What is in Store for China Ethnic Minorities

July 5, 2026

China’s new Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which came into effect on July 1, is pushing the ethnic minorities to integrate with Chinese identity and mandating that parents guide their children to “love” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The law also “bans acts that ‘undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division’ among China’s 56 officially recognised ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90 per cent of the country’s 1.4 billion people. The law also says that the curriculum of students forges a strong sense of the community of the Chinese people.

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. In April, the United Nations human rights experts, through a letter, said the law “could have serious implications for the linguistic, cultural, and religious autonomy of ethnic communities, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols.” The experts also warned of the potential for “transnational repression.”

The new law gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders who it believes violate its rules. China’s Communist Party “faced allegations of widespread transnational repression. A 2022 report from human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders said it had found evidence of more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile.”