City in Xinjiang Mandates Exclusive Use of Mandarin Chinese in Schools

Schools in Artush city, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), will teach all first grade elementary school classes in Mandarin Chinese beginning in September 2006, according to a July 11 article in the Xinjiang Daily. Artush is the capital of the Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture in the XUAR. The prefectural government and Party committee, which are jointly carrying out the policy, will require all primary and secondary schools to teach exclusively in Mandarin by the year 2012. Since March 2006, teachers in 76 preschool classes in the city have instructed students entirely in Mandarin, the article reported. In Artush, 80 percent of the population is Uighur, Kirgiz make up 12 percent, and Han Chinese almost 8 percent, according to 2001 statistics available on the Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture government’s Web site.

The article noted that the Artush Education Department has recruited teachers from elsewhere in the XUAR who are fluent in Mandarin to teach in the elementary schools. A number of ethnic minority teachers have asked for leaves of absence to study Mandarin at their own expense, the article reported. The new language policy requires that all elementary school teachers must score a minimum of 6 on the national Mandarin Chinese language test within three years. Secondary school teachers must score a minimum of 7 on the same test.

The stated Mandarin-only focus of the Artush language policy differs from the stated bilingual focus of recent language policies elsewhere in the XUAR. The XUAR government has expanded its bilingual education program in the past year and provided monetary incentives for students and teachers to participate in bilingual preschool programs. Bilingual education policy at ethnic minority schools elsewhere in the XUAR, however, has placed primacy on using Mandarin in school rather than promoting both Mandarin and ethnic minority languages.

In June, the XUAR government began recruiting 1,595 "specially appointed teachers" nationwide to take up teaching positions in rural schools in Kashgar, Yili, and other areas, according to a June 14 article in Xinhua's Xinjiang service. An XUAR official quoted in the article said that the recruitment would address the "tense situation of qualified teachers in rural areas in Xinjiang and raise the quality of rural education." The official noted that there is a shortage of teaching staff in the southern XUAR, and that some areas exceed the quota of minority language-speaking teachers while they are understaffed in Mandarin-speaking teachers. The official added that some schools have a shortage of bilingual teachers who can use both Mandarin Chinese and a minority language. The article did not report whether the specially appointed teachers must have knowledge of ethnic minority languages spoken in the XUAR. It specified only that the teachers should be college and technical school graduates under the age of 30 who have relevant teaching credentials.

Under article 10 of the 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law (REAL), ethnic minorities are guaranteed the freedom to use and develop their own languages. In addition, article 37 of the REAL stipulates that "[s]chools (classes) and other educational organizations recruiting mostly ethnic minority students should, whenever possible, use textbooks in their own languages and use these languages as the media of instruction;" it promotes the use of instruction in Mandarin Chinese only in language and literature classes, starting in lower or senior levels of elementary school. Article 22 of the 2005 Implementing Provisions for the REAL affirms the freedom of ethnic minorities to use and develop their own languages but also "encourages ethnic autonomous areas to gradually adopt 'bilingual teaching.'"

For additional information, see the sections on Language Policy and Rights Violations in Xinjiang in the CECC 2005 Annual Report.