China's Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law came into force on 1 July. It represents the latest step in a campaign of forced homogenization, and the communist government intends to enforce its reach beyond national borders, targeting Uyghurs, Tibetans and Taiwanese most severely.
The National People's Congress passed the controversial law in mid-March. Even then, pro-Tibetan organizations were already warning of the violent suppression of minority identities in a country home to at least 55 recognized ethnic minorities.
The Han people make up the majority of the population, and Mandarin is their most widely spoken language. Under the new law, Mandarin becomes mandatory as the first language of instruction, even in schools administered by autonomous regions such as Tibet, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.
China's Parliament, one of the largest legislative bodies in the world, passed the law by a vote of 2,756 to three, out of 2,977 deputies, with one abstention. A Reuters correspondent reported the outcome from the chamber on Tiananmen Square on 12 March.
Beijing Defends Its Right to Crack Down on Separatists
More than 91% of China's population is Han, but a parliamentary communiqué points to the country's mounting demographic aging as a driving concern. Officials cited "rejuvenating the nation" as one of the law's stated goals.
Beyond making Mandarin the sole official language, the law mandates that school curricula be revised to "forge a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people", and requires parents to guide their children to "love the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people".
The law also requires museums, libraries and other cultural institutions to present a unified version of Chinese history, and it reaches into housing allocation policy through provisions on "ethnic integration". CNN's interviewees described this as effectively legalizing forced resettlement.
UN human rights experts warned as early as April that the law risked being misused to drive nationwide denationalization, calling it a threat with global implications. Beijing, for its part, maintains that the law can also be applied abroad.
Deputy Minister of Justice Hu Weili addressed these concerns in late June, a week before the law took effect, arguing that Western media had "distorted" its provisions. "This provision is based on China's national conditions, conforms to legal principles, and is consistent with international practice. It is a legitimate, lawful, necessary, and feasible legal provision", he said.
"Countries around the world all have the right to prevent separatist and destructive activities, and to maintain social solidarity and normal order, through domestic legislation", he added. He declined to address whether Beijing could use Interpol to issue arrest warrants for citizens targeted under the law.
The European Union and the United States both raised this possibility almost immediately. Taiwanese citizens, whom Beijing has placed in the most critical category of dissidents of Chinese origin, view the law with particular alarm, and Taiwanese activists now fear the Chinese government will pursue them with far greater zeal.
International Condemnation Mounts
CNN characterized the law as part of a broader vision pursued by President Xi Jinping, who is seeking to bolster national security through forced de-tribalization. The American network noted that Xi rose to China's highest office in the wake of the 2008 protests in Tibet and the bloody unrest that followed in Xinjiang, homeland of the Uyghur minority.
The law, which effectively aims to eliminate minority identities, has drawn condemnation from virtually every major international organization and think tank, both for its proposal and its passage. The European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with China responded by reminding Beijing of its obligations under international law to protect minorities, with MEPs stating that they "denounce the transnational repression against individuals residing within the EU and urge member states to suspend their extradition treaties".
"MEPs stress that the succession of the Dalai Lama is a religious matter and should be determined in accordance with Tibetan Buddhist traditions alone", the delegation noted in its 30 April report.
The Council on Foreign Relations, based in the United States, offered a mildly critical but measured assessment, laying out precisely the dangers minorities face once the law takes effect. Carl Minzner, an expert on Chinese affairs, observed that the text repeatedly uses the term "zhulao" (literally, to "forge" or "cast" metal) in describing ethnic assimilation.
Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab network, covered the law largely through the lens of Uyghur Muslims, noting that the document, in force since the start of the month, contradicts China's own constitution, which states that "each ethnicity has the right to use and develop their own language and the right to self-rule".
"The United Nations in 2018 said China was holding at least one million mostly Muslim Uighurs and other Turkic minorities in a network of what Beijing described as re-education centres", the Qatari broadcaster noted. These same separatists, whose past efforts to declare an independent East Turkestan largely failed, are also most frequently targeted for forced organ harvesting.
Tibet Bears the Brunt
Unsurprisingly, the fiercest protests came from Tibet. The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) published an extensive analysis back in March, describing the Ethnic Unity Law as "the culmination of a decades-long CCP effort to dilute the unique identity of the Tibetan people and codify forced assimilationist policies into the PRC's legal framework".
The organization traced legal provisions on regional autonomy from Mao Zedong's rise to power in 1949 through to March 2026. In doing so, it found that the Communist government has, since Xi Jinping's re-election in 2018, pursued a gradual but far-reaching rollback of previously established rights for ethnic minorities.
"Citizens of all ethnic groups shall have the right to use their native spoken and written languages in civil proceedings", the ICT noted, citing Article 11 of China's Civil Procedure Law. According to the campaign, the new law's draft began taking shape as early as last year's parliamentary session, and it now radically curtails these very rights.
Nowhere are these restrictions more evident than in Tibet. In 1995, the Chinese government abducted a senior spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama, whose role includes identifying the reincarnated soul of the Dalai Lama after his death.
It was the ninth Panchen Lama, Thubten Choekyi Nyima, who "identified" the reincarnation of Tibet's late ruler as a boy named Tenzin Gyatso, now the 14th Dalai Lama. Thubten's successor sought to free the newly independent Tibet from the "feudal yoke" and bring it under Chinese rule, but when he refused to brand Gyatso a traitor, he was stripped of his titles and tortured.
The Dalai Lama selected the then six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama, but three days later, the Chinese government abducted him. The government installed the loyalist Gyaltsen Norbu in his place, who will select the successor upon the death of the Tibetan leader-in-exile.
Although the current Dalai Lama held the title of vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress before his enthronement, a post he officially retained for 10 years until 1964, he had already fled into exile from Chinese troops in 1959.
The findings noted above, published in March of last year, suggest Tibet has become something of a testing ground where Beijing is refining tactics for its broader plan to Sinicize ethnic minorities.
In early July, Tibetan activist Logba Rangzen set himself on fire outside UN headquarters in protest against the ethnic law. Yet this tragic act of resistance appears to have had no effect on the law’s implementation, and the drive towards forced assimilation – one that far outstrips the Magyarization of 19th-century Hungary or the medieval Ostsiedlung – shows no sign of slowing.