The Ear to Asia podcast is made available on the Jakarta Post platform under agreement between the Jakarta Post and the University of Melbourne. Hello, I'm Sami Shah. This is Ear to Asia. In China, Mandarin in general is seen as the language for social mobility and also for opportunities. Overall, there's no such a forceful, let's say, imposition of Mandarin to replace other minority languages. But rather, it's more of a gradual approach in which minority languages are seen
as less valuable or made less valuable. Even a language that in the Chinese context can have a couple of million speakers and be a minority language in one or two generations can drastically fall down the cliff when you have that sense that people don't want to pass the language on to their children. These children don't get to grow up learning these languages as their mother tongues because their parents have decided that that won't be a sensible investment of time for
them. Can ethnic minority languages coexist with Mandarin in China? Ear to Asia is the podcast from Asia Institute, the Asia research specialists at the University of Melbourne. Mandarin, or Putonghua, has long served as China's official language, yet recent developments have shown its growing influence is coming at the expense of the country's minority languages. While China's constitution mandates the promotion of Putonghua, it also guarantees the right to use and develop
minority languages. But after a legislative decision in 2020, mandatory schooling in some minority languages is now regarded as unconstitutional. This tension has brought forth language policies impacting large ethnic groups like the Zhuang, who live in China's south, and whose language has been losing ground in official domains. Concerns have also arisen about the effects of language policy on linguistic diversity in regions like
Tibet. Underpinning this trend are concepts like the pluralist unity model, which ostensibly seeks to balance ethnic diversity with natural cohesion. However, the growing push to cement Putonghua's dominance in education and governance marks a clear shift in China's linguistic landscape. So, given that Mandarin is indisputably the dominant language of the nation, why is there an apparent need to further strengthen its positions vis
-à -vis minority languages? What are the real -world impacts of China's Mandarin -first language policies on ethnic minority communities? And what will it take for minority languages to thrive alongside Putonghua in China? Joining me to examine the impact of government policies on minority languages in China are researchers of linguistic diversity, Dr. Lajia Tu from Asia Institute and Dr. Alexandra Gray from University of Technology, Sydney. Welcome to Ear to Asia, Lajia and Alex.
Thank you for having me. Such a pleasure to be here, Sami. Alex, let's start with you. Before we get to minority languages, can you please give us a quick overview of China's ethnic minorities? Of course. And I think this is a good place to start because it's not necessarily something that people outside of China, say here in Australia, know much about at all. But if we think about China just as a physical space, it's much bigger
than, say, Europe. So, of course, if we start to think, we can anticipate that there might be quite a lot of diversity in the histories, the origins, the cultures, the languages of different groups of people there. And indeed, that is the
case. And so when the nation we now know as China formed itself after a period of civil war and tension in the middle of the 20th century, the government, through its constitution and other policies, set up an official recognition of not just the ethnic majority, which is called the Hanzhou or the Han group, but 55 recognised other
peoples. And they are predominantly at that point in time being recognised because they have cultural and linguistic differences from what's seen as the majority or, if you like, the mainstream. And so these 55 minorities in Chinese, they're called 少数民族 or small number minorities, have a certain legal status. And then coming to the issue of languages, of those 55, 54 of them were recognised as having an official language for their own group. So how many minority languages
are currently spoken and viable in China? Look, this is a really difficult question to answer, Sami, although it's also a really sensible question. Of course, people want to know this. So if we think of those 55 minorities that I just explained, together their population is about 8 or 9 % of the national population. However, it's very hard to get data, first of all, on... who amongst those minority peoples speaks what is recognised
as a minority language. And then even in the cases where we do have data on language being spoken, it's a further challenge to get data that properly reflects how often or when or with whom people speak those languages, how fluently, how comfortably, whether they write those languages
as well. And then also I think it's really important to remember that despite this very rigid state organisation of peoples into groups and languages to go with peoples, there are people from the majority who grow up speaking what we think of as minority languages because... That's the main language in the village or the town where they
grow up. So there's not necessarily a one -to -one correspondence between the number of people in the minorities and the number of people speaking those languages and then the number of people speaking those languages as their sole language. So to put this in a bit of a grounded context, to give an example, the language that I've done a lot of my own research on is called Zhuang. It's a language that originated in that part of South Central China that's sort of above Vietnam
