Language as Resistance Against Chinese Colonization in Southern Mongolia

Language is often a battleground in colonial settings. Southern Mongolia (often referred as “Inner Mongolia”) does not escape from this reality. Deniz Bodi describes the aftermath of massive protests that followed the People’s Republic of China’s decision to impose Mandarin in Mongolian schools as part of a Han-centric assimilationist agenda.

In 2020, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced a new language policy targeting schools in Chinese-occupied Southern Mongolia. In essence, the policy was meant to change the language of instruction of “core subjects” from Mongolian to Mandarin. This policy was met with mass protests of approximately 300,000 people taking to the streets in opposition to the ongoing assimilationist agenda of the Chinese government. Demonstrations happened across the region, including the province’s capital city Hohhot.

Southern Mongolia is an autonomous region between China and Mongolia also known as “Inner Mongolia”—in this sinocentric referential, “Outer Mongolia” refers to the state of Mongolia. While Chinese occupation of Southern Mongolia involves a lengthy and complex history, the PRC has embarked on a multipronged effort to erase the nationhood and cultural distinctness of Southern Mongolians. Alongside other policies that deliberately dispossessed Mongols from their ancestral lands and pushed them into sedentary agricultural lifestyles (as opposed to traditional nomadic ways), this language policy poses a significant threat to the cultural survival of Mongols in the region.

The cultural policies of China today must be set in the context of historical murderous policies where thousands of Mongols were killed, injured, and prosecuted. While ethnic conflict in the region dates back hundreds of years, mass murders of Mongols during China’s Cultural Revolution still casts shadows today. In the 1960s, a massive political purge took place when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lynched and massacred thousands in Southern Mongolia. The purge targeted those associated with the “Inner Mongolia People’s Party” as Mongol autonomy and self-determination were deemed to be threats to the CCP’s nation-building project. The death toll in Southern Mongolia during this period is estimated to be anywhere between 20,000 to 100,000. 

When the 2020 language policy was announced, it was done verbally rather than through a formal government document. Government officials visited an eastern region of Southern Mongolia and verbally communicated their plans for the policy’s implementation. By the end of August 2020, ahead of the new school semester, Southern Mongolians formed large protests as parents refused to send their children to school where classes would be taught in Mandarin. As a result, thousands were arrested and public demonstrations were cracked down. Initially, the PRC government promised that only the “core subjects” would be taught in Mandarin. However, leaked video footage at a parent-teacher meeting in Hohhot revealed that all Mongolian schools in the region will have to use the national common language as the language of instruction for all subjects as of September 1, 2023. Local laws that once protected minority languages have been held by the Chinese National Congress to be “unconstitutional.” As such, minority languages are increasingly targeted and outlawed in favor of Mandarin. 

“It’s important to note that this is just the linguistic front of a broader cultural erasure project,” said Enghebatu Togochog, director of the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center based in New York.  The Chinese government has embarked on a long-term erasure of Mongolian identity within its borders. Its goal has been to depoliticize its “ethnic problem” by calling it just that. In English, the Chinese government initially referred to Southern Mongolia as a “nationality minority autonomous region.” Later, it was strategically re-labelled as an “ethnic minority autonomous region.” This was a move to depoliticize the existence of Southern Mongolia’s nationhood, and represent to the Western world that it was merely a community bound by ethnicity rather than nationhood. 

As part of a larger colonial imperative that attempts to erase other ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uyghurs, the PRC government is inspired by the policies and histories of colonial erasure in the United States. When I spoke with Enghebatu, he noted that the U.S. so-called “melting pot” policy is the unofficial blueprint for the PRC’s assimilationist cultural policies. Its ultimate goal is to establish a unified Chinese national common identity.

Assimilationist policies have seeped into all aspects of Southern Mongolians’ lives. Names have been transliterated (and therefore modified) into Chinese characters, families have been relocated, and people are afraid to speak their mother tongue publicly. While the history of Chinese-Mongol relations is complex and far-reaching, the dichotomy of barbaric versus civilized is a common trope still found in popular media and political discourse in the PRC. The “civilizing mandate” of the Chinese government is for instance advanced through advertisements that read “Learn Chinese and become a civilized person.” 

