Minority Language Policy in China

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been struggling since 1949 to make and practice a minority (language) policy that is supposed to serve its ideological goals, safeguard its territorial integrity and national unity, and accommodate the minority communities’ linguistic and cultural diversities and that has often swung between integrationism and accommodationism in order to achieve whichever of those three objectives is the top priority on its agenda at a given time in the last five decades of the history of the PRC (see Dreyer, 1997; Zhou, 2001a). In is chapter, I examine the relationship between the theory/law of the PRC’s minority language policy and the PRC’s practice of it at both its best and its worst. I first review the concepts of language rights, language equality, and language laws from broad international perspectives to build a framework for the discussion of the Chinese case in perspectives. Second, I analyze the theoretical and legal foundation of the PRC minority language policy in comparison to international practices. Third, I scrutinize the PRC’s practice of its policy against its own laws in three areas: legal status for minority languages, opportunities for minority language use/development, and government service in minority languages in minority communities. In conclusion, I briefly discuss reasons behind the theory-practice gap and the constitutionality of the PRC’s current minority language policy and practice.