and near Thailand. And for that language, we have data from around the turn of this century, so data from around the year 2000, and that's the most recent I can find reflecting this sort of information, saying that about 53 % of the people who were technically in the Zhuang population in what's called the Guangxi Zhuangzi Autonomous Region were speaking Putonghua, so that is the
national Mandarin language. But only 20 % of that same group, so only 20 % of that Zhuang ethnic minority in that area at about the same time were monolingual, okay? So the majority of people, at least in this example of the Zhuang, are multilingual, bilingual, maybe trilingual, even quadrilingual. So people are speaking, and this is not just in South China, people are speaking both ethnic minority languages and the national language, which... We call it Mandarin, but it's
called Putonghua. And then also a whole range of other Mandarin dialects that don't have that official status as the national official version of Mandarin. So in fact, there's enormous linguistic diversity going on. And that means both at a societal level and an individual level, there's a dynamic, there's, if you like, a sort of allocation of which language, where and how much and at what point in everyone's lives. Last year, historically, how has the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP,
viewed ethnic minorities? Thank you for the question. Yes, historically, the Communist Party of China has seen these minority groups, as Alex said, 55 ethnic minority groups, along with the Han majority group. as a big part of what makes China's culture so rich and diverse. So they call China as a multi -ethnic country. And it has come up with different ways to support these minority
groups in schools and in the media. For example, in certain ethnic minority groups, there are bilingual schools, which incorporates ethnic minority language along with the Mandarin in their instruction in the classrooms. And also there are media such as radio broadcasts and televisions that has bilingual programs. Oh,
well, there are minority language programs. Of course, there are membranes, but there are televisions and radio stations that are dedicated to minority languages that usually have programs that focus on a minority culture and the language and their literature and all aspects of their lives. And also, of course, the state news. And so Historically, I would say China has seen this as a very important part of their family. They call this the family of a Chinese nation, in which Chinese call it
Zhonghua Minzu, right? Zhonghua Minzu is a big umbrella term that includes all these 56 ethnic groups, including... Han Chinese. And as Alex said, that Han Chinese actually makes up about 92 % of the population in the nation. So that's a super majority. And all the other 55 ethnic groups make up only about 8 % to 9%. That's the latest statistics that we can get. So yeah, so that's a very quick overview of historical approach
to ethnic diversity in China. So does that change from autonomous regions versus hand -majority provinces, the approaches that the CCP might have towards the transmission and use of minority languages? Yes, Sami. So in autonomous regions, so in China, there are several levels of autonomous regions. So first you have autonomous region like TAR, Tibet Autonomous Region, and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous
Region. So there are also autonomous counties that are dedicated to different ethnic groups. So in autonomous regions such as in the Tibet Autonomous Region or Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang or Guangxi or Ningxia. China has established these frameworks to allow these communities to
preserve their cultural identities. So they designated these regions for specific ethnic groups like, as I said, Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region or Mongolians in Inner Mongolia to ensure their traditions, languages, customs remain prominent. And it reflects the government's commitment to keep the distinct contributions of these groups within the broader context of China. So what this means is that, for instance, In Mongolia, when they attend the school, they usually go
to bilingual schools. And in these bilingual schools, there are courses that are... that include Mandarin and Mongolian, either as a medium of instruction or as a language subject. So this is the crux of the issue that you pointed out in the introduction that we can dive into later. So this kid theoretically can learn Mongolian fluently as a language subject or as a medium of instruction in a classroom, and also can celebrate their cultural practices and their traditions,
and also pick up Mandarin along the way. So that's That's what it's like in autonomous regions. But in the high majority provinces, usually there are very few, if any, bilingual schools. But in China, we can also differentiate the bilingual schools from the bilingual schools that include Mandarin and thick minority language, and also international schools, because these are also called, the latter are also called the bilingual schools. For example, there are international
schools that have... Mandarin along with English or Mandarin with Japanese and others, yes. So in this high majority provinces, there are ethnic minority people living there like Tibetans, Mongolians, Uyghurs, but they usually lack this access to education in their mother tongue. So they can only learn this through their household, through their parents and the peers. So that's a quick overview of this difference between autonomous region and the high majority provinces. Alex,
you had something to add? Yes, Sammy, I did. Look, I wanted to clarify two things, both the status of bilingual schooling in those autonomous regions and their autonomy itself. These are things I've looked at in some of my own research because I take both a linguistic and a legal approach to my research on Chinese minority languages. But the autonomous regions, the five of them that Lajia explained... They haven't had a full devolution of power from the central government.
