China’s efforts to boost Mandarin-use in schools angers ethnic Mongols

ON THE FIRST day of the school year in Inner Mongolia, a northern province of China, some teachers in schools using the Mongolian language found their classrooms empty. To show their anger at an official order that Mandarin be used to teach history, politics and literature, parents had kept their children at home. In recent years the government has stepped up repression in parts of China with large ethnic-minority populations, making widespread protests all but impossible. In Inner Mongolia ethnic tensions have seldom reached levels seen in Tibet or Xinjiang, so the school boycott is especially remarkable.