China’s National People’s Congress, a rubber-stamp for President Xi Jinping, passed sweeping legislation March 12 that further attacks the rights of tens of millions of the country’s residents. It mandates Mandarin as the primary language in schools and official communications and imposes strictures on the use of other languages in China.
Under the new law authorities will guide citizens to have “correct views” on history, culture and religion, and reject “outdated customs.” It requires parents to “educate and guide children to love the Chinese Communist Party.”
Taking effect July 1, the order codifies Xi’s long-running ambition to force the assimilation of the country’s 56 officially recognized ethnic minorities that make up 8.9% of the population — some 124 million people. Together, China’s ethnic minorities are concentrated in regions that cover roughly half of the country’s land area, much of it rich in natural resources.
Han Chinese, most of whom speak Mandarin, make up more than 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
The passage of the law comes in the wake of Beijing’s inability to reverse a yearslong slowdown in economic growth and subsequent widening class inequality. At the National People’s Congress, China’s premier, Li Qiang, announced an economic growth target of 4.5%, the lowest in decades.
This crisis is driving working people to look for ways to change the worsening conditions they face, something Beijing is preparing to try to stamp out. The new law seeks to build a single national identity molded by China’s ruling Communist Party.
Beijing fears the impact that unresolved struggles for national rights will have on broader layers of the working class. It has already moved to crush political rights in Hong Kong.
The new law replaces 1980s legislation that mandated some autonomy for regions with large ethnic-minority populations, continuing the long retreat from the party’s original promise that the country’s different nationalities could manage their own affairs.
Mandarin has already been imposed as the primary language of instruction in Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang, areas with large ethnic minority populations. Massive demonstrations and classroom walkouts broke out in several cities in Inner Mongolia in 2020 — where some 17% of the population is Mongol — after authorities required textbooks to be in Mandarin and announced plans to phase out local history, literature and ethnic textbooks. Police swarmed in, using pepper spray and arresting protesters.
Today students there can only study Mongolian as a foreign language for at most an hour a day in school.
In the mainly Buddhist region of Tibet, Beijing has imposed restrictions on Tibetan religion, education and language, all monitored under the watchful eyes of a network of police surveillance posts. Authorities have sent Tibetan children to state-run boarding schools, separating them from their families, to teach Mandarin and “Chinese” culture.
In Xinjiang, home to millions of Turkic-speaking Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities, authorities set up mass internment camps as part of their forced assimilation drive, claiming they were carrying out a “people’s war on terror.” After growing international protests, the government backed down, closing most of what they called “reeducation centers” saying everyone has completed their “studies.” By 2020 what remains of the camps contained hundreds of discarded metal bed frames with red stickers on them saying, “Recognize your mistakes, admit your mistakes, repent.”
Beijing’s drive to foist a single national identity on the country’s different peoples isn’t stopping at its borders. In 2025, Chinese officials pressured a museum in Thailand to remove the names and works of Uyghur, Tibetan and Hong Kong artists.
The law also says that organizations and individuals outside China that carry out acts “that undermine ethnic unity” can be detained. Zhang Yadi, a student in Paris since 2022, was detained under suspicion of “inciting separatism” by Chinese authorities when she returned home for a visit in 2025. She is part of the group Chinese Youth Stand for Tibet, which says it aims to “foster a deeper understanding of Tibetan culture within Chinese-speaking communities, challenge and deconstruct Han chauvinism, and address ethnic conflicts and prejudices.” Zhang could face 10 years in prison.
The bill says people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be encouraged to identify as Chinese, in line with Beijing’s assertion that the people of Taiwan are really citizens of China. Beijing is determined to impose its control over Taiwan.