China's coercive language policy
The Hindu
B.S. Raghavan / October 29, 2010

China is doing no good to itself and to its standing in the world by becoming known more and more for its deliberately designed policy of pinpricks than for mature handling of situations.

Hardly had the contretemps over its blackballing of General B. S. Jaswal, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of India's Northern Command, who was to lead the team for the fourth India-China defence dialogue, subsided when it got into an unseemly confrontation with Japan by letting its trawler trespass into territorial waters that the latter had always claimed to be its.

While the embers of that hotbed of contention are yet to die down, China's rulers have once again displayed their peculiar penchant to stir up trouble for themselves by meddling with the language policy.

In the process, they have excited suspicion and anger among linguistic and ethnic minorities, resulting in public protests at various places in Guangdong, Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

In July last, in the city of Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province, the needlessly provocative action of the local political boss ordering a TV network to change to Mandarin in its programmes and discontinue the use of Cantonese, which was the traditional majority language of the province, led to public expression of opposition and resentment.

It was soon clear that this was not an aberration by an overzealous official but was part of a pre-planned move by China towards an ‘integrationist' and coercive language policy which would give primacy to Mandarin as the official language and medium of instruction in educational institutions and downgrade the importance of regional languages.

Mystery

In fact, the party secretary of Qinghai Province was reported by the People's Daily as taking an aggressive stand, asking ‘officials at all levels' to go ahead making Mandarin compulsory, without any worry about hurting minority people's feelings or its impact on the development of minority culture or social stability.

It is a mystery why China chose to take on the linguistic and ethnic minorities at this time. Its approach has been ham-handed, to say the least, on several counts.

Knowing that its attitude to Tibet and Tibetans is yet to get the full acceptance of the world community, it has shown extreme tactlessness in inviting adverse publicity upon itself by seeming to target Tibetans who have taken the new policy as an attack on their language and culture.

By pushing for language reform in this abrupt manner, China has also violated its own Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law of 1984 which guarantees the right of minorities to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and use textbooks written in their own languages and use these languages as the medium of instruction.

The fear of protests, with agitated students in the forefront, becoming widespread has made the Chinese authorities backtrack.

They have reportedly sought to reassure the teachers and students in an open letter that education in their ethnic language will not be neglected and that in places where conditions are not ripe, the authorities will not forcefully push the reforms.

The educational institutions have been asked to follow teaching rules and listen and respect viewpoints and advice from students and their parents before carrying out the reforms.

Of all the prized gifts of human existence, one's own language is the most cherished one for imparting to one's personality and culture its unique grandeur and glory.

Anything that touches on it should be approached with the greatest delicacy and respect.

That China should ride roughshod over such an emotive issue and then beat a hasty retreat bespeaks of a tendency to act first and think later. It has to be curbed since it can create problems in the external context as well.