Cultural Genocide

China’s goal? To unify the entire country into a single Chinese society governed closely by the Communist Party out of Beijing. And they won’t back away from erasing Inner Mongolian culture to satisfy this goal. Handley says, “The Chinese government is imposing the education system to be predominantly in Mandarin Chinese. That means that the local, indigenous Inner Mongolian population will have less and less ability to train the next generation within their own cultural norms and language norms.”

Inner Mongolians identify more with Mongolia than much of Chinese culture, so the pressure to conform has been profound. With so much pressure to embrace a monolithic Chinese culture, Handley says many Inner Mongolians are simply fleeing the country, often up into Mongolia.