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Toughness is a crude measure to judge an unelected regime. To maintain power, many rulers crush dissent with an iron fist. A more subtle measure is thoroughness. Dedicated autocrats use cold, patient repression to break even the meekest and most unthreatening. Its objective is to end any belief – no matter how harmless – that could divide the loyalty of its subjects.
This grim trend can be seen in the way the Communist Party treats ethnic minorities China, a diverse group that represents around 9% of the total population. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, these groups have lost many of the limited privileges granted to them and have faced aggressive campaigns to assimilate into mainstream Chinese culture.
Apologists present Xi-era policies as tough but rational responses to threats. The government’s actions in Xinjiang are indicative. To defend China’s cruelties in the region – including mosque demolitions, re-education campaigns, imprisonment of poets and surveillance of millions of Uyghurs and other minorities – officials exaggerate the dangers of Islamic extremism.
National security is also used to justify an increasingly intense campaign of assimilation of the ethnic mongols who live in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. The new laws that force the use of the Chinese language instead of Mongolian in schools and public institutions are aimed at “safeguarding national sovereignty.” When protests over similar changes broke out in 2020, the local government responded by tightening rules. Citing Xi’s calls for “ethnic solidarity,” authorities have banned some history books and closed memorials to Genghis Khanfounder of a dynasty that conquered areas of Eurasia and ruled China between 1271 and 1368. Proponents of these hardline policies point out that Inner Mongolia is a border region, sharing linguistic, religious and historical ties with a neighboring country, Mongolia, independent and democratic.
However, in the Xi era, measures have been taken to stifle traditions that pose no conceivable challenge to national security. The Economist recently traveled to one of the strangest places on the Chinese ethnic map, the Mongolian township of Xingmeng, in Yunnan province. This rural municipality, of about 6,000 inhabitants, is located in the lush tobacco hills of southern China, near the border with Vietnam, about 2,500 km from the grasslands and deserts of Inner Mongolia. Locals claim descent from the Mongol armies, initially led by Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, who conquered the region in the 13th and 14th centuries. Some soldiers are said to have stayed behind after the Ming dynasty emperors defeated their Mongol overlords and drove them back north. After a first wave of intermarriage with local women, these “Yunnan Mongols” established themselves as fishermen and carpenters in five villages.
Today, locals praise their ancestors for stubbornly refusing to marry outsiders, thus preserving – they insist – traces of Mongolian language and dress for more than seven centuries. Declaring himself a descendant of Genghis Khan, a village elder admits that he married a woman from China’s Han majority, “so my daughter is only half-Mongol.” However, for the old man, a long-time party member, his daughter is totally Mongolian because she “has inherited the spirit of the Mongolian nation.”
The story of Xingmeng was rediscovered in the 1950s, an era of Sino-Soviet friendship, by party officials and ethnographers, as well as envoys from the Soviet-controlled Mongolian People’s Republic. However, when Mao Zedong plunged China into paranoid isolation, ethnic minorities with ancient traditions and ties to foreign lands became targets of attack. After China broke with the Soviet Union and was plunged into the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, terrible violence reached Inner Mongolia. Tens of thousands of ethnic Mongols were killed, accused of treason and feudal thinking. Far to the south in Yunnan, minorities were targeted in a “Political Defense of the Borders” campaign targeting border counties. Xingmeng avoided the worst of the violence, older locals say, although a temple and ancestral clan halls were damaged. Some temples survived because they had been converted into schools.
After Mao’s death in 1976, Xingmeng experienced something of a golden age, as history was harnessed for economic development. Teachers from Inner Mongolia came to teach language classes at the primary school. Cement replicas of nomadic tents, horse sculptures and other Mongolian touches appeared. In 1985, a damaged temple, the “Temple of the Three Saints,” was restored, housing statues of Genghis and Kublai, as well as Mongke (Kublai’s brother). A Mongolian folk festival, called naadam. It began with ceremonies honoring royal ancestors.
Not this year. In Xingmeng, on December 15, Genghis Khan was not allowed to be worshiped in the last edition of the Naadam (although early in the morning some locals discreetly sneaked into the temple to light incense before the impassive statues of the Khans). At the opening ceremony, a parade featured cloth and bamboo models of fishing boats, shrimp, clams, dragons and a large dancing white elephant. Missing was a cloth and bamboo model of Genghis Khan on horseback, which appeared in the last Naadam in 2017.
A few years ago, Xingmeng schools stopped offering Mongolian classes. The state has also reduced the number of bonus points awarded to ethnic Mongolian students taking university entrance exams. At the Naadam opening ceremony, local leaders praised Xi Jinping Thought and the ethnic unity of the Chinese nation. In the cobblestone streets of Xingmeng, the columnist heard nostalgia and fatalism for the new Naadam, rather than revolt. Asked about the changes, an elder said: “All nationalities must unite, and all Chinese must listen to what the party says. Isn’t that how political issues work in China?”
It takes a ruthless regime to hear such words and still see the need for tighter controls. China has such a regime.
© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.
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