language policies in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia may be seen as deliberate attempts to erase cultural survival.

Human Rights Watch has called on governments around the world to push back. Wang of Human Rights Watch said, “The draft law on ethnic unity is a blatant effort by the Chinese government to control people’s thoughts and expression about China both inside and outside the country. Concerned countries should push back against these efforts by pressing the Chinese government to scrap the law and stop persecuting ethnic minority communities and their supporters.”

Despite arrests, intimidation, and threats of prison, minority groups continue to protest and speak out. Their voices highlight that what Beijing describes as “unity” is seen by many as cultural destruction. The result is a loss of identity on a massive scale that scholars and activists describe as being nearly equivalent to genocide.

ACZ Editor: It is a good time for China to be cruel and provocative, since Trump is negotiating a trade deal and has neither time nor inclination to fight about other things.