As Beijing prepares to enforce its new Ethnic Unity Law on July 1, Tibetan leaders and China experts warn that beneath its language of harmony and national integration lies an unprecedented legal framework designed to institutionalise the assimilation of Tibet and other minority communities into a single Chinese identity.
When China’s new Ethnic Unity Law comes into force on July 1, Beijing will present it as another milestone in building national cohesion, ethnic harmony and a stronger Chinese nation.
Officially titled the Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress, the legislation is portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a framework for strengthening unity among China’s 56 officially recognised ethnic groups while promoting stability, development and modernization.
But thousands of kilometres away in New Delhi, where Tibetan scholars, policymakers and China experts gathered days before its implementation, the law was described in strikingly different terms.
Rather than promoting ethnic harmony, participants at a conference organised by the Tibet Policy Institute argued that the legislation marks one of the most significant legal steps yet in Beijing’s decades-long effort to absorb Tibet’s distinct language, religion and culture into a singular state-defined Chinese identity.
For many of those attending, the law is not the beginning of a new policy. It is the legal culmination of one.
“What China has pursued for decades through political campaigns, administrative directives, educational reforms, religious restrictions and surveillance systems is now being formalised and protected by national law,” one Tibetan scholar observed.
The conference repeatedly returned to a single conclusion: Beijing is no longer merely implementing assimilation through policy—it is embedding it in legislation.
From political campaign to permanent law
Passed by China’s National People’s Congress in March this year, the legislation is divided into seven chapters and 63 articles and seeks to forge what Beijing calls a “strong sense of community for the Chinese nation.”
On paper, its objectives appear uncontroversial.
The law promotes national unity, social harmony, common prosperity and modernisation. It calls upon citizens to safeguard national sovereignty, oppose separatism and resist what it describes as foreign interference in ethnic affairs. It also seeks to deepen identification with Chinese culture through education, public administration and ideological work.
Yet critics argue that behind this language lies one of the most comprehensive legal frameworks ever enacted to institutionalise the Sinicisation of ethnic minorities.
For Tibetans, they say, the legislation does not celebrate diversity but seeks to gradually replace it.
At the heart of the law is the directive to build a unified “community of the Chinese nation”—a political vision that requires peoples with their own languages, histories, religions and cultural traditions to increasingly identify first and foremost with an officially constructed Chinese national identity.
“It talks about unity, harmony and progress,” observed Dharamshala based Penpa Tsering, who is the democratically elected political leader (Sikyong) of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). “But history reminds us that some of the gravest injustices have been committed in the name of peace and unity.”
A legal mask for an old policy
One of the conference’s most consistent themes was that the law introduces very little that Tibetans have not already experienced.
When details of the proposed legislation first surfaced last year, many observers assumed Beijing was embarking on an entirely new ethnic policy.
But a close reading of every provision suggested something different.
“There is nothing in this law that is fundamentally new,” Sikyong Penpa Tsering opined.
Nearly every measure contained in the legislation—from educational reforms and language policies to ideological campaigns, surveillance mechanisms and restrictions on religious institutions—has already been implemented across Tibet over many years.
The difference, experts argued, lies in the legal status those policies now acquire.
“China is not creating a new system in Tibet,” Maj. Gen (Dr) G D Bakshi said. “It is giving an old system a legal mask.”
That distinction, they argued, has profound implications.
Administrative directives can be revised. Political campaigns eventually end. Governments change priorities.
Legislation, however, institutionalises policy. It gives political objectives the appearance of legality, permanence and legitimacy.
For Tibetans, participants said, assimilation is no longer simply a policy choice—it is becoming a legal obligation.
The politics behind the language
President of New Delhi based Centre for China Analysis and Strategy Jayadeva Ranade urged audiences not to take the law’s title at face value.
“The Chinese always have nice names with bad intentions,” he remarked.
According to Ranade, terms such as “ethnic unity,” “community” and “shared destiny” have become central political concepts under President Xi Jinping.
While they appear benign, he argued, they carry a very specific ideological meaning within the Communist Party.
The objective, he said, is not multiculturalism but homogenisation.
“The law wants Tibetans to adapt Tibetan Buddhism to socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Ranade observed.
He argued that the legislation reflects the growing influence of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, the powerful organisation responsible for managing ethnic minorities, religious organisations and non-Party groups.
Rather than simply administering minority regions, the department seeks to reshape identities.
Its work extends beyond governance into education, religion, media, academia and civil society.
Ranade warned that the same structures are increasingly used internationally to influence democratic societies through political engagement, social organisations and overseas Chinese networks.
“It wants to homogenise thinking,” he said, adding that Beijing’s ambition is to become the dominant global power by the centenary of the People’s Republic in 2049.
“It is in this context that we have to understand the Ethnic Unity Law.”
