China’s Education Ministry announced that hildren will study “ethnic unity” starting from primary school, as a year marred by violent riots in Tibet and unrest in the northwestern Muslim Xinjiang region came to a close. The new classes will run for the duration of a child’s academic life, with high-school students receiving up to 14 hours a year to help them “recognize the superiority” of China’s government and the Communist Party’s ethnic policies. Primary school children will be given “basic awareness of the vital nature of encouraging ethnic unity, protecting national unity and opposing ethnic separatism,” said a summary of the policy posted on the ministry’s website(www.moe.edu.cn).

By Staff