A new law on ethnic unity took effect in China on Wednesday, despite warnings from Taiwan, the United Nations and rights groups that it could threaten freedoms, especially for minorities.
The Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress aims to create a “shared” national identity among ethnic groups, for example by strengthening the status of Mandarin as an official language.
But overseas activists have argued that it will further degrade the rights of ethnic minorities, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans, that Beijing is accused of persecuting.
They also point to a clause that says people can be held accountable for breaking the law even when outside China, saying it gives the Chinese government more justification to target its opponents abroad.
The law will require “political and ideological alignment with the Chinese Communist Party” and “further institutionalization of … forced assimilation policies,” Amnesty International’s deputy regional director, Sarah Brooks, said on Tuesday.
“Chinese authorities have human rights obligations that require them to protect minority communities and their cultures, but this law does the opposite,” Brooks said.
Amnesty has warned that the legislation is pushing ethnic groups to “adopt a single, state-defined national identity dominated by Han Chinese culture”, referring to the country’s ethnic majority.
Beijing consistently denies that it engages in rights abuses against any ethnic group and maintains that they all benefit from its domestic security and economic development policies.
Taiwan expressed “strong condemnation” of the law on Wednesday, saying it expanded “threats and intimidation against the people of our country and other nations”.
“In the future, individuals from any country whose words or actions are unacceptable to China may become targets of the law or be prosecuted under it,” its foreign ministry said.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to annex the self-governing, democratic island.
In Washington, nine US lawmakers, including top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced strong opposition to the law and vowed in a statement to continue speaking out against Beijing’s attempt to “legitimize its international repression”.
In particular, the senators said, “we are deeply troubled by language in the law that requires ideological compliance with the CCP, mandating that even people outside of China who are deemed to be undermining ‘ethnic unity and progress’ by the Chinese government can be held legally accountable in China.”
Call for repeal
The law formalizes longstanding policies to promote Mandarin as the language of education, official business and public spaces, and also contains provisions for social cohesion and the prevention of terrorism and separatism.
Some ethnic groups in China, especially in its border regions, have their own languages and have historically been allowed to use them alongside Mandarin in schools.
Beijing has also justified sweeping campaigns in areas with large minority populations as legitimate efforts to prevent the spread of terrorism and extremism.
A senior Chinese judicial official defended the law last week, saying it would target “illegal acts” that “undermine ethnic unity and progress or promote ethnic separatism.”
Hu Weilie said the clause allowing overseas enforcement was “legitimate, legal (and) necessary”.
But UN rights chief Volker Turk has called for the law to be repealed, saying it risks “deepening restrictions on the freedoms of language, education, practice of religion, culture, expression and assembly”.
Uyghur and Tibetan advocates have urged countries to push China to crack down on it, saying it aims to wipe out minority communities.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said Taiwanese people already faced high risks traveling to China and warned Beijing now had “another law to fabricate charges”.
Beijing will use the law “as a legal basis to further suppress and persecute human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet, or expand its threats against voices internationally that support or are friendly to Taiwan,” the MAC said in a statement, attributing the remarks to Vice Minister Liang Wen-chieh.