There is a mechanism set up to do that, but it's never been completely executed. It's been blocked continually at the highest level for some 20, 30 years. And so while we call these autonomous regions because that's their official name, they don't actually necessarily have more legal power than other parts of China to serve their minority
populations. But more than that, demographically, Guangxi, again, to take an example, so this is in south -central China, one -third of the population of that autonomous region are officially part of the Zhuang minority. It's still an area where the Han majority are the majority of people living in that place, and increasingly it's also a place that is urbanised, and in urban places you have greater dispersal of the minority populations.
And so while Lajia is correct in saying that there's bilingual schooling available across China, it varies very drastically in the form it takes and the access people have. So in the Inner Mongolian example that he gives, yes, Inner Mongolia has long been touted as a model minority and in particular because they've had very successful bilingual education and we'll come to how that has changed. sadly, in my view, in the last few
years. But in the south of China, bilingual schooling in Guangxi has been, in fact, quite inaccessible. When I did my research in the 2010s, it was very difficult to get exact data, but crunching together different sources that I could find, I calculated that about 1 % of the school -aged population of the Zhuang minority had access to bilingual schooling. And even then, that's bilingual schooling that doesn't go all the way through primary and
secondary school. It's bilingual schooling that predominantly is bilingual for a couple of years to help people transition into full Mandarin schooling. And so actually, while there is a framework to support minority peoples and their self -governance of a sort, and there is a framework and an allowance in the national education law for bilingual education, that doesn't necessarily mean that it plays out in a really robust and full and accessible way for everyone. Let's talk
about that framework then a little bit. You mentioned, of course, that your research focuses on the legal side of things as well as the linguistic. So what then has been the constitutional status of both Mandarin and minority languages in China since 1949? In 1949, in a preliminary kind of constitution and then in the actual constitution as it has existed and been updated since, there has always been a provision that minority peoples have the freedom, not the right, the freedom,
to use and develop their own languages. And then there has, at the same time... also been an article of the Constitution saying, amongst other things to do with the national language, that the state promotes the nationwide use of Putonghua. And then since 2000, there's also been a really important piece of national legislation. So it's not the Constitution, but it's a nationwide, very important piece of legislation about what's called the
common spoken and written Chinese language. And in Article 4 of that, there is a right so not a freedom a right to learn and use the standard language so we have at the high level a really strong not just status for standardized mandarin as the national language but a right to access it a right to use it and an obligation on the state to promulgate it and that stands alongside uneasily this legally weaker and in practice not always fully fleshed out, freedom to use
and develop minority languages. Can you just kind of expand on that a little bit? What's the difference there between the right versus the
freedom? Yeah. How does that pan out? Look, in general terms, a right is something that can be... um advocated for or used you know to sort of prompt expectations of the state more than a freedom um the way it plays out particularly is the way say in the the decision i've recently written about and the article that underpins i think my invitation to this podcast a really high level important legal body called the um Legislative Affairs Commission, undertook a review
on the constitutionality of certain regulations that were regulations setting up bilingual schooling in parts of China. And this was in 2020, right? So this review was in 2020 and then it came out in a report in early 2021. And in that report, they determined that, in fact, these bilingual schooling regulations offended the constitutional... necessity for the state to promote the nationwide
use of Putonghua. So they're using that constitutional protection of the national language to invalidate bilingual schooling regulations, even though bilingual schooling regulations, these particular ones had been in existence already uncontroversially for some years prior, and even though the national education law specifically allows for bilingual schooling. And so that's an example of how that legal tension or that difference between, if you like, the right and the freedom plays out.
The Legislative Affairs Commission doesn't have to provide reasons, and it didn't, but the discussion of it by commentators, legal scholars inside and outside China links it to this sense that... there is more strength or there is more obligation in that legal protection of Putonghua and what it demands compared to the more flexible freedom to use and develop minority languages, which is localized to these particular territories and also always conditional upon whether conditions
exist, as the provisos in the law say. So those might be economic conditions, those might be demographic conditions that mean that... local governments can say, well, conditions no longer exist. So we don't really need to put this freedom to develop the language into any concrete form. So is it fair then to say that minority languages are being preserved, but that preservation is symbolic, but they are also simultaneously being marginalized on a functional level? Totally.
