China Holds First “Ethnic Unity Week”: Human Rights Watch Says New Law Signals Deeper Coercion

The week-long campaign centered its public messaging on cross-ethnic goodwill. Human Rights Watch tells Közet the law behind it mostly formalizes existing practice, but points toward more assimilation pressure ahead.

China held the first nationwide observance of its Ethnic Unity and Progress Publicity Week from September 21 to 27, 2026. A provision of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress designates the fourth week of every September as the occasion; this was the first observance since the law took effect. The law itself, a 65-article national statute, passed March 12, 2026, and took effect July 1, 2026.

Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told Közet the law mainly codifies what China already does in practice, rather than creating new legal tools, with a caveat. “China’s laws often are indicators of official policies, pointing to the direction of travel,” Wang told Közet in written comments. “In this case, the law mostly formalize existing practices, but it also suggests that authorities will continue to deepen ideological control and efforts to pressure and coerce minorities to assimilate, to become loyal subjects of the Party-state.”

According to Xinhua, the campaign included policy seminars, public lectures on the new law, and youth education programs, under the theme “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, Advancing on the Journey of Great Rejuvenation.” It was organized by the Communist Party’s Central United Front Work Department, the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, and local governments nationwide.

A Chinese report described a launch ceremony held in Urumqi on September 21 opening a slate of 12 regional activities for the week, including ethnic-policy seminars, legal education tied to the new law, “Ethnic Unity as One Family” events, and national common-language competitions.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China has said the law mandates Mandarin-priority instruction beginning at the preschool level, which it argues functions to displace minority-language education despite the law’s own stated language of “respect and protection” for minority languages, and requires school curricula to instill a Communist Party-approved “correct view” of the country, its history, its ethnic groups, its culture and its religion.

The Council on Foreign Relations has reported that the law expands state oversight of religious practice under Sinicization-of-religion requirements, and extends enforcement extraterritorially, allowing Chinese authorities to act against people abroad found to have undermined ethnic unity. Article 63 of the law says organizations and individuals outside China “that commit acts aimed at the P.R.C. that undermine ethnic unity and progress or create ethnic division are to be pursued for legal responsibility in accordance with law,” according to a translation by China Law Translate. Wang, at Human Rights Watch, said of that provision: “The law itself does not indicate any specific enforcement mechanism, but more part of a bigger whole, a collection of laws and regulations that, together, strengthen such practices,” adding that “the Chinese government has increasingly used laws to strengthen its long arm, including the use of transnational repression” over the years.

China’s Foreign Ministry has rejected criticism of the law. Asked by Reuters on July 3 about U.S. and European Union concerns that the law gives Beijing a legal basis to act against people outside its borders, spokesperson Guo Jiakun did not directly say whether it applies abroad. He said “certain countries” had “maliciously slander[ed] China’s ethnic policies” and urged them to “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs by hyping up ethnic issues.” He also said the government “lawfully safeguards the right of all ethnic groups to use and develop their own spoken and written languages.”

Maya Wang said the law’s effect runs through China’s bureaucracy: minority-affairs and United Front officials must fold it and related directives into routine governance through what she called “repeated campaign-like implementation drives,” which will also shape how those officials engage with the diaspora. “The law is about signaling to its vast bureaucracy and ensuring its implementation from the top to the bottom,” she said.