For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.
Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.
The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
So if the government passes those same laws without the intent of genocide then it isn’t genocide? Like China is saying the intent is harmony, not genocide.
The intent of the laws is what’s up to interpretation. A lot genocides don’t have an explicit policy like the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide. A lot tend have policies where the real intentions are hidden under some sham cover. That’s why historians and other academic researchers examine policies by how they’re implemented and enforced rather than how politicians or the state market them as.