this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.

Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.

The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

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[–] Tiral@lemmy.world 57 points 5 days ago (10 children)

As someone who lived in China for about 5 years, it's amazing reading people's comments on China that have never been there, but they watch bullshit propaganda tictoks, and think they know what they're talking about.

I'm 43 from the US. For how ridiculously racist the world thinks the US is because they have the most whiney people with victim syndrome (because you know we have free speech and China doesn't), I have heard/seen legitimately 10x more racist shit living in China in 5 years than I've heard over the last 38 years of my life.

There's government messages all over to hate/kill Japanese. They have an amusement park in the south (I forget where) where it's a replica US aircraft carrier you can visit and outside there's an activity where you can stop US tressed dummies with a bayonet.

China thrives on the imbalance of information between itself and the US. They abuse freedom of speech in the US while controlling all media outlets, social sites, and WeChat in their own country.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Han Chinese are even racist towards other Han Chinese due to insane obsession with skin whiteness and China not having free movement like other countries (regional identity then becomes superiority status). This is kinda everywhere in Asia but China is especially bad.

The problem with western freedom is that it allows for lazy conclusions like "my government is restricting my freedoms and is unjust which means the opposition is free and just, through sheer virtue of being opposition".

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[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 14 points 5 days ago (9 children)

hate/kill Japanese

Tbf..... That's pretty much all of Asia. That's what happens when you try your best to murder all your neighbors except for the ones you enslave to do either manual labour or be raped for years on end.

The hate for Japan would be like if the Nazi party still existed to a lesser extent and were unapologetic or in denial about their war crimes. The vast majority of their leaders since ww2 have either been war criminals, the children or war criminals, or grandchildren of war criminals.

[–] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is not true, most countries in Asia and the greater specific view Japan very favorably except for Korea.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/11/12/countries-views-of-japan-abe-japanese-views-of-china/

Yeah ...... Sorry if I don't think that's a very well put together article, considering that they claim South Korea as the only exception. Then link further down to a study that claims China has even worse views of Japan than Korea.

And as I have said multiple times in this thread..... Most people in asia are able to separate the Japanese people from the Japanese government.

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[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 106 points 6 days ago (164 children)

This is continuing an act of genocide against the Uyghurs.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 62 points 6 days ago

and other minorities

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[–] Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 33 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Can't wait for the tankies to try and spin this into something positive.

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[–] treehugger6@lemmy.world 49 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (14 children)

Define integrate. I live in a country that I wasn't born in. Obviously, I follow the laws, but I don't owe anyone to change my personality. I eat whatever the fuck I want, dress the way I want, etc. I'm allergic to narrow-mindness because it implies low intelligence, among other things

[–] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 41 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Here's the wiki article on the law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_Promoting_Ethnic_Unity_and_Progress.

Some stuff makes sense - like economic modernization of regions with many minorities (especially poor regions), teaching Mandarin in schools so that everyone can speak the majority language, and preserving cultural works and texts of minority groups.

Other stuff seems repressive, like the broad enforcement section, the extremely broad reach of the law into all public and private institutions, legislating what various actors can/can't teach the youth if it might "harm Chinese ethnic unity" which is left pretty vague. Very ethnostate-coded stuff on the whole, not great.

Some sections I thought were noteworthy, taken from wikipedia, shortened with DeepSeek. There is lots more stuff in there.

"Chapter I.... tasks the whole of government and society to achieve these goals, mandating general obligations on a wide range of public and private actors such as ... " [basically all imaginable institutions]

"Chapter II, titled Building a Shared Spiritual Home, lays out the ideological characteristics ... requiring fostering identification with 'the great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the Communist Party of China, and socialism with Chinese characteristics' through patriotic education ... and promotion of 'Chinese cultural symbols and image of the Chinese nation'. It also codifies the predominance of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) in public life ... and requires that Chinese characters be displayed more prominently than minority scripts if both must be used in public."

"It tasks the Ministry of Education and the National Ethnic Affairs Commission in developing textbooks regarding 'the community of the Chinese nation' ... It vows to support the standardization, digitization, and preservation of minority texts. It broadly requires media, internet service providers, families, among others, to promote the CCP's ethnic policy ... while prohibiting them from 'instilling in minors ideas detrimental to ethnic unity and progress'."

