Cultural Preservation and Identity Awareness of Ethnic Mongolians in Present China. An analysis of the condition of the Mongolian language use in the Inner Mongolia autonomous Region

Abstract

Ethnic Mongolians, as one of 55 ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China, are guaranteed equal rights as with the majority Han Chinese. In addition to that, the Chinese government has carried out the policy of Regional Autonomy to enable ethnic minorities in self-ruling to a large extent, such as establishing the autonomous regions, prefectures, counties and townships. For ethnic Mongolians, their largest compact residential area is the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Due to the facts that Mongolian is not so commonly used as Chinese and the increasing occurrence of intermarriage between ethnic Mongolians and Han Chinese in the region, the author hypothesizes that ethnic Mongolians especially young ones have been and are being assimilated greatly by Han Chinese such that most of them do not speak Mongolian as their mother tongue or they do not speak Mongolian at all. As a result, the Mongolian language and culture are endangered.

The aim of this study is to find out the true condition of the Mongolian language speaking among young ethnic Mongolians in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The study was conducted in the way of distributing the designed questionnaire both to two educational institutions in the central part of the region and online. Employing the theories involving multiculturalism and assimilation, language and ethnic identity and language shift and attrition, the author analyzes the responses sequentially and correlationally in three parts ─ general analysis, multivariate analysis and opinion analysis. The results showed that the Mongolian language and cultural conditions are more favorable than having been presupposed and most of young ethnic Mongolians speak Mongolian as their mother tongue.