I think that's a very good way of saying it.
And what I would add to that is that while they're being preserved and not... without some expense i mean there is an enormous amount of resources going into documentation and archival of linguistic diversity in china at the moment both for mandarin dialects and official minority languages and that of course is done with a great deal of effort by the people involved that is primarily done to make a sort of record, a relic, so people don't forget what the linguistic diversity was,
what the languages were. That's quite different from setting up the conditions of life where people can and want to, are compelled to, or are encouraged to use multiple languages and to pass them on to their children. So in my work, I talk about this as a kind of nationalisation
of linguistic heritage. it becomes documented it becomes archived it becomes used in museums and it's not necessarily accessible for minority peoples going forward both in a functional sense maybe people no longer learn to speak or read that language so what are they going to do with that archive but also it's not necessarily accessible as a social resource for them to identify with it no longer is as closely connected to them and their own people But it is, by contrast,
then a resource that others like local governments can use for things like place branding. So it's really shifting, if you like, the power, the control, the embodiment of these linguistic resources. Alex, as language policy goes, then China also implemented the Yubao or linguistic treasures policy in 2015. What is that and how does that fit with the 2020 review recommendations? Yeah,
thanks for that question, Sammy. So in fact, what I was talking about just now, this mass effort to document and archive and preserve languages in China, that is the Yubao policy from 2015, language protection policy. It plays out differently for some languages, not for minority languages, at least as far as my research has found. So some languages, particularly strategically useful foreign languages, under this policy are also getting protection in the form of enormous organisation.
organisation of, say, higher education resources to make sure more people speak those languages for the benefit of international trade and so forth. So that's also part of UBAL, but that kind of economic value or utility is not seen as worth preserving for minority languages, even though some minority languages at least are spoken across borders, are already used in cross -border trade. around all the fringes of China and related
to the languages overseas nearby. And so their speakers have a head start in learning those other foreign languages too. So it's not that there is in reality no possible economic value for these languages, but the way the Yubao policy plays out is quite different from the minority languages and their sort of documentation and strategically useful foreign languages and their investment. There's also a slightly more recent policy called the National Language Capacity
Approach that sits alongside UBAL. And that really supports further the sense that any implementation of language rights or language policy has to be geared towards economic development and how those languages play into the capacity of the nation. A third policy sitting alongside this all, Sammy, so it's a slightly complicated policy landscape. A third policy sitting alongside this is what we translate into English as subjectivity
and diversity. It's a slightly opaque name, but it is a policy that is specifically about how diversity and linguistic diversity sits alongside the core. essential subject of the nation who is seen to be a Mandarin speaking subject. And that policy is explicitly hierarchical in how Putonghua, so national standard Mandarin, should fit alongside minority languages. So it's an
explicitly hierarchical. So in the past, the kinds of things that Lajia and I have been talking about have always had a sort of inherent hierarchy between the languages. But this is a new policy that makes that hierarchy and that intention to continue to maintain a hierarchy between the languages really explicit. Lajia, it seems that China's language policy then comes down to... The pluralist unity tenet. Can you just explain what that is and why is it so important to the
CCP? Yes. So China's ethnic policy in general is guided by a principle known as the pluralist unity, which was proposed by Chinese sociologist and anthropologist Fei Xiaotong in early 1980s. And it started as an academic term in his research about ethnic minority areas in China. But since it serves as this foundational concept in managing the country's linguistic and cultural diversity among ethnic groups. So the pluralist aspect of this principle refers to this acknowledgement
and all. appreciation of these diverse languages and cultures that are present in China among the ethnic minority populations, such as Tibetans in the western parts of China and Mongolians in the northern parts and Zhuang in the southern regions. So it emphasizes the importance of these distinct linguistic traditions as valuable components of China as a nation. It's also part of the Chinese
nation. And conversely, the unity component focuses on how to foster a cohesive national identity that binds these diverse groups together and ensure that all communities integrate into this broader family of Chinese nation. So as Alex has mentioned that this is not... let's say pluralist and unity it's not a equal let's say equally weighted rather there's an emphasis on the unity part of this pluralist unity tenet or this approach.
