WEAI Professor Morris Rossabi discussed assimilation and language education among China's ethnic Mongolian minority in an interview with NPR.
In the segment, Rossabi suggested that a new Chinese policy limiting minority language education was "odd" given high rates of Mongolian assimilation with the majority language and culture.
"'Many more Mongols were already studying Chinese,' says Morris Rossabi, an academic who studies Central Asian history at Columbia University and Queens College.
He explains that ethnic Mongolians are an assimilation success story from the eyes of Beijing, with high rates of intermarriage with Han, the majority ethnic group in China, and high levels of Mandarin Chinese fluency. 'There was a kind of peace that had prevailed for 25 years. It just seems very odd that the government would create conditions that would arouse dissent,' says Rossabi."
Read the full article and listen to the clip here.
