Minority Education in China: Balancing Unity and Diversity in an Era of Critical Pluralism

7. Trilingual Education and School Practice in Xinjiang

Introduction China comprises a highly multilingual and ethnically diverse population. All of China’s fifty-five legally recognized minority nationalities possess their own spoken languages, with the exception of the Hui, She, and Manchus who used to speak their own languages but now mostly speak some form of Chinese. In fact, many of China’s minority groups tend to be multilingual, speaking at least 128 different languages (Sun, Hu, and Huang 2007). In some of these minority groups, people may be bilingual, trilingual, or they may speak a variety of different languages, some of which are totally different from one another (Tsung 1999 and 2009). The Constitution of the PRC grants minority nationalities the freedom to use and preserve their native languages. An essential principle in China’s policies towards minorities states that people of all ethnic groups are equally guaranteed the use of their own languages in education as stated in Article 4 of the Constitution (1952, 1982). Administrative autonomy has been a part of the government structure since PRC’s establishment, and a law that guarantees regional autonomy for concentrated minority communities was adopted in the 1950s and confirmed on May 31, 1984. As a result, bilingual education (that is, instruction in both a minority language and Mandarin Chinese, or Putongua 普通話 as it is known in China) has been the norm for a number of minority groups with written languages since the 1950s. Minority languages have been used in teaching , from national kindergarten to higher education, and support the cultural life of the ethnic minorities. Furthermore, there is a diversity of bilingual educational 7 Trilingual Education and School Practice in Xinjiang Linda Tsung 162 Linda Tsung models in China, which reflects not only the diversity that exists among China’s ethnic minorities but also the Party-state’s ambivalent attitude toward bilingual education. This ambivalence highlights a belief that education in a minority language is a transitional measure aimed at facilitating the mastery of Putonghua (Stites 1999; Tsung 1999). In general, ethnic minorities in China face a choice between either preserving their own languages and cultures or obtaining upward social mobility through competency in Chinese (Zhou 2001). Rapid economic growth in China since the end of the 1970s has led to an increase in the importance of learning Chinese (that is, oral skill in Putonghua and literacy in written Chinese) for minority students. Successful participation in the mainstream economy is strongly related to mastery of Chinese, and therefore minority students have developed a motivation and a positive attitude toward educational success, economic benefits, and integration into mainstream society through learning Putonghua and written Chinese. However, there is growing evidence that the PRC’s language education policy has tended to work against multilingual education and its main objective of national integration. Multilingual Education Policy and Practice: Mother Tongue, Bilingual and Trilingual Early state policy in the PRC sought to legitimize and promote a multilingual policy for ethnic minority learners. For example, the Constitution declares, “All ethnic minority groups have freedom to develop their languages.” The revised 1982 version of the Constitution re-emphasized the rights of ethnic minority groups with regards to language use, sociocultural development and regional autonomy by claiming in Article 4 that: All nationalities in the People’s Republic of China are equal. The state protects the lawful rights and interests of the minority nationalities and upholds and develops the relationship of equality, unity and mutual assistance among all of China’s nationalities. Discrimination against and oppression of any nationality are prohibited; any acts that undermine the unity of the nationalities or instigate their secession are prohibited. The state helps the areas inhabited by minority nationalities speed up their economic and cultural development in accordance with the peculiarities and needs of the different minority nationalities. Regional autonomy is practiced in areas Trilingual Education and School Practice in Xinjiang 163 where people of minority nationalities live in compact communities; in these areas organs of self-government are established for the exercise of the right of autonomy. All the national autonomous areas are inalienable parts of the People’s Republic of China. The people of all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages, and to preserve or reform their own ways and customs (People’s Daily 2004). The national constitution establishes the legitimate status of ethnic minority groups in China and paves a way for later multilingual education in...