So for example, in schools in the Tibetan areas or in other parts of China, Mandarin is often prioritized over other, I think, minority languages. And this also raises this question of how these minority languages are used and supported by the government. So to begin with, China has largely officially recognized one language for each ethnic minority groups. But that's very different from how linguists and linguistic anthropologists
and language researchers see this. So, for example, in Tibet, usually we see that we think that Tibetans speak Tibetan, of course, that's their mother tongue, their native language. But some scholars, such as Gerald Raj from La Trobe University, has studied this linguistic diversity with Tibetan, and he and his co -authors have identified more languages, for example, like Mani Kaja, which he specializes in. And so for him, Tibetan language is also a dominant language within these minority
areas. For example, it marginalizes other minority languages within this minority community. And in schools, in the public schools in China, all the schools are public. ethnic minority areas, they only provide this bilingual education in Mandarin and the officially designated ethnic minority language. So for example, in Tibetan bilingual schools, it's usually Mandarin along with Tibetan, but there are no instruction in other, let's say, minority languages within Tibet.
And so that means that when a kid goes to school and learns these languages, usually it's the national language along with the the more let's say dominant or language that represents the ethnic group as a whole but not really not necessarily the language that speak at home and within tibet there are other languages and varieties varieties are languages that are sometimes called as dialects but strictly speaking they can be linguistically different um however i also have to emphasize
that the The status of these language use or how widely they are used in a social context in education varies a lot across China. So for example, in a drawn communities as Alex said that some of these languages needs really they are in in the state of endangerment and they need this documentation and protections to to really keep them alive. But in a Tibetan areas, I would say the The situation is much better,
although it could be better, of course. There are rooms for improvement all the time, but language is widely spoken. And it's just my observation that in recent years, with the emergence of these live streaming apps, such as in Tibetan areas, an app is particularly popular. That's called Kuaishou. It's very similar to TikTok, and also the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, is also popular in some parts of Tibet, but mostly it's
a kuaishou. And on kuaishou, as a frequent user of myself, there are many Tibetans who sell stuff, they perform. arts and music, and they also speak in Tibetan. And that has actually generated more enthusiasm among the Tibetans who are very addicted to these social media platforms. So I would say that in the past, you learned Tibetan at the household, in your communities, and then at the schools. But now we also have this virtual platform
which provides them with this space. But that's not That might not be the case in other areas, such as in a drawn and other, let's say, communities. But in Tibet, yes. So that's the case. And so go back to your question. So this pluralist unity
is seen as very crucial. And to outsiders, it sounds that China... does appreciate diversity and this like the pluralism among its ethnic groups in terms of language culture and traditions but there is a huge emphasis on this unity and some scholars might argue that there's actually a directional approach that is from a pluralism to the one body of unity and the purpose is really to uh to integrate all ethnic groups into the big family of uh chinese nation Yeah, that directionality,
Ladja, or that sort of assimilationist tendency really comes to the fore at different periods
of history and then fades away again. And I mean, most recently, say for the last 15 or so years, scholars in this space have particularly noticed that that focus on unity, particularly when it comes to linguistic issues, has been to see multilingualism or the use of... languages other than the national standard as a security threat almost, as a sort of a will to separatism, which is pretty extreme and a little, maybe we could say hypochondriac
if you want to take that metaphor. And that's not the view of all local governments all across China, but definitely there is that increasing tendency. I've called this in my own work, this mistaken conflation of homogeneity with unity. would also be fun at this point, or interesting, just to remind listeners that China's not totally alone in this. A lot of these aspects of language policy, these problems, these dynamics, you know, they resonate in other parts of the world too.
