China Accused of Erasing Mongolian Culture Online
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By: Charlotte Lam
When the Mongolian language started to disappear from classrooms in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China's north, many turned to the internet to keep their language and culture alive. A new investigation shows those remaining online spaces are being targeted by the Chinese government.
The Chinese government is targeting Mongolian language and culture in certain online spaces, systematically dismantling important digital communities where Mongolian identity existed, according to a new report by PEN America and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center.
For years, despite periodic digital crackdowns, the internet remained one of the only places where Mongolians from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China's north, a region many Mongolians refer to as Southern Mongolia, could use their language freely, share music and literature, and connect as a community.
In 2020, Beijing enforced a new education policy to replace Mongolian with Mandarin Chinese as the language of instruction across schools. The move sparked widespread protests. China responded with mass detentions, the introduction of re-education programmes and forcing public "confessions" from protesters. Since those demonstrations, the report found that offline repression has increasingly bled into the digital world.
According to the study, entitled "Save Our Mother Tongue", nearly 89 per cent of known Mongolian cultural websites have since been censored or shut down entirely. Online communities have also been restricted, including the most widely used Mongolian-language social media app, Bainu. The report also further uncovered a policy known as "One Province, One Newspaper, One Client,", which allows state media outlets to launch their own apps, effectively crowding out independent platforms created by Mongolian developers.
Soyonbo Borjgin is a Southern Mongolian journalist now living in exile in New York. During the 2020 protests, the government closed the newspaper he worked for, The Inner Mongolia Daily, and he was sent to a re-education class for one month. He now writes to raise awareness of what he describes as systematic cultural repression.
"Since the government has banned Mongolian in local schools, the digital space has become the last free public space for the Mongolian people," Borjgin told TECH 24.
"It means the Chinese government is deliberately removing spaces where Mongolians can use their own language, share music, discuss history, and connect as a community."
"Mongolian songs are being removed from music apps. Songs like 'Let Us Be Mongolian' and 'I Am a Mongolian' have been erased."
He added that words tied to Mongolian identity, including references to Genghis Khan, are censored and labelled "separatist".
"Right now, in the region where I come from, people cannot use Mongolian to discuss any topic," Borjgin said.
"The entire cyberspace for the Mongolian language has disappeared."
Liesl Gerntholtz, Managing Director of PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center at PEN America, told Tech 24 the findings should be a wake-up call for tech companies.
"I absolutely think tech companies should be taking note," she said. "This intersection between cultural rights and digital repression is much less understood."
"If internet companies are committed to an open and free internet, including the core principles that support internet freedom, they should be paying close attention to what has happened in Mongolia," she added.
"It's a clear case study of how culture can be suppressed online."
Advocacy group PEN America and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center are now calling for coordinated pressure on tech companies, governments and international institutions to protect Mongolian culture online in this region.
"We want to see them (tech and social media companies) adopt a cultural rights framework in platform development, uphold their responsibility to respect human rights, and partner with independent organisations to provide digital support – particularly for impacted Mongolian communities," Gerntholtz said.
Borjgin said he would never stop fighting to protect his culture.
"I'm being resilient as a Mongolian because in 2020, after going through that re-education class, what I really understood about being resilient is that you don't feel fear. It means feeling fear and continuing anyway," he said.
"I am actually able to send a powerful message to the people back at home that we don't have to be afraid of the Chinese authorities because we, as the people, have the right to use our language in digital space, in school and in society."
Tech 24 contacted China's foreign ministry for comment, but it had not responded at the time of publication.
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