Ethnic Minority Rights
More than 200,000 of Xinjiang's most well-educated citizens have moved out of the autonomous region since 1979, according to a May 1 article in the Workers Daily. Post-secondary schools outside Xinjiang admit more than 10,000 Xinjiang students each year, and fewer than half return to the autonomous region after graduation. The article says Xinjiang has 493,000 technically trained workers, just over half of whom are minorities.
The State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) published a new report on May 19 called "Unified Struggle, Common Prosperity", which contains survey findings and new details on government poverty alleviation efforts in minority areas. (See also the February State Council White Paper on Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China.) The government uses different criteria for minority and Han areas when determining whether or not a particular county falls below the national poverty line. For example, in 1985 officials set the national poverty line at 150 yuan per year, but drew the line in autonomous areas at 200 yuan.
The State Council announced on May 18 a new Five Year Plan to promote economic development among China’s 22 minority groups that have fewer than 100,000 members. The State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) devotes a special section of its Web page to policies toward this special group of minorities. SEAC notes that these groups reside primarily in western China along international borders, and 16 of them have ethnic counterparts across the border in other countries. Since 2000, the government has made a priority of assisting the minority border regions, the poorest of the minority counties, and minorities with small populations.
New "Regulations on the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region's Mongolian Language Work" that became effective on May 1 contain provisions to promote the use of the Mongol language. At a time when Chinese government policies limit the use of the Uighur language in neighboring Xinjiang, the new Inner Mongolia regulations set specific guidelines for increasing the use of the Mongol language in government offices, courts, schools, and in the news media. For example, Article 13 stipulates that institutes of higher education should increase recruitment of Mongol-speaking students, as well as the number of classes using Mongolian as the language of instruction. Article 12 states that economic incentives should be offered to students receiving their primary and middle school instruction in Mongolian.
Among the Communist Party and central Chinese government's most important tools for promoting its minority policy is a program called "Assist Tibet, Xinjiang, and Border Areas", (see below for an English translation), according to the State Ethnic Affairs Commission Web site. This program sends Han cadres and technical experts to the border minority areas for contracts ranging from three to eight years. The first goal of the program is to foil "domestic and foreign forces'...vain attempts to stir up ethnic separatism and to threaten our country's social stability, ethnic harmony, and national unity." The Han cadre also "help liberate the thinking" of minorities to foster economic and socialist construction, and heighten cadres' awareness of minority issues.
The following translation was retrieved from the Inner Mongolia News Web site on February 7, 2011. This Web site lists its source as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Ethnicity and Religion Net, which is sponsored by the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Ethnic Affairs Commission. The Chinese text was retrieved from the Central Government of the People's Republic of China Web site on February 7, 2011.
Order No. 435 of the State Council of the People's Republic of China
Government officials in Kuche (Kuqa) county in Xinjiang have allocated RMB 1 million per year between 2004 and 2009 to improve Han language competency in primary schools, according to a May 10 article in the Xinjiang Daily. More than 90 percent of the county's 60,000 Uighur primary school students who study in Chinese now have working competency in the language, according to the report. The government has enrolled 150 Uighur teachers from the countryside in a five-year Han language program at the Northwest Nationalities Institute in Gansu province. The teachers will return to Kuche County during their school holidays to conduct Han language training sessions for other teachers, and to set up Han language testing centers.
The Gansu Party Organization Department recently published survey findings that provide rare details on the precise number of minority party members within a rural county and an even more unusual acknowledgment of widespread party member acceptance of religion (see 李盛刚，妥善解决少数民族和信教群众居区农村党员信仰宗教问题的积极探索，甘肃理论学看，2004年11月). The Organization Department conducted the survey in Zhangjiachuan Hui Autonomous County, which contains a higher percentage of the Hui Muslim minority (69.5 percent) than any other autonomous county in China. 63.7 percent of county party members there are Hui, while 53.3 percent of the "peasant party members" in the county are Hui.
The government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region announced the specific selection criteria for prospective middle and high school students, according to an April 20 Urumqi News account. All students in China must take entrance examinations, but the government has preferential programs for ethnic minorities. The Xinjiang government will send 3,115 of the top applicants to special classes at high schools in eastern Chinese provinces, and will train another 3,000 students at local middle schools.
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The Congressional-Executive Commission on China held another in its series of staff-led Issues Roundtables, entitled "China’s Ethnic Regional Autonomy Law: Does it Protect Minority Rights?” on Monday, April 11, from 2:00 – 3:30 PM in Room 2255 of the Rayburn House Office Building.