The legal protection of the right to education for ethnic groups in China is an integral part of the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics. As the state places greater emphasis on educational equity and the development of ethnic regions, China has formulated and implemented a series of educational laws to promote and safeguard the educational rights of ethnic groups, thereby continuously strengthening the legal protection of their right to education.
To start with, China has provided a comprehensive legal framework for the protection ethnic groups' right to education. On one hand, China has enhanced legal protection to maintain the equal right to education for ethnic groups. Laws such as the Constitution, the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy, the Education Law, and the Compulsory Education Law have respectively established the right of ethnic groups to equal access to education and clearly stipulated the state's obligation to support ethnic minority education, including the popularization of compulsory education, the development of ethnic education, and the protection of the rights to use and develop their own ethnic languages and scripts. On the other hand, China has established the right to educational development for ethnic groups as a core right under the ethnic educational laws. The Constitution explicitly stipulates the support and assistance for ethnic groups, providing a constitutional basis for ensuring the educational development rights in ethnic minority areas. The Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy further establishes the support and assistance for the development of ethnic minority education as a legal obligation.
Moreover, China has further formulated series of policies to ensure the enforcement of educational laws. These policies aiming to enhance ethnic group’s educational rights can be classified into three categories. The first category is the key policies to guarantee a balanced allocation of educational resources throughout ethnic regions. Among the most notable is the implementation of 15 years of the free and public education as well as the "three guarantees" educational policy for children of herders and farmers in Xizang and southern Xinjiang. These supportive policies require both the central and local governments bear the costs of tuition, textbooks, accommodation, etc., for students from kindergarten to high school, and provide educational subsidies for students from economically disadvantaged herder and farmer families, covering meals, accommodation, and basic learning expenses.
The second category is that, in addition to popularizing basic education, specific educational policy has been offered to enhance educational rights for ethnic groups. One remarkable initiative is the " National Minority Backbone Plan " in support of higher education development in ethnic regions. This policy, which began in 2006 in Xizang, Xinjiang, and other ethnic places, has seen a year-by-year increase in the number and quality of admissions, cultivating a large number of urgently needed specialized talents for ethnic regions.
The third category focuses on continuously improving education quality in ethnic regions. China has been devoted to the promotion of education quality over the last half century in ethnic regions through measures such as increasing financial investment, improving infrastructure, enhancing teacher quality through the selection of teaching staff, optimizing curriculum settings, and promoting modern educational technologies. As such, Xizang, as a typical example, has successfully established a relatively complete modern educational system covering preschool education, basic education, vocational education, higher education, adult education, and special education.
Eventually, China has enhanced the realization of ethnic groups' right to education, on the basis of law/policy-making. Over the years, China has adhered to the people-centered development of ethnic education, and the cause of ethnic education has achieved historical achievements and structural changes, which could be identified in the following three aspects.
Firstly, the right to education has made a leap from "equal access" to "empowerment ". Take Xizang as an example, educational opportunities for people in Xizang have continuously expanded, and the level of educational popularization has made a historical leap. Statistics shows that the dropout issue in Xizang was historically resolved in the fall of 2012, with a primary school enrollment rate of 99.64%, a junior high school gross enrollment rate of 98.91%, and a high school stage gross enrollment rate of 73.37%. The illiteracy rate among young and middle-aged people has dropped from 95% in 1960s to 0.6%. The development of ethnic education has greatly enhanced the social competitiveness of ethnic regions, providing internal momentum for local economic development and social progress. According to the 7th National Population Census, the number of people with a university education per 100,000 people in Xizang increased from 5,507 in 2010 to 11,019 in 2020, the average years of education for the main labor force population is 10.2 years, and the average years of education for new labor force entrants has increased to 13.1 years.
Secondly, China has gone through a deep integration of ethnic characteristics and modernity in ethnic education. Developing ethnic education requires breaking the contradiction and opposition between traditional culture and modern civilization, and bridging the gap between ethnic characteristics and modernity. To promote the integration of tradition and modernity in ethnic groups’ education, China actively and prudently carries out "bilingual" teaching models in ethnic regions, valuing the use and development of ethnic minority languages and dialects. Moreover, in terms of the educational content, China has attached great significance to multicultural education, underlying the enrichment of traditional culture and history of ethnic minorities in ethnic curriculums, which gives students full choices to access multi cultures. In addition, as for the educational models, it explores modern educational models with ethnic characteristics, integrates ethnic education with the economic, social, and cultural development of ethnic groups, and vigorously develops ethnic vocational education, providing opportunities for ethnic minority students to broaden their employment choices.
Thirdly, the educational activities in ethnic regions focus on balancing ‘diversity’ and ‘unity’. Ethnic minority education always needs to seek a balance between the "diversity" of each ethnic group and the "unity" of a multi-ethnic as a collective in many countries around the world. China in this regard has followed an "integrated" educational development paradigm that develops multiculturalism and simultaneously constructs a sense of community for the Chinese people. Specifically, ethnic education activities would emphasize respect for the diversity of ethnic cultures to leverage the cohesive value of culture and promote national stability and unity on the one hand; on the other hand, the activities are carried out to strengthen the sense of Chinese national community, promoting a higher degree of identification and stronger cohesion among the Chinese nation.
Admittedly, the protection of ethnic groups’ right to education is an ongoing cause. In the future, China will continue to advance educational rights development in ethnic regions, further ensuring and enhancing the realization of ethnic groups' right to education.
（LI Juan, Central South University Human Rights Center in China）