The civilizing mandate often portrays traditional Mongol life (i.e. nomadic pastoralism) as backwards and in need of development. The dehumanizing logic of civilizing discourse has impacted traditional peoples around the world, who are frequently associated with “savagery” for living closely with the land and its earth-beings. Nomadic pastoralism is a traditional way of life grounded in thousands of years of culture, history, and knowledge of ancestral lands. The vast grasslands form the landscape on which Mongolian nomads have built a culture of stewardship. Mongol nomadism involves an intimate understanding of the landscape, and is also embedded with spiritual beliefs that recognize the agency of the land and the importance of living sustainably. 

These pasturelands were viewed to be “empty” or “wasted” as they were not being used for economic benefit aligned with the PRC’s idea of development. In the early 2000s, the PRC adopted a set of policies called “ecological migration” and “total ban on livestock grazing.” Mongolian herders were moved from their ancestral lands to Chinese urban and agricultural areas. Those who tried to graze animals were criminalized and many turned to low-wage factory work to sustain themselves and their families. Traditional Mongol practices were framed as harming the environment as animal grazing was associated with land degradation and desertification. Large mining projects in the region continue today despite ongoing environmental concerns. The twisting of ecological narratives to frame Indigenous practices as harmful is a common trope that enables the empire’s extractivism and destruction.

While the PRC colonization today intersects with capitalism, its original form under communism is worth noting for the ways class was used as a tool to justify it. As noted by Professor Uradyn Bulag, “Mongol nationalism was curtailed by the class-nation concept, in which the Chinese peasants were rendered class victims […] and thus could not be treated as colonialists” (2004). As Han peasants migrated from inland China to Southern Mongolia, many migrants attacked Mongol herders as they saw it as “struggle against alleged Mongol class enemies.” The intersections of colonization and class struggle in this context illustrates how “class” can be used as a government tool to justify colonial policies. 

Under capitalism, the issue of language is pertinent given the importance of education in accessing employment. Parents face a difficult reality this coming school year as many low income Mongol families may have to send their children to schools operating in Mandarin to access economic opportunities. It has been almost three years since the PRC announced the “Second Generation Bilingual Education” policy. In part, I wanted to write this  as a follow-up to the 2020 protests which were violently repressed resulting in the fading of the public forms of contestation. In the face of hyper-surveillance and criminalization of Mongols in the region, I believe there is an important role for the diaspora both in terms of building solidarity and maintaining cultural knowledge. The plight of Southern Mongolians has not received widespread reporting in Western media, and perhaps a part of that has to do with the smaller and scattered nature of the Mongol diaspora. In terms of building solidarity, there is a lot to learn from Tibetan and Uyghur activism in recent years and the work being done by those in exile. Building solidarity between peoples colonized by the PRC will be an important step in challenging Han-centric assimilation.  

As part of the Mongol diaspora, the issue of language has always been an intimate one for me. Having forgotten much of the language upon immigration, I re-learned Mongolian in my teenage years to better communicate with my grandmother. Through this process, I learned that language is not only an essential way to connect with kin, but also is the carrier of cultural knowledge.  The survival of language in Southern Mongolia, similar to other colonial contexts, has to do with the survival of cultural inheritance. Language is an infrastructure of dissent. While I speak a mix of broken Mongolian and English with my grandmother, it is a reminder of how language and cultural connection can survive migration and dispossession even if it mutates in the process. 

As the school year approaches, it’s unclear what parents will do in Southern Mongolia. Especially when faced with the reality that children must attend schools to obtain an education and access upward social mobility, the coercive nature of this language policy becomes even clearer. While large-scale public protest is virtually impossible after the 2020 crackdown, it is premature to say that resistance is non-existent. As the PRC government launches a multipronged campaign to erase Mongolness within its borders, an unintended effect has been the growing but silent movement of Mongols interested in learning their traditions and language. “People are still trying to keep their language and tradition alive,” says Enghebatu. Quietly and behind closed doors, resistance can be found in the everyday act of speaking one’s language. ■