BEIJING — On a recent short trip to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China, I marveled briefly at the Mongolian-language signs, whose distinctive script looked like a blend of Arabic and calligraphic Chinese characters. But my eyes were soon drawn to the bright-red slogans hanging on nearly every block. The wording varied slightly, but the messages were uniformly calls for the integration and unity of ethnic minorities: "The Chinese nation is one family" and "Let us build the Chinese Dream together with one heart." The moment I arrived at the train station, women in traditional dress warmly greeted visitors with Mongolian-style milk tea, but amid the slogans blanketing the city, tradition felt like nothing more than a one-time prop for ceremony.
The scene in other areas densely populated by ethnic minorities is not much different. Niujie, in southwestern Beijing, is filled with nothing but Chinese-language signs, belying its reputation as a district concentrated with the Hui people, China's largest Muslim ethnic minority. This is because authorities have ordered Arabic script and Islamic symbols removed from signs since 2019. Ethnic minorities losing their place have moved online, where they share their concerns about preserving their identity. A Korean-Chinese creator who runs a restaurant in Qingdao posted a video on local social media saying, "They say Korean is no longer taught even in Yanji. I worry about how the children will build their futures." The video drew hundreds of likes and comments.
Unfortunately, the anguish of ethnic minorities is likely to only deepen. The ethnic assimilation policy that authorities have been tightening for years was cemented by the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, which took effect on the 1st of last month. The law requires schools at all levels to use Putonghua, or standard Chinese, as the primary language of instruction, and mandates that even when minority languages are displayed alongside it in public spaces, Putonghua take precedence in placement and order. It also allows people outside China to be punished for acts that incite ethnic division, drawing controversy over violations of international law.
Despite outside concern and criticism, the Chinese government has been openly displaying its resolve to enforce the law day after day. It is not hard to understand when one considers the situation China faces. President Xi Jinping, who must secure a fourth term at next year's 21st Party Congress, has a political need to strongly assert his will to carry out "the historic task of the Chinese nation," including the unification of Taiwan. There is also a calculation to more effectively confront the escalating conflict with the West through internal control and unity.
Above all, the 12 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities of western China where many ethnic minorities live — including Xinjiang, Tibet and Guizhou — account for 71% of the country's territory and are major hubs for generating electricity, the core energy source for artificial intelligence. For China, which is seen as lagging behind the West in advanced semiconductors but holding an overwhelming edge in power resources, managing this region stably amounts to protecting the foundation of its contest for supremacy.
The problem is that such control inevitably stifles creativity and, in turn, may hinder the very scientific and technological innovation China so desires. This is especially true in basic science, the foundation of all innovation, where China still trails the West. Wang Hong, a professor at France's Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) and one of two Chinese nationals to recently win the Fields Medal — often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics — has confessed that he lost his confidence in mathematics while studying at Peking University and regained it after moving to France. In Chinese academia, there has been an outpouring of self-reflection, with voices saying that had the two remained at home, they would have found it hard to achieve the same feats because of a uniform evaluation system and short-term performance-ism.
The single most important driving force behind China's dazzling growth over the past three decades or so has been "reform and opening up." Actively absorbing diverse capital and knowledge from abroad is what made today's China. That is why there is a sense of dissonance in the sight of China imposing a uniform identity on its 55 ethnic minorities in the name of countering U.S. containment. State mobilization can build factories and lay power grids, but it cannot make creativity and innovation take root.