This aspiration to monolingualism is, you know, something we encounter in Australia and something people are talking about right now in the US. But also just this pluralistic unity, this concept, or in Chinese it's 多言一体. That's almost exactly the motto of the European Union as well. So this sense of an identity as a national or sort of a group identity as a diverse body, that's not
new in China or that's not unique to China. And then the ongoing dynamism or the ongoing tension that it creates to be both a unity and diverse, that also is not unique to China. It's free to read and it's open access at melbourneasiareview .edu .au. You'll find articles by some of our regular Air to Asia guests and by many others. Plus, you can catch recent episodes of Air to Asia at the Melbourne Asia Review website, which again you can find at melbourneasiareview .edu
.au. I'm Sami Shah and I'm joined by researchers of language diversity, Dr. Alexandra Gray of UTS and Dr. Lajia Tu of Asia Institute. Alex, we've been talking so much about Mandarin over the minority languages and how much it has been sold or justified to the public. How is that done? How is the public, particularly those who practice minority languages themselves, being
convinced of the value of Mandarin? The main ways I would say are through creating economic avenues where Mandarin is what gets you economic value. And part of that is the job market and part of that is education and higher education. And laws and policies are used in regards to both to prioritise credentials or instruction or use of Mandarin. And increasingly what we've seen is even the use of law to create exclusive domains for Mandarin. So before I was talking
about the Legislative Affairs Commission. and their decision that certain bilingual schooling regulations were unconstitutional. But then a couple of years later in 2023, they also declared that certain regulations that gave preferential local government positions to people who passed their civil service exam in a minority language, they were also unconstitutional. So that's an example of closing the spaces in which you can make a living for yourself through your minority
language skills. And so that In a nutshell, or in the broader context of a nation where economic development is really always the key value, that is something that is sold not just in language but across the board as sort of the mission of China and what the government does for its people. You know, in that context, it's the economic value of Mandarin that really... sells it to people or compels people or gives people really very little choice, whichever way you want to
put it. Yes, I like to add that I think the word choice is really the key here. So Mandarin in general is seen as the language for social mobility
and also for opportunities. So for example, in many cases, like in education and employment, there's a... although the situation varies across different regions and and areas but overall there's no such a forceful let's say imposition of a Mandarin to replace other minority languages, but rather it's more of a gradual approach in which minority languages are seen as less valuable
or made less valuable. So for example, let's say in my research area in a Minzu higher education, if a Tibetan student who attends a bilingual school and learns... most courses in their mother town, Tibetan, and also has a very high fluency in Mandarin. When they choose university degree programs, most of those programs are in Mandarin. So they have to really give up their minority language to apply to those degree programs that
are exclusively in Mandarin. But there are also other programs, degree programs at the higher education level that provide some forms of instruction in minority languages. And those are usually in Minzu universities. But if you know this higher education landscape in China, Minzu University, it's a very hierarchical, let's say, education system in that. So there are first -tier universities, second -tier, and a third -tier. And the Minsu universities, except the Central Minsu University
in China, is usually in the second tier. So that means a Tibetan student insists that they want to learn Tibetan in university classrooms, they have to go to Minsu University, and they have to pick from a very narrow, let's say, specialized
areas or majors. But if they want to go to a better university or a higher tier university and to learn more, let's say, choose from a wider subject, such as science and physics and all those areas, they have to really, there's no way but to give up their mother tongue at the higher educational level. But at this time, we're really speaking of this academic language use, but not necessarily the language that they use
in their daily conversations. These students have acquired a very high, uh let's say uh officials uh these students can speak their mother tongue fluently but there's no really use in the the current uh situation at the higher education level and then when they look for jobs uh although i think other Parts of China are different, but in Tibet, as I see, such as in Qinghai province, in the past, if you want to take an exam and apply for a job in a civil, let's say in the
civil services or in a government, you really have to. prove that you are fluent both in chinese and the tibetan so usually the most of the courses are either in tibetan or chinese but you have to prove that you are fluent you are bilingually fluent but in recent years there's no such demands on the the proof of fluency in a tibetan so you have to just prove that you are tibetan ethnically so but that doesn't mean that you have to speak
very good Tibetan. I'm not saying that Tibetans would decide or make decisions on whether they attend a bilingual school or Tibetan medium instruction just purely based on the employment, but that does have this washback effect. So for some Tibetans, when they see that, oh, if I go to Tibetan medium instruction and learn Tibetan well, but not so much focus on the Mandarin, then there's less opportunities at the university admission. Meaning that when they apply to university, there are
less opportunities. And then those jobs require a strong influence in Mandarin. Although, let's say, as much as they love Tibetan and their mother tongue, but it's really hard for them to make a personal choice just based on their passion and enthusiasm and their love for their mother tongue. So that's why I think I would say that it's really about choice, or rather, it's a limited choice that forces these students to naturally give up, or let's say, or pay less attention
to their mother tongue. However, I would also just... uh repeat to what the point that i mentioned before that is uh tibetan language can be also language of entertainment and for social interactions and that's exactly what's happening in tibet at least from my observation that is in the life let's say uh live streaming uh social media platforms like question tibetans such widely used for example one of the one of the bloggers that i follow he has more than a thousand simultaneous viewers
