Comments on: Language Rights in a Changing China https://languageonthemove.com/language-rights-in-a-changing-china-2/ Multilingualism, Intercultural communication, Consumerism, Globalization, Gender & Identity, Migration & Social Justice, Language & Tourism Thu, 27 Feb 2025 17:05:23 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 By: Making Zhuang language visible – Language on the Move https://languageonthemove.com/language-rights-in-a-changing-china-2/#comment-111952 Thu, 27 Feb 2025 17:05:23 +0000 https://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=25863#comment-111952 […] ‘Language rights in a changing China: Brynn Quick in Conversation with Alexandra Grey’ Language on the Move Podcast, New Books Network (1 January 2025) […]

]]> By: Paul Desailly https://languageonthemove.com/language-rights-in-a-changing-china-2/#comment-111027 Wed, 01 Jan 2025 22:22:53 +0000 https://www.languageonthemove.com/?p=25863#comment-111027 What’s the difference between a comedy and a tragedy? Timing! At least half a century, mes amis.
A quarter of a century ago peripatetic Paul gave minority languages a go way west of Xian and north of Huhehot’s hills until I ran out of money and raced back to campus in Tianjin to teach English, Esperanto and French just as US war planes (NATO) ‘accidentally on purpose’ bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. As a westerner (or a Japanese!) during that week of living dangerously in China you wouldn’t be cuddling up to any Pandas until Jiang Zemin finally accepted Bill Clinton’s implausible telephoned apology about a maverick or two amok in the CIA losing (or mixing up!) their Serbian twin-alphabet maps of the city! De ja vu re Presidential porky pies, i.e. lies, what? It wasn’t my job as an English teacher that prevented a thousand angry students right in front of my apartment’s ground floor window, who were chanting for hours “Death to America. Death to Australia etc”, from beating the hell out of me, as occurred across the PRC at that time: In Yannan, for a while, after the Long March, Mao was a revolutionary Esperantist. To this day my brief case carries the ideogram: Shì Jiè Yŭ,

It was interesting to notice as I wandered around the back blocks of new Cathay that the central and regional governments in working together in China have a priori adopted the principle of extending language rights and other privileges to minorities. I suppose it’s not all theoretical: The Mongolian and Hui minorities etc, need pass a slightly less difficult examination to enter university. Should a Han Chinese, 85% or more of the population, compete for a government job with an equally qualified member of a minority, then success automatically belongs to the latter according to law. Yeah. Sure! Long before aging population issues arose minorities in China were entitled to have two children while Han Chinese were limited to one kid in most cases.

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