This week on Sinica, we discuss the controversy surrounding the decision by Beijing to selectively replace Mongolian-language instruction in schools in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region with Mandarin — and how people both in Inner Mongolia and in Mongolia are pushing back. We're joined by Christopher Atwood, one of the nation's leading specialists in Mongolian history and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and by Christian Sorace, an assistant professor of political science at Colorado College.
7:28: A historical overview of Mongolian history through independence
19:03: The demography of Inner Mongolia
23:09: What the bilingual education policy would actually do
35:07: The impetus for pushing language policy
Recommendations:
Jeremy: Buying books from your local bookstore. He also recommends the website bookshop.org, which allows you to support local bookstores.
Christopher: Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow, and the album At Fillmore East, by the Allman Brothers Band.
Christian: As a new father, he’s recommending a children’s book: Telephone Tales, by Gianni Rodari.
Kaiser: The Vow, a true crime documentary series available on HBO Max.
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Talking Taiwan with former national intelligence officer Paul Heer
A new U.S. strategy in East Asia, from the Quincy Institute
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Ryan Hass on the Biden administration's China direction
Ian Johnson and Lin Yao on "liberal" Chinese Trump supporters
Historian James Carter on the final days of Old Shanghai
Veteran diplomat Evan Feigenbaum on U.S. policy in a changing Asia
China and India: Pallavi Aiyar and Ananth Krishnan on mutual misperceptions
Is coercive environmentalism the answer?
Chilies and China: Brian Dott on how a New World import defined regional cuisines in China
Jennifer Pan studied clickbait in Chinese propaganda. You won’t believe what she discovered!
Rana Mitter on the reshaping of China’s World War II legacy
A China policy for the progressive left
The wuxia storyverse of Peter Shiao
Southeast Asia in the dragon's shadow: A conversation with Sebastian Strangio
The American journalists still in China
U.S.-China relations in 2020 with Susan Shirk
Online vitriol and identity with The New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan
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