HONG KONG—Students, teach­ers, par­ents, and oth­ers are stag­ing protests in Inner Mon­go­lia, a semi-autonomous region in north­ern Chi­na, by sur­round­ing police sta­tions and gath­er­ing out­side schools. Thou­sands are con­gre­gat­ing in rare dis­plays of open defi­ance of gov­ern­men­tal orders.These demon­stra­tions were sparked by the Chi­nese government’s direc­tive issued in the sum­mer to broad­en the foot­print of Man­darin Chi­nese in state-com­piled text­books and class­room instruc­tion with­in the region, dis­plac­ing the Mon­go­lian lan­guage in aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ments and dai­ly usage.From Sept. 1 onward, the author­i­ties will shift pub­lic ele­men­tary and mid­dle schools’ lan­guage of instruc­tion to Chi­nese, specif­i­cal­ly for three courses—language and lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, as well as moral­i­ty and law (which includes polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion). The change will be rolled out in phas­es, even­tu­al­ly keep­ing just math­e­mat­ics and art class­es in the region’s dom­i­nant native tongue.On anony­mous par­ent said teach­ing every­thing in a sec­ond lan­guage would make it more dif­fi­cult for chil­dren to learn in school. “As Mongolians—myself and oth­er parents—we are not will­ing to our moth­er tongue be grad­u­al­ly replaced by anoth­er lan­guage. Sure, we study Chi­nese, from a young age so that’s not an issue,” they told the Voice of Amer­i­ca Man­darin service.Ethnic Mon­go­lians who reside in Chi­na see this as a step to erase an impor­tant part of their cul­ture. Some see it as forced homo­gene­ity direct­ed at their young­sters, much like what is hap­pen­ing in Tibet and Xin­jiang, where the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has strict rules that lim­it the pub­lic dis­plays and prac­tices relat­ed to each region’s cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. It’s all part of the Chi­nese cen­tral government’s objec­tive to impose cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic homo­gene­ity on one of the world’s largest and most diverse nations. As new poli­cies are rolled out to bring this clos­er to fruition, the many cul­tures of more than one hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple are slow­ly expunged.The snap­back came right before the start of the aca­d­e­m­ic year. High school pupils, many wear­ing their school uniforms—blue and white track jack­ets with loose-fit­ting blue pants, worn by pub­lic school stu­dents all over the country—formed crowds and chant­ed, “Mon­go­lian is our moth­er tongue! We are Mon­go­lian until death!”The gath­er­ings were peace­ful. As of Tues­day, police offi­cers were on site most­ly to observe the protests.> ӨвөрмонголЭхХэлээХамгаалахТэмцэл > Жирэм, Хүрээ хошуунд, эцэг эхчүүд хүүхдүүдээ сургуулиас нь гаргаж авч байгаа байдал. pic.twitter.com/KM0wPVKWXQ> > — Enkhochir Khu­vis­galt (@Khereid_Mongol) August 30, 2020Since the July announce­ment that schools in Inner Mon­go­lia would phase out Mon­go­lian lan­guage instruc­tion, 4,200 peti­tions have cir­cu­lat­ed by eth­nic Mon­gols in Chi­na against the pol­i­cy, accord­ing to Made in Chi­na Jour­nal, a quar­ter­ly pub­li­ca­tion that cov­ers the socioe­co­nom­ic changes in the country.In some cas­es, names are added to the peti­tions in cir­cu­lar for­ma­tion so as not to cre­ate a hier­ar­chy on paper, pre­vent­ing the author­i­ties from sin­gling out one per­son as an orga­niz­er with­in the oppo­si­tion. This method has his­tor­i­cal prece­dence: region­al resis­tance groups and secret soci­eties in the 19th and 20th cen­turies applied this arrange­ment so that ring­lead­ers could not be iden­ti­fied and cap­tured.