every night for his live stream and he talked about about literature history and culture and uh to my surprise there's less censorship on this because there are also reports that once you use minority languages, all those media apps, you get censored or your live stream gets banned or prohibited. But so far, I haven't seen such cases, at least on this particular app. Lajia, just to take your point there a little further, it's really important to think of them the next
generation. So we still have people in China growing up. With a mother tongue or at least a familiarity with a minority language in some contexts, those people are reducing in number, but they still exist. But as you've pointed out, these economic imperatives or incentives are not there for them to pursue that language much and in important domains in their adult lives. And those people often then choose not to pass
on their language to their children at all. And that's where it's an issue of having no choice at all. These children don't get to grow up. Learning these languages as their mother tongues because their parents have decided that that won't be a sensible investment of time for them and some maybe never regret that but certainly some do and certainly that is the way that intergenerational transmission breaks down on such a rapid scale
that you get a shift away from a language. Even a language that in the Chinese context can have a couple of million speakers and be a minority language in one or two generations can drastically fall down the cliff when you have that sense that people don't want to pass the language on to their children. Well, let's talk then about the Zhuang people. Alex, you've written about them. They reside in the Guangxi Autonomous Region
in southern China. Can you give us a quick account of this ethnic group and the languages they speak? And then how has China's policies affected their language communication? Sure. So traditionally, Zhuang language originated in south -central China. Over the course of the 20th century, the people who spoke Chuang came to be territorialized in the Guangxi Autonomous Region and then an autonomous prefecture and an autonomous county
in the neighboring provinces. No longer do those people necessarily always live in those areas because like everyone in China, they participate in this enormously high level of internal migration. Some of it permanent, some of it temporary. And then even within that area, there's enormous urbanization. So people who feel like are not moving away from the Zhuang speaking homelands are still having change arrive at their doorstep. And so in this context, there is increasingly
little place for Zhuang in everyday life. I've mentioned before in this podcast in various answers, there's very little access to literacy in Zhuang. There's very little access to schooling in Zhuang. If we look at the built environment, there are very few cues that prompt people to use Zhuang or to think that Zhuang is in place in that area. And that's something I write a lot about in my own work. And so there is increasingly a sense that Zhuang is displaced even from its homelands,
but also relegated to them. The way we're talking about it, the way the legal system talks about it, it's as if Zhuang can only be legitimately spoken within these areas of South Central China. So once people move out of them, they have no legitimate expectation of any linguistic protection
or support. And so that really localised, territorialised system is just totally at odds with the mobility, the urbanisation, you know the everyday life of contemporary china and how has the community responded to the reduced status of their language in official venues well i mean this is a community of some 17 million people so it's hard to give an answer that represents everyone but Even the Guangxi government itself, so the regional autonomous government itself in 2019 published a report
that surprised me in its frankness on the weakening status of Zhuang. So it's recognized as an issue. When I spoke to people, so as part of my doctoral research, I did interviews with Zhuang community leaders and separately with young people, just university age people with Zhuang language heritage. But there was a sense from some people of great
disappointment. And then there was a sense from other people that it was, if you like, something of a fault of the community themselves that they hadn't pushed for more, they hadn't expected more. And so you get this diversity of views as to, like, to what extent this is a problem and who is to blame or how to fix the problem. I also did interviews up in Inner Mongolia, so
in the far north of the country. And just to give a really, you know, sort of... I think, telling little example of how some people can feel about this. I sat down with a group of language officials who had retired, Mongolian language officials. So they were passionate enough about Mongolian language to have made it their work, their life, but they hadn't passed it on to their children. They had raised non -Mongolian speaking
children. And now in their retirement and their children's adulthood, those children were very disappointed and felt they had lost a part of themselves or never had access to it. And those retirees told me that they felt really regretful about the decision they had made. And so that is also a scenario that can happen where, you know, a community can respond to this by feeling, well, what can we do or whose fault is it? Or, you know, we just need to get ahead. It's a pretty
poor part of China. And yet at the same time, come to also feel like regretful or mournful that they've lost something. And so the question I take away from that is that. Is it not possible for policy to make people both richer and bilingual? Why does it have to always be a trade -off between a minority language and getting ahead in the world? Well, that really does then raise the question, and I suppose this goes to both of
you, and Alex, I'll come to you first. The process of migration and demographic shift often results in a shift by speakers away from the languages of their ethnic backgrounds or ancestral homelands. That's a natural thing that happens. It can happen without policy measures by government. Does that mean language shift should then be ignored by researchers, advocates, or policymakers? Certainly not, because it's not necessarily natural, just
because it happens a lot. I mean, societal change, migration, demographic change, change in the economy, all these things happen and all these things create pressures and changes in language, in the relationships between languages in many places around the world. But that doesn't mean that there's no room for policy to step in. And the fact that these things haven't been directly caused by policies that were overtly intending to wipe out languages doesn't mean that there's
no policy involvement at all. You know, not having a policy or just having, as in the case I have studied, having policies that are outdated and non -responsive to the current situation. That's a kind of policy response that creates. this sort of problem. So it doesn't have to be an explicitly oppressive language policy for us to pay attention to the situation and say there
might be a role for government here. I was thinking overnight of a somewhat provocative analogy, but let's think of the case of female infanticide that is common in some parts of the world still.
