A new report by Human Rights Watch denounces the systems used by the People’s Republic to promote Han Chinese identity starting in kindergarten. Tibetan is no longer used in teaching, while parents are forced to send videos to schools to prove Chinese is spoken at home. Among the effects are alienation from elders and a growing perception that the local identity is inferior.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a new report today titled Start with the Youngest Children: China Uses Preschools to ‘Integrate’ Tibetans. In it, the rights watchdog group notes that Beijing’s policy of erasing the local identity through forced assimilation and ideological indoctrination is now affecting even the youngest children in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The study highlights how Tibetans are now forced to speak the “national Chinese language” from preschool onward in lieu of Tibetan. In some places, parents are pressured to provide videos proving that the same is happening at home.
The HRW study is based on an analysis of Chinese laws and policy documents, as well as interviews with seven Tibetans and scholars with recent and firsthand knowledge of living conditions in Tibetan areas.
The Chinese government, by targeting kindergarteners, is accelerating its campaign to deprive Tibetan children of their mother tongue and their culture and identity,” said Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This policy is not about education quality, but about forcibly assimilating Tibetans at an early age into a Han-centric national identity.”
Human Rights Watch found that many Tibetan children leave kindergarten unable or unwilling to speak Tibetan, even with family members. Parents reported that, within weeks or months of starting kindergarten, children switch almost entirely to Chinese.
The 2021 Harmonization Plan was the culmination of decades-long policy changes that reduced mother-tongue education for minority communities.
