China passed a law on a “shared” national identity among the country’s 55 ethnic minority ‌groups on Thursday, a move critics say will further erode the identity of people who are not majority Han Chinese and risk making anyone challenging that “unity” a separatist punishable by law.

Called “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”, the ethnic minority law aims to forge national unity and advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at its core, a draft copy of the law showed.

It was passed at the closing session of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, by 2,756 votes, with three opposing votes and three ⁠abstentions, according to a Reuters witness.

The law will come into force on July 1 this year, state media reported.

Officially, China has 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, dominated by the Han Chinese, who account for more than 91% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

China’s ethnic minority populations — including Tibetans, Mongols, Hui, Manchus, and Uyghurs — are concentrated in regions that together cover roughly half of the country’s land area, much of it rich in natural resources.

The law aims to promote integration across ethnic groups through education, housing, migration, community life, culture, tourism, and development policy, the law said.

It mandates that Mandarin is the basic language of instruction in schools, and for government and official business.

In public settings, where Mandarin and minority languages are used together, Mandarin must be given “prominence in placement, order, and similar respects,” the draft said.

“The state respects and protects the learning and use ‌of minority ⁠languages and scripts,” it added.

Religious groups, religious schools, and religious venues must adhere “to the direction of the Sinicization of religion in China,” according to the draft.

The law also seeks to ban any interference with marriage choices based on ethnicity, custom, or religion, to enable more intermarriage between ethnic groups.

‘Integrate with the minority’

Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government at Cornell University and an expert on Chinese foreign policy, said the law underlined a move towards assimilation.

“The law makes it clearer ⁠than ever that in President Xi Jinping’s PRC non-Han peoples must do more to integrate themselves with the Han majority, and above all else be loyal to Beijing,” he said, referring to China by the initials for its official name.

Ethnic affairs are incorporated into China’s social governance system, with clauses that include anti-separatism, border ⁠security, risk prevention, and social stability.

An editorial in state newspaper China Daily said that ⁠the law had followed a rigorous legislative process, been through multiple readings and consultations with lawmakers and representatives from ethnic minority communities.

“The law stresses the protection of cultural traditions and lifestyles of all ethnic groups… it is misleading to claim that ethnic minorities in China must choose between economic development and cultural preservation,” it said.

A magnitude 5.5 earthquake rattled north-east Turkey on Friday, the country’s disaster management agency said.

The tremor hit around 3:35 am (0035 GMT) in Tokat province, with no reports of damage, the Turkish disaster and emergency management authority said.

The agency added it was continuing to assess the situation.

The governor of Tokat announced that schools would be closed on Friday.

Turkey is crisscrossed by several geological fault lines which have previously caused catastrophes in the country.

A quake in February 2023 in the southwest killed at least 53,000 people and devastated Antakya, site of the ancient city of Antioch.

• US says Russia, China blocking sanctions committee work to protect Iran.
• China, Russia fail to stop Security Council discussion.
• All members should be implementing arms embargo against Iran: US envoy.

The US and Western allies clashed with Russia and China on Thursday over Iran’s nuclear intentions, as Washington sought at the United Nations to further justify the war it launched on Iran two weeks ago.

At a meeting of the 15-member UN Security Council, which is chaired this month by the US, Russia and China moved unsuccessfully to block a discussion about a committee established to oversee and enforce UN sanctions on Iran. 

They were overruled 11-2 with two abstentions.

Addressing the council, US envoy to the United Nations Mike Waltz accused Moscow and Beijing of seeking to protect Tehran by blocking the work of the so-called 1737 Committee.

“All member states of the United Nations should be implementing an arms embargo against Iran, banning the transfer and trade of missile technology, and freezing relevant financial assets,” Waltz said.

“The UN provisions to be re-imposed are not arbitrary, but instead, narrowly scoped to address the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear, missile and conventional arms programmes and Iran’s ongoing support for terrorism,” he said.

Waltz said both China and Russia did not want a functional sanctions committee “because they want to protect their partner, Iran, and continue to maintain defence cooperation that is now once again prohibited.”

Waltz noted that last week the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency had reiterated that Iran was the only state in the world without nuclear weapons to have produced and accumulated uranium enriched up to 60 per cent, and had refused to provide the IAEA access to this stockpile.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya accused the US and its allies of whipping up “hysteria surrounding supposed plans Iran had to get a nuclear weapon” that were never corroborated by IAEA reports.

“This was done in order to undertake yet another military venture against Tehran and to ensure great escalation of the situation in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.

China’s representative, Fu Cong, called Washington the “instigator” of the Iranian nuclear crisis and said it had “resorted to blatant use of force against Iran during the negotiation process, which rendered the diplomatic efforts futile.”

Iran’s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, told reporters later on Thursday that Iran’s nuclear programme “has always been exclusively peaceful,” and Tehran would not recognise any attempt to enforce sanctions against it.

US President Donald Trump has used Iran’s nuclear programme to justify his war on Iran. He said this month that Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks had the US not struck three key nuclear sites in June, a claim sources have said was not supported by US intelligence assessments.

Britain and France told the Security Council that re-imposing sanctions on Iran was justified by Tehran’s failure to address concerns about its nuclear programme.

France said the IAEA was no longer able to guarantee the peaceful nature of the programme and that Tehran’s nuclear stockpile was sufficient for 10 nuclear devices.