Chinese Police Detain 23 Protestors in Mongolia.

Police in China’s Inner Mongolia region have arrested at least 23 people during protests at the beginning of September. The people were protesting a new policy that takes Mongolian-language textbooks away from schools, and replaces them with Mandarin-Language textbooks.

The decision to enforce the use of the Chinese textbooks, which started in other ethnic minority regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet in 2017, has started demonstrations and boycotts by ethnic Mongolians in at least five cities and counties in Inner Mongolia.

Police in Chifeng city, in Inner Mongolia, said that on Monday the 6th of September, they handed over two elementary school teachers, to a local party disciplinary committee for investigation because they refused to replace the Mongolian language textbooks with the Mandarin ones.

Information about the situation has become harder to get because of the Chinese government’s communication blackout.

It is not surprising that China's control over ethnic minorities is tightening, but Inner Mongolia, unlike Tibet or Xinjiang, hasn’t fought for freedom from the Han Chinese government in recent years. Yet the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decided that their culture needs to be erased just because they are different.

Ethnic minorities are not the only groups of people to suffer from the CCP’s plans to erase any language that isn’t Mandarin. To this day, the local Shanghaiese dialect is discouraged in favour of speaking the official language Mandarin. Key Terms:

1. Mongolia

2. Ethnic Minority

3. Xinjang

4. Tibet

5. Demonstrations

6. Han Chinese Government

7. CCP

Key Questions:

1. Why does the Chinese government only want people to speak Mandarin?

2. What does Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang have in common?

3. Should the CCP be able to tell people what language they can and can’t use?