Chinese children will study “ethnic unity” from primary school, the Education Ministry said at the end of an Olympic year marred by violent riots in Tibet and unrest in Xinjiang.
An outline of the new policy suggested Beijing is worried about discontent among minority groups, although its policies in regions like Tibet, which have attracted foreign criticism, are widely supported at home by a generation of vocal nationalists.
The new classes will run all the way through school, with high school students getting up to 14 hours a year to help them “recognize the superiority of our government and Communist Party’s ethnic policies.”
Primary school children should learn a “basic awareness of the vital nature of ‘encouraging ethnic unity, protecting national unity and opposing ethnic separatism,’” said a summary of the policy posted on the ministry Web site.
Older children would gain a “correct understanding” of government and party policy, while those in high school would also be expected to have a firm grasp on basic theory about “ethnic problems” and “establish a Marxist outlook on ethnicity.”
Meanwhile, police in China have arrested two people suspected of despoiling the national flag and other national symbols with ink-filled eggs, Chinese media reported yesterday.
More than 100 policemen were dispatched to find the suspected culprits after four flags at a cemetery for communist martyrs in Chongqing were last month splattered with ink, the Chongqing Times said.
“This is a case that has harmed the image of the party and the nation and has sought to damage our democratic legal system,” lead investigator Wang Lijun was quoted as saying.
Police investigated 873 suspects over 10 days before issuing arrest warrants for two people identified as Zhang Jingzhi and Wen Tingyu, the paper reported.
The two have been accused of tossing eggs filled with ink at four flags, a national one and others representing organs of the Chinese Communist Party.
Zhang and Wen have been formally charged with “insulting the national flag.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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