Xi Jinping Attends Inner Mongolia Meeting for 4th Year... Emphasizes Unity of the Chinese Nation

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki-min Lee] Chinese President Xi Jinping was the first among the delegates of the Two Sessions (National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) to meet with representatives from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

According to the People's Daily on the 6th, President Xi attended the Inner Mongolia delegation review after the opening ceremony of the annual National People's Congress meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing the previous day. At the meeting, President Xi stated, "We must embrace new development concepts, serve development, and integrate well," and urged, "We should cherish the glorious tradition of ethnic unity and the honor of being a model autonomous region, and strengthen ethnic unity."

He also emphasized, "Through learning, we must not forget our original intention and engrave our mission in our hearts," adding, "We must pursue happiness for the Chinese people and seek rejuvenation for the Chinese nation."

President Xi has attended the Inner Mongolia delegation meetings following the opening of the National People's Congress for four consecutive years since 2018.

To emphasize the leadership's attention and encouragement of development in underdeveloped regions, the Chinese government applied the "Xiangbi system" (相避制) to the Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau, and President Xi shifted his affiliation from Guizhou Province to Inner Mongolia in 2018.

Given President Xi's emphasis on ethnic unity, analysts predict that the biggest topic this year will be the integration of the Chinese nation. Each time President Xi attended the Inner Mongolia delegation meetings, he explained the key issues of the year, such as poverty alleviation (2018), ecological protection (2019), and overcoming COVID-19 (2020).

Recently, China has been expanding measures to strengthen Chinese language education instead of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia, where many Mongols reside. The Inner Mongolia authorities, emphasizing patriotism and the consciousness of the Chinese national community, mandated that from the fall semester this year, some grades in minority schools will use Standard Chinese, Putonghua (普通話), for three subjects.

As a result, at the end of August last year, thousands of Mongols in Inner Mongolia held large-scale protests carrying banners stating "Learning Mongolian is an inalienable right," and conflicts have continued unabated.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.