People make that very unfortunate choice. because they feel compelled by reasons to do with say economics or opportunity that might be something that has arisen without a government policy of course nowhere in the world is there a government policy saying you must kill your female children And yet nowhere do we sit back and say, well,
that means it's not a problem. Of course, we look at that and we, as a society in many places, as a government in many places, construct that as a problem and something that perhaps needs policy intervention to shift those imperatives or to shift the kind of choices that people are
making in those households. And it's not a perfect analogy, of course, but I think it helps us understand that what happens to people's languages in their households, in the way they use languages, in the way they transmit languages, in whether or not they maintain multilingual lives or shift to just one particular language, that can happen under so much societal and economic pressure that there is space for policy to step in and
change those conditions. So to you then also, Elijah, as social scientists, how can minority languages be given the best chance of remaining viable and vibrant? What do you think? As a social scientist, I think we have to really be very, let's say, descriptive and analytical rather than saying... that we should prescribe certain, let's say, solutions or changes or, let's say, reforms, because the world is changing fast.
And the case I see in Tibet is that it's not necessarily, like, let's say, there's a formula that we as a social scientist think is good, but not necessarily in the interest of the locals. So, for example, speaking of Tibetan bilingual education, currently, really, the problem is not whether Tibetans should be eliminated in the schools or not. But rather, should Tibetan be the medium of instruction or language subject?
And for Tibetans, there are a lot who think that language, Tibetan as a language subject is sufficient for their kids to pick up. And then they would rather their kids to learn Mandarin. Although I'm not saying that's desirable outcome for most, but there are some Tibetans who think this way. Because that way they can send their kids to really good universities and get higher. paying jobs. But in the meantime, they can get to pick
up their Tibetan. Because Tibetan, let's say, there's also this linguistic part to this argument. That is, we humans are very capable of picking up languages, especially at a younger age. It's very, very common in some societies to be bilingual or multilingual. And so that's why in Tibetan community, let's say, asking someone to really learn to speak two languages at the same time is not really too much to ask. Because kids pick
up language very naturally. And those kids attend schools because they attend bilingual schools. Mostly their peers are Tibetan. And then they learn really Tibetan very fast. And there are more, as I said, programs on those social media apps. And also their parents at least speak Tibetan. So yes. So overall, I think for me, I tend to really describe better than just analyze why this happens. And so that's why when I see this
language movement, I'm very critical. For example, on one hand, I see this language ideology of authenticity as a very powerful tool to organize and to really raise awareness about the importance of speaking Tibetan. But on the other hand, I see this exclusionary, even this social discipline among Tibetans to please each other and to see, oh, are you Tibetan or not? Why you are not speaking Tibetan? Because that does have a bad let's say, effect on those who do not speak Tibetan, but
probably Tibet. Our guests have been Dr. Lajia Tu of Asia Institute and Dr. Alexandra Gray from University of Technology, Sydney. Thank you both. Thank you. Thanks so much. Ear to Asia is brought to you by Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne, Australia. and review it. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. And please help us by spreading the word on your socials. This episode was recorded on the 19th of March, 2025. Producers were Kelvin Param and
Eric Van Bemmel of Profactual .com. Ear to Asia is licensed under Creative Commons, copyright 2025, the University of Melbourne. I'm Sami Shah. Thanks for your company.