• alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Eradicating local culture in Tibet and Xinjiang

        Except they still have their culture. We know what eradication of a culture looks like, it looks like schools that ban the use of native languages, instead of teach in them.

        ~98% of Tibetans speak a Tibetan language.

        Enforcing Mandarin

        Everyone in China learns Mandarin in additional to their local language, how else are they supposed to communicate with people from other parts of China?

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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            4 months ago

            https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3100112/inner-mongolia-doubles-down-chinas-plan-teach-key-subjects

            The regional government announced last week that primary and secondary schools that originally taught in the Mongolian language would shift to Mandarin to teach three core subjects: literature, ethics and history

            Turns out it’s hard to teach Chinese literature, ethics, and history when you can’t interact with the primary sources.

            • Match!!@pawb.social
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              4 months ago

              That’s the core question then: should Mongolian children be made to learn Chinese literature, ethics, and history instead of Mongolian literature, ethics, and history?

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                4 months ago

                They should learn both. But as an American, it’s laughable for me to have an opinion on the matter given the way indigenous people are treated here.

                • Match!!@pawb.social
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                  4 months ago

                  I have real strong opinions about how indigenous people are treated here, why wouldn’t I have those opinions about other nonruling groups?

                  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                    4 months ago

                    2 reasons:

                    1. The reletive silence suggests most people who talk about minority rights in China don’t actually care about minorities rights, because I see >100 “but what about the uhigars or women in Iran” or w/e for every post about the poisoning of Hawaiian or Dakota water.

                    2. We can actually have positive impacts on native Americans, when it comes to minorities in enemies of America, it’s just carrying water for hostile action that hurt those people as much as anyone else. A productive context for that discussion wouldn’t involve Americans.

                    Same when articles trot out LGBT rights in Gaza or Iran or Russia as if those groups don’t suffer from hunger and lack of medicine due to western sanctions.

      • Match!!@pawb.social
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        4 months ago

        I wouldn’t say that makes them an ethnostate (considering the obvious genetic, cultural, and language diversity among Han ethnicities) but the forced Mandarin and Uyghur re-education camps are better arguments

        • UrbonMaximus
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          4 months ago

          “Ethnostate - noun. a state that is dominated by members of a single ethnic group.” That exactly makes them an Ethnostate. Mandarin and Uyghur re-education camps is authoritarianism.

          • Match!!@pawb.social
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            4 months ago

            Han Chinese isn’t a single ethnic group. They don’t speak the same language and they’re genetically and culturally diverse. The CCP is attempting to erase that diversity to become an ethnostate.

            • UrbonMaximus
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              4 months ago

              Just because you disagree with a definition, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

              Every country is culturally diverse, but there’s still statistical common denominator. You have big differences in languages, accents, food, culture in the UK and yet 82% are white British. Same goes for Germany, Japan etc. Every country do their demographic analyses differently, but the point is that they all can have major differences within the same ethic group.

              So we should either agree to use the same definition or agree that it has no meaning and not use that word at all.

              • Match!!@pawb.social
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                4 months ago

                I agree with your definition of ethnostate and everything you said. But Han Chinese is strictly not a single ethnicity and it is purely to the CCP’s advantage to say it is.

                edit: Han is what we might call a race, in that it’s a bunch of distinct ethnicities bundled together via social construct for the purposes of allying that group of ethnicities against the others. So China is a racist state, but not an ethnostate, because an ethnostate is “a state that is dominated by members of a single ethnic group.”