"Chapter V and VI concern the enforcement mechanisms ... permits citizens to report conduct that 'undermines ethnic unity and progress' ... Procuratorates may initiate public interest litigation when any such conduct also 'undermines national interests or the public interest'. It generally leaves penalties to be imposed under other applicable laws. It also asserts jurisdiction over foreign organizations and individuals that 'commit acts targeting the PRC that undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division'.[7] The law empowers the state to pursue those outside of China perceived as undermining notions of ethnic unity."

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 39 points 6 days ago (6 children)

It's quite standard fascist discourse:

Point to real problem that everybody wants to solve; declare that some policy they want (almost always some kind of racism) is the only solution; do some genocide as the means of implementing the policy.

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[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 29 points 6 days ago (53 children)

Tell me again how china is good or better than America? I’ve said this before but American capitalism hasn’t been the answer for decades. And Chinese communism won’t save us either. As a Native American I know all to well about the great American history of treating natives here. And how china has been treating Tibet and Uyghurs is distinguished as well as Taiwan too.

[–] Reality@feddit.org 27 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Why does everything need to be compared to the US and why can't both be bad?

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hey, be generous and give .ml some time to write their script at how they treat their minorities better before they respond to you!

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[–] nullspace@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago (6 children)

Hmm, hmm...

So, ethnic cleansing?

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[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (8 children)

How can there be ethnic unity if there are 56 officially recognized ethnicities.

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[–] jpreston2005@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (10 children)

While the text of the law doesn't seem especially egregious, we'll have to wait and see how it is enforced. The treatment of minorities by China in the past has been fraught with... well imprisonment, torture, and erasure of their communities. Kind of like the US and Canada, but worse and on a bigger scale.

Probably just more of the same, honestly. My biggest concern is this:

and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.

So, uh, any Chinese national, anywhere in the world, does something they don't like, they come after you? yeeeeeeah, that's gonna be a No from me, dog.

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 10 points 5 days ago

So, uh, any Chinese national, anywhere in the world, does something they don’t like, they come after you? yeeeeeeah, that’s gonna be a No from me, dog.

They don't need to care how you think about it since they run these "110" police stations all over the world. They enforce the rules on Chinese people after they've left the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_police_overseas_service_stations

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[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 30 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I'm from Silesia which is now part of Poland after the WWII. All my grand parents were born in Germany and then the borders moved and the land became polish.

But it's more complicated, because my ancestors were fighting against both the polish and the Germans to make Silesia an independent nation, but they failed. Two of my great grandfathers ended up in concentration camps because of that, one in Auschwitz and another one in Dachau.

When my dad started going to achool he spoke Silesian, a mix of polish and German which was usual there. His parents were called to the principal countless times that they have to do something about it because German was not allowed in school.

When my grandfathers sister who lived in Germany because she fled there - came to visit him they spoke German at the bus station because she didn't speak polish. Someone called the police and my grandfather spent two weeks in jail for this.

When I started to go to school, it was still forbidden to learn German, so I was supposed to learn Russian instead.

My parents finally had the possibility to flee to Germany and only there 1989 we all started to learn the language of our ancestors, two generations later.

Still to this day the polish government is afraid of the separatistst movement in Silesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_independence

China has the exact same problem as Poland. Before Xi they have been quite relaxed with it. My wife was born into a Korean family in north east China, she didn't speak Chinese until middle school. They had their own identity, Korean schools, Shops, etc, no integration needed.

But separatism is dangerous for countries, it brings a lot of problems, fighting, security concerns, etc. It's just easier and more harmonic if everyone pulls to the same direction. Poland crushed the German identity by constantly putting people into jail and making it impossible to live a normal life and by mixing the rest of the german population who for whatever reason couldn't flee to Germany after WWII. And they did so very successfully I might add. Now Xi is learning from this success and doing the same with their minorities.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 25 points 6 days ago

It’s just easier and more harmonic if everyone pulls to the same direction.

This puts the cart before the horse. Nations are supposed to serve the needs of people. People are not supposed to serve the needs of a nation. If your nation needs to go to the extreme lengths of forced ethnic integration to keep a region from breaking free from your country, maybe that region simply doesn't belong in your country and never should have been a part of it. That's not harmonizing a nation; that's conquest and ethnic cleansing.

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