Protests that have erupted in Inner Mongolia over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attempt to assimilate the population’s language and culture bear similarities to demonstrations in Hong Kong, scholars have noted.

Ethnic Mongolians in northern China have staged protests against school-curriculum changes that remove their local language from core subjects.

“The Mongolian protests are a result of Beijing’s extreme assimilation policies that have touched a nerve of the Mongolian people,” said Chinese political scholar Wu Qiang.

In China, Inner Mongolia is typically seen as an “exemplary” and compliant autonomous region, Wu said. The region has been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party since 1947 and does not deviate much from the central government when it comes to politics and religion.

The people in the region, however, have pushed back against what they view as the government’s efforts to wipe out its culture. It is not the first time that such attempts at assimilation have been made: In 2014, Xi stressed the need to “actively foster a sense of belonging to the Chinese race” in schools. Two years later, China’s Ministry of Education announced plans to increase the use of Chinese in ethnic minority communities.

Xi’s heavy-handed language policy has sparked backlash because it infringes on people’s cultural identities, Wu said.

He added that the situation in Inner Mongolia, which has a developed economy and culture as well as a strong cultural identity, was similar to that in Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong is also a well-developed area and does not differ from mainland China in terms of race or religion. However, there is a difference in identity,” Wu said, also noting that protests in both regions have been led mainly by young people.

Yang Haiying, a humanities professor at Japan’s Shizuoka University, said that the shift in China’s education policy was spurred by the fact that the government in Mongolia — China’s independent neighbor — announced plans to restore the use of its traditional alphabet by 2025.

“The Chinese Communist Party feels insecure after realizing that the people in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia share the same language. It thinks that Mongolians [in Inner Mongolia] will become separatist,” Yang said.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play