China passes new ethnic minority law, prioritises Mandarin language

BEIJING: China passed a law on a “shared” national identity among the country’s 55 ethnic minority groups on Thursday, a move critics say will further erode the identity of people who are not majority Han Chinese and risk making anyone challenging that “unity” a separatist punishable by law. Called “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”, the ethnic minority law aims to forge national unity and advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at its core, a draft copy of the law showed. It was passed at the closing session of the annual meeting of the…