China’s protection of minority and ethnic cultures is embedded in their culture as opposed to Western countries.

Comparison of China’s and major Western countries’ paradigms of minority language and cultural rights protection

Western countries were the first to face the issue of the protection of minority groups’ language and cultural rights. In the course of building nation-states over centuries, how to treat the language and cultural rights of minority groups has always been an important political issue faced by the nation-states of Western Europe. Historically, Western countries have two characteristics in the protection of the language and cultural rights of minority groups.Footnote 40 One is the regulation or legislation of rights protection, often issued before international bilateral or multilateral treatiesFootnote 41;the other is that the choice of legislation on rights protection is obviously passive, that is, the main reason for choosing to protect the language and cultural rights of minority groups is external pressure, or the internal need for maintaining national security.

After World War II, as influenced by the international liberalism of “equality of all citizens,” many Western countries adopted the policy of “citizenization” for their domestic minority groups. In the United States and Canada, the languages and cultures of native minorities had been assimilated or eliminated because they were regarded as an obstacle to the groups’ “modernization and citizenization.” In the countries of Western Europe, the “citizenization” movement was in full swing, and the languages and cultures of indigenous minority groups in some countries had been systematically suppressed.Footnote 42

After the US civil rights movement in the 1960s, and especially after the rise of multiculturalism in Canada in the 1970s, Western countries began to adjust their existing citizen homogenization policies on the language and cultural rights of minority groups. By the 1980s, under the two-way interaction of Western political philosophy and international human rights law (Kymlicka 2019), the language and cultural rights of minority groups attracted extensive attention in Western mainstream society. Since then, the United States, Canada, and other countries have begun to fully protect their linguistic and cultural rights through native autonomy. For immigrant minority groups, the policies of the United States and Canada are different: although the former also provides financial assistance for various immigration organizations, the purpose is mainly to support integration, rather than to preserve immigrants’ cultural traditions,Footnote 43 while the latter aims to allow various ethnic groups to preserve and develop their own culture and value within Canada (Lipset 1990).

During this period, even France, which was a model of civicism, began to clearly recognize the cultural differences of immigrant minority groups; the languages of some indigenous minority groups, such as the Bretons, were given official language status by regional committees. When the French constitution was revised in 2008, France also added “regional language is the heritage of France” in Paragraph 1 of Article 75 thereof. After the Cold War, Western countries largely continued their historical practices in protecting minority groups’ language and cultural rights.Footnote 44

In general, after World War II, Western countries generally adopted a policy on differentiated treatment of minority groups’ language and cultural rights. For native minorities, the paradigm of protection of collective rights was basically adopted; for indigenous minority groups, the paradigm of protection of collective rights plus individual rights was adopted; for new immigrant minority groups, the paradigm of individual rights was mainly adopted. This different choice of political strategy was related to the different historical experiences and actual conditions of various minority groups, and further closely related to the consideration of political interests by the ruling class.Footnote 45 Since the twenty-first century, with the impact of the refugee crisis, some Western countries have imposed restrictions on the languages, and especially on the cultural rights, of immigrants.Footnote 46

In stark contrast to Western countries, the Chinese government’s protection of ethnic minorities’ language and cultural rights is not based on treaty supervision between countries or other external pressures, nor is it based on utilitarian considerations to maintain national security. The Chinese government’s process of protecting the language and cultural rights of minority groups was almost synchronized with the establishment of the PRC. Since the 1950s, the Chinese government has conducted a comprehensive investigation into and research on the languages of ethnic minorities, and established specialized ethnic-language working institutions and research institutions to train professionals in ethnic languages. In strong contrast with the attempts of some Western countries to eliminate ethnic minorities’ languages, the Chinese government has helped the Zhuang, Buyi, Miao, Naxi, Lisu, Hani, Wa, Dong, Jingpo, Tu and other dozens of ethnic minorities create or improve their written languages (Shaoqing 2016).

In terms of language rights protection, China has almost forty laws and regulations to ensure the rights prescribed by the constitution that ethnic minorities have to employ and develop their own spoken and written languages. Whether in national politics and social life, or in the fields of administration, justice, education, news, publishing, broadcasting, or film and television, minority groups’ language rights are clearly and effectively guaranteed. With regard to cultural rights, the traditions and customs of various minority groups are respected and protected by the state (SCIO 2013).

It is worth noting an outstanding phenomenon related to the Chinese government’s protection of ethnic minorities’ cultures, and a proportion of intangible cultural heritage of ethnic minorities in the entire country. Among the list of 1372 items of national-level intangible cultural heritage compiled by the Chinese government, 492 items belong to ethnic minorities, accounting for 36%; among the 3068 representative inheritors of national-level intangible cultural heritage items, 862 are minority inheritors, accounting for about 28%. In addition, twenty-one national-level cultural and ecological protection experimental zones have been established nationwide, with eleven located in ethnic areas (Shaoqing 2018a, 2018b).

In China, the language and cultural rights of ethnic minorities are protected by the constitution.Footnote 47In addition, the state also includes “guaranteeing the cultural rights of ethnic minorities” and “lawfully guaranteeing the rights of ethnic minorities to learn to employ and develop their own spoken and written languages” in the human rights promotion target through the “human action plan.” All this forms a strong contrast to Western countries.

With regard to the protection of language and cultural rights, the main difference between Western countries and China is that the former mainly adopts a passive response strategy, and as driven by external pressure or national security motives, often adopts several protective measures; while the latter takes the initiative to adopt systematic protective measures under no external pressure. Regarding the equality of protection, the former divides the protected minority groups into different classes, and adopts different protection standards for different types of minority groups; while the latter takes “equality” protective measures for fifty-five ethnic minorities according to the idea that “all ethnicities are treated equally irrespective of their [population] sizes.” In terms of the stability and effect of protection, many Western countries have declared that the “multiculturalism” policy protecting the language and cultural rights of immigrant minorities is a “failure,” that their measures protecting the languages and cultures of native minorities have poor effect, and that the languages and cultures of native minorities are generally endangered; China not only consistently recognizes and respects the language and cultural rights of ethnic minorities, but also actively adopts various political, legal and policy means to protect these language and cultural rights. Over seventy years since the founding of the PRC, the language rights of all ethnicities have been fully exercised, and their cultural rights have been respected and guaranteed. The cultural prosperity of all ethnicities in China has reached a new level.