Inner Mongolia Government Promotes Mongolian Language

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) government has earmarked 10 million yuan for subsidies to reduce educational fees for students who received their high school education in the Mongolian language and continue their schooling at universities in the IMAR, according to a July 23 Xinhua article posted on the PRC Central Government Web site. The government also has set aside yearly funds to support minority-language teaching materials. According to the article, the IMAR government now has over 1,900 ethnic minority elementary and secondary schools that educate approximately 420,000 students.

The article coincides with other reports from the IMAR on recent measures to encourage use of the Mongolian language, though under strict Party control. The Sin-e Bargu Right Banner (Pinyin: Xinba'erhuyouqi) government announced that it has expanded efforts to promote the Mongolian language, according to a July 24 article on the IMAR Ethnicities and Religion Web site. The 52 banners in the IMAR are equivalent to county-level governments elsewhere in China. The banner government has established a literature federation with offices under the banner Party committee propaganda department that supervises arts and literature initiatives, including a revival of "Vast Grassland" magazine, which was first published 30 years ago. In addition, in response to requests from herders, the banner government will resume Mongolian-language FM radio broadcasts, the article reported. Banner authorities invested 180,000 yuan in April to prepare the radio facilities, according to the article.

In addition, Ulanhot City has begun examining implementation of the Regulation on Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Mongolian Language Work, according to a July 17 article on the IMAR Ethnicities and Religion Web site. Investigation teams have focused on Mongolian language work by Party and government administrative units and have examined the use of Mongolian and Mandarin Chinese in areas including business and transportation, the article reported. The Regulation on Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Mongolian Language Work entered into force in May 2005. It supports education in Mongolian and provides subsidies, stipends, and scholarships to participating schools and students (Articles 8-12). The Regulation also promotes a subsidy to bilingual workers for their knowledge of Mongolian (Article 17); requires government offices and other work units to increase Mongolian-language translation capabilities (Article 18); and promotes and subsidizes Mongolian-language publications and broadcasts (Articles 26-28). See a related CECC analysis for more information on the regulation.

While the recent reports indicate some efforts to implement provisions from the IMAR language regulation, it is unclear if the regulation is being implemented consistently throughout the region. Some NGO reporting challenges the notion that authorities are promoting the use of Mongolian in the IMAR. According to a May 22 statement by the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center submitted to the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous People, authorities have closed or merged ethnic minority schools as part of efforts to assimilate Mongol populations. Approximately 25 percent of the region's Mongolian population speaks only Mandarin Chinese, according to a 1998 article by anthropologist Naran Bilik on Mongolian language education in the IMAR. Bilik noted at that time that teaching in Mongolian was decreasing in urban areas but that teachers, activists, and officials were undertaking efforts to open more Mongolian schools. (See Bilik, "Language Education, Intellectuals and Symbolic Representation: Being an Urban Mongolian in a New Configuration of Social Evolution," in William Safran, ed., Nationalism and Ethnoregional Identities in China, London: Frank Cass, 1998, pp. 47-49, 54).

The recent IMAR measures to promote Mongolian differ from language policy in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where authorities have reduced the use of minority languages in preschool, elementary, and secondary schools through Mandarin Chinese and bilingual education programs. Authorities in the XUAR also have reduced opportunities for XUAR residents to receive college and technical education in ethnic minority languages, thereby reducing incentives to receive primary and secondary education in such languages. The XUAR's 1993 Regulation on Written and Spoken Language Work promotes the use of both ethnic minority languages and Mandarin Chinese, but is not as detailed as the IMAR language regulation. In addition to subsidizing Mongolian-language education, Article 13 of the IMAR regulation encourages the recruitment of students trained in Mongolian for college-level studies, and Article 14 encourages employers to hire graduates who received higher education in Mongolian. The XUAR regulation lacks, in contrast, such specific incentives for students to be educated in minority languages.

Ethnic minorities are guaranteed the freedom to use and develop their own languages by Article 10 of the 1984 Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law (REAL). 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." 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 more information on conditions in the IMAR and language use among ethnic minorities, see Section III(a), "China's Minorities and Government Implementation of the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law," in the 2005 CECC Annual Report.