> While Chi­na forces the Chi­nese lan­guage onto stu­dents in Inner Mon­go­lia, Mon­go­lian elders write back in protest. pic.twitter.com/u7032oyBSF> > — Ungerni Khooloi (@Nicholastrad) August 31, 2020The region­al edu­ca­tion bureau of Inner Mon­go­lia issued a state­ment on Mon­day to soothe the con­cerns of par­ents and stu­dents, say­ing, “The cur­rent bilin­gual edu­ca­tion sys­tem has not changed.” But peo­ple in the region point out that tele­vi­sion, radio, and oth­er forms of media are already broad­cast in Man­darin Chi­nese, and that their own lan­guage is large­ly absent in mas­sive­ly dis­trib­uted media. While fam­i­lies gen­er­al­ly speak Mon­go­lian at home, par­ing it back from schools will dimin­ish the language’s usage by eth­nic Mon­gols who live in China.Language schools in five oth­er provinces are also reduc­ing their usage of local lan­guages and dialects, replac­ing the cur­ricu­lums with Man­darin Chi­nese instruc­tion accord­ing to the government’s new rules.Online posts about reac­tions to this pol­i­cy, espe­cial­ly protests and peti­tions, are being cen­sored. Videos of the demon­stra­tions in Inner Mon­go­lia have been scrubbed from Wei­bo, a domes­tic plat­form that func­tions like Twit­ter, as well as oth­er social media sites. In late August, the only Mon­go­lian lan­guage social net­work, Bainu, was tak­en offline by the Chi­nese government.The People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na prop­a­gates a myth of social har­mo­ny where the Han Chi­nese major­i­ty (more than 91 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion) lives along­side 55 minori­ties. Dur­ing the annu­al gath­er­ing of the country’s rub­ber-stamp par­lia­ment, known as the Nation­al People’s Con­gress, del­e­gates from non-Han regions wear their tra­di­tion­al attire to stand out from the sea of black suits worn by most bureau­crats. Often­times, the lives and cul­tures of minori­ties are reduced to folk­songs and dances, paving over the ten­sions caused by the Chi­nese author­i­ties’ demands for uniformity.This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true in Xin­jiang, a Mus­lim-major­i­ty region where up to a mil­lion Uyghurs are in “thought trans­for­ma­tion” camps at any giv­en moment. Peo­ple who are trapped in these high-secu­ri­ty loca­tions spend hours each day rehears­ing musi­cal and dance pro­grams, which are then per­formed for vis­it­ing jour­nal­ists as “proof” that indi­vid­u­als are “trans­formed” or “reformed,” and can be inte­grat­ed into the Chi­nese fab­ric of society.In these camps, lan­guage instruc­tion plays an impor­tant role too. A leaked 2017 memo that was penned by an offi­cial who was at the time in charge of the region’s secu­ri­ty includ­ed this direc­tive: “Make reme­di­al Man­darin stud­ies the top priority.”This type of lin­guis­tic engi­neer­ing is not new in Chi­na. The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty gov­erns by uni­for­mi­ty, main­ly address­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic mat­ters, not so much social and cul­tur­al fac­tors. Part of the idea is that peo­ple can be unified—or more eas­i­ly kept under control—if they speak, hear, and read a sin­gle, flat­tened lan­guage, one that removes cul­tur­al intri­ca­cies and dis­tinc­tions, break­ing con­nec­tions with­in region­al pock­ets to chan­nel direct links to the party’s own organs.The pol­i­cy in Inner Mon­go­lia is, on paper, meant to fos­ter stronger eco­nom­ic inclu­sion in an impov­er­ished area with­in Chi­na. But the fact is that locals see its imple­men­ta­tion as a slight—and a con­tin­u­a­tion of Han Chi­nese incur­sion into their cul­ture. Many feel that their tra­di­tions are being dis­man­tled in the name of pover­ty reduc­tion, and few eth­nic Mon­go­lians have ben­e­fit­ed from min­ing booms in an area that is near­ly twice the size of Texas. Instead, state-run enter­pris­es have reaped most of the profits.Now, the peo­ple of Inner Mon­go­lia won­der if even their own lan­guage may be fad­ing away too.Read more at The Dai­ly Beast.Get our top sto­ries in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Mem­ber­ship: Beast Inside goes deep­er on the sto­ries that mat­ter to you. Learn more.