Rewriting identity
For Tibetan representatives, perhaps the greatest concern lies not in policing dissent but in reshaping future generations.
The legislation strengthens Beijing’s efforts to promote Mandarin Chinese from the earliest stages of education while encouraging greater identification with Chinese culture.
Ranade pointed to the gradual erosion of Tibetan-language education.
Where authorities once restricted Tibetan-medium schooling outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region, they are now reducing it even within Tibet itself.
Parents, he said, are increasingly encouraged to speak Mandarin at home.
The official argument is practical: children fluent in Mandarin enjoy better employment opportunities.
Critics, however, see a different objective.
“The idea,” Ranade said, “is that over time youngsters no longer speak Tibetan.”
Language, conference participants argued, is not simply a means of communication.
It carries history, memory, religious knowledge and cultural identity.
The erosion of language therefore represents something far more profound than educational reform.
It alters how future generations understand themselves.
The monks Beijing still cannot control
Ranade argued that Beijing continues to view Tibetan monasteries as among the greatest obstacles to complete political integration.
“It has been seventy years and they continue targeting monks,” he observed.
“They are regarded as the real troublemakers.”
For decades, Tibetan Buddhist institutions have served not only as religious centres but also as custodians of language, philosophy, scholarship and cultural memory.
Participants argued that the new legislation strengthens the Party’s ability to extend ideological supervision over those institutions.
The objective, they said, is to ensure that Tibetan Buddhism evolves only within parameters approved by the Communist Party.
Xi Jinping’s ‘new era’
Professor Srikanth Kondapalli placed the legislation within the broader political transformation underway since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.
Xi has repeatedly described his leadership as inaugurating a “new era”—one intended to stand alongside the historical eras of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
According to Kondapalli, this new phase has revived assimilation as a central objective of ethnic policy.
He traced the evolution of China’s constitutional approach towards ethnic minorities.
Early constitutional frameworks granted relatively greater autonomy to minority regions.
During the Cultural Revolution, however, assimilation intensified dramatically, with widespread destruction of monasteries and severe repression.
Although aspects of autonomy returned under the 1982 Constitution, Xi’s administration has increasingly moved back towards national integration and Sinicisation.
“The assimilation policy is coming back,” Kondapalli said.
“The new Ethnic Unity Law represents Xi Jinping’s new era.”
Echoes of Hong Kong
Among the strongest warnings issued during the conference was that the legislation bears similarities to Beijing’s expanding national security architecture.
Kondapalli drew particular attention to Article 63, which provides for penalties against organisations and individuals found violating the law.
He argued that the provision reflects a broader legal approach already witnessed in Hong Kong following the introduction of the National Security Law.
That legislation, initially presented as a measure to restore order and safeguard national security, significantly expanded Beijing’s authority to suppress activities deemed threatening to the state.
The Ethnic Unity Law, he suggested, extends similar legal principles into ethnic governance.
Other provisions require citizens, families and even children to fulfil obligations in safeguarding ethnic unity while emphasising identification with the Chinese nation over individual ethnic identities.
For critics, these provisions move beyond encouraging national cohesion and instead create legal obligations governing how identity itself should be understood.
Why Beijing is legislating now
Journalist and researcher Tenzin Desal argued that the legislation represents China’s latest attempt to resolve what it views as the unfinished task of nation-building.
China’s state-building project, he said, has relied successively on revolutionary campaigns, political reforms, economic development and massive infrastructure investment.
Yet despite these efforts, Tibetan resistance has persisted.
“The reckoning in China,” he observed, “was that what had been done so far was not working.”
The answer, he argued, has been to institutionalise assimilation through law.
By embedding ideological objectives within legislation rather than relying solely on Party directives, Beijing creates a far more durable framework for implementing its policies.
The law therefore represents not merely another administrative reform but a structural shift in how the Chinese state governs ethnic identity.
A unanimous rejection
Soon after the legislation was adopted, the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile unanimously passed a seven-point resolution rejecting it as fundamentally illegitimate.
The resolution condemned the law as an instrument of forced assimilation and warned that it accelerates the erosion of Tibetan language, religion and national identity under the guise of ethnic unity.
Participants at the New Delhi conference echoed that assessment.
For them, the law is not simply another legal text.
It is the formal codification of policies that have steadily transformed education, religion, governance and public life across Tibet over decades.
Whether Beijing succeeds in achieving the integration it seeks remains uncertain.
But as China prepares to enforce one of the most consequential pieces of ethnic legislation enacted under Xi Jinping, critics argue that the country has crossed an important threshold.
For the first time, they say, a decades-long project of political and cultural assimilation is no longer being pursued primarily through campaigns or directives. It is being written into law.
And for Tibetans, that legal transformation may prove to be its most enduring legacy.
