China’s new National Unity Law could mean greater repression for Tibetans and other minorities. It could also be used to prosecute foreigners for pro-Taiwan statements made abroad. Chinese police encircle Tibetans during a religious festival in Kumbum. Photo courtesy of Tibet.net.

China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress was submitted to the National People’s Congress on September 8, 2025, passed by a vote of 2,756 to 3 with three abstentions, signed by Xi Jinping on March 12, 2026, and takes effect July 1, 2026. The 62-article law codifies Xi’s sinicization policies and extends their reach into every sector of Chinese society, and beyond China’s borders.

The law also applies to foreign nationals living in or visiting China, who could now be punished or possibly jailed for advocating freedom for Tibet or independence for Taiwan. The law’s preamble frames China as a civilization with more than 5,000 years of history that has forged “a unified multi-ethnic nation” under the CCP. This is despite the fact that China has 56 recognized ethnic groups and five ethnic autonomous regions: Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, and Ningxia. Several of these regions have movements seeking independence or greater autonomy.

China also includes Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region whose residents have mounted sustained resistance to Beijing’s encroachment on political freedoms. Taiwan, meanwhile, already functions as an independent democratic country despite lacking official international recognition.

Its Chapter II mandates fostering identification with the “great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture, the Communist Party of China, and socialism with Chinese characteristics” through patriotic education, official historical narratives, and promotion of Chinese cultural symbols. Article 14 directs authorities to “establish and highlight … Chinese cultural symbols” in public facilities, architecture, and tourist sites, including in the naming of places.

The law imposes ideological obligations on a sweeping range of actors, including public employees, mass organizations, enterprises, public-service institutions, industry groups, religious institutions, neighborhood committees, and the military. Under Article 20(2), parents and guardians are required to “educate and guide minors to love the Chinese Communist Party” and are forbidden from teaching minors “concepts detrimental to ethnic unity and progress.”

The provision reinforces existing law. The CCP’s 1982 Document 19 banned religious education among minors, a prohibition the U.S. State Department confirms remains in force: children younger than 18 are prohibited from participating in religious activities and receiving religious education, even in schools run by religious organizations, and the law mandates the teaching of atheism in schools.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) has documented enforcement of these prohibitions against minority communities specifically, with Uyghur and Tibetan children, among whom religion and ethnic identity are inseparable, subject to the strictest application.

Language policy is a central mechanism that builds on previous restrictive legislation. In December 2025, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee revised the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, originally adopted in 2000. The revision removed a provision that had allowed minority languages to be used as the medium of instruction in schools, declaring such education “no longer necessary.” The changes took effect on January 1, 2026.

A years-long trend of replacing Mongolian-, Tibetan-, and Uyghur-medium instruction with Mandarin was thereby codified into law. Students in those communities are now permitted to study their mother tongue only as a standalone class, while all other subjects are taught in Chinese.

The March 2026 ethnic unity law reinforced and expanded that framework. It codifies the predominance of Standard Chinese (Putonghua) in public life, sets a goal of preschool-level Mandarin proficiency, and requires Chinese characters to be displayed more prominently than minority scripts wherever both appear.

The CECC found that the law promotes Mandarin-language instruction for ethnic minority children beginning in preschool. It also embeds ideological education prescribing a single “correct” understanding of history, ethnicity, culture, and religion as defined by the CCP.

The new laws conflict with the Chinese Constitution. Article 4 states that “all ethnic groups shall have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages and to preserve or reform their own traditions and customs.”

However, unlike the U.S. Constitution, China’s is not enforced by an independent judiciary. Courts cannot invalidate unconstitutional laws, and constitutional interpretation resides solely within the Party’s political machinery. In practice, the Chinese Communist Party sits on top of the political and legal hierarchy, making constitutional guarantees contingent on Party approval rather than enforceable as law.

The law’s call for mutually embedded community environments raises concern among scholars who say it may result in the breakup of minority-heavy neighborhoods, with the stated goal of encouraging Han and ethnic minority populations to migrate into each other’s communities. The provision has precedent in decades of documented demographic control policies.

The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Report states that the government continued to promote Han Chinese migration into minority areas such as Xinjiang, which significantly increased the population of Han there. In Tibet, the State Department found that major development projects and other central government policies contributed to the considerable influx of Han Chinese into the Tibetan Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas, with Han professionals and migrant workers from other provinces staffing major infrastructure projects rather than local residents.

In Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia documented that Han migrants arriving in Uyghur-majority southern Xinjiang were provided free housing, utilities, land, and relocation costs paid by the government, while simultaneously Chinese authorities forcibly moved thousands of Uyghurs deeper into the interior as both a source of forced labor and a method to dilute their political influence.

The U.S. Department of Labor confirms that the CCP’s Poverty Alleviation Through Labor Transfer program relocated minority workers to industrial areas inside and outside Xinjiang, subjecting them to constant surveillance, isolation, and political indoctrination. In Xinjiang, the Han population has grown from 7 percent in 1945 to over 36 percent, with similar demographic shifts documented in Inner Mongolia and Guangxi. Enforcement provisions give the law its power domestically and internationally.

Citizens may report conduct that “undermines ethnic unity and progress,” and procuratorates may initiate public-interest litigation when such conduct also undermines national or public interests.

Article 63 provides a pretext for Beijing to target individuals outside China for acts that “undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division,” language legal scholars say is broad enough to reach diaspora communities. This extraterritorial reach echoes the National Security Law China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020, under which the government has issued bounties for 34 overseas activists.

The law’s primary impact falls on China’s ethnic minorities, concentrated in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. The CECC documented that authorities in Xinjiang have conducted mass detentions and coercive family planning measures targeting Turkic Muslims. Reported restrictions include bans on the hijab, beards, fasting, Friday prayers, and rituals, as well as forcible inter-ethnic marriages. An estimated 16,000 mosques have been demolished in Xinjiang over the past decade, and over a million Uyghurs have been held in detention facilities.

In Tibet and Inner Mongolia, Mandarin was made compulsory in place of local ethnic languages, alongside restrictions on religious symbols, colonial-style boarding schools, and mass surveillance through facial recognition cameras, DNA databases, and social media monitoring.

As is often the case, the actions of the Chinese Communist Party violate international human rights law and basic principles of linguistic and religious freedom.

Even more concerning, Americans could be charged for comments or social media posts made inside or outside China.

Ad block users: Some site features may not work correctly while an ad blocker is enabled, because they break scripts and content this website depends on. If you can't see comments below, for example, please disable your ad blocker.