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In her Chapter, Zuliyati Simayi provides a comprehensive and sophisticated survey of bilingualism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). She highlights some of the important accomplishments over the last couple of decades, and some of the systemic limitations inherent in the current system. In particular, she emphasizes the way in which a minzu-based education, rather than one that takes the individual as its starting point, can undermine learning and social outcomes, echoing the debate in Western liberalism over the relationship between group and individual rights. She concludes: “…one of the essential objectives of school education should be not only the cultivation of respect for different ethnic group’s history, culture and guaranteed development, but also the cultivation of ethnic minorities into equal citizens of the state. The best way to realize this objective is to promote multicultural education that targets justice and equality at the individual level rather than a group basis.”

In this chapter, Ma Rong provides a detailed and nuanced overview of bilingual education in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Charting the historical development of bilingualism in TAR since 1952, Ma analyzes various models for balancing Putonghua and Tibet language instruction, highlighting the differences of opinion among state officials and Tibetan families over the relative value of both languages, and the best methods for increasing enrolment, promoting high quality educational outcomes, and improving life chances. He is critical of the current trend that does not require Han students in the TAR to study the Tibetan language and culture, and stresses the importance of adapting the model of bilingual education to local conditions. In the end, however, he stresses the centrality of Putonghua for Tibet, and contends that “if a group does not learn the language of mainstream society, especially for the groups relatively less developed in industrialization due to historical reasons, it will be impossible for the members of this group to participate in national education, economy, and social development. In most cases, these groups will be marginalized in all aspects and then ethnic conflicts will be inevitable.”

In the PRC, where the majority population exceeds 90 percent, cultural pluralism will remain an uphill struggle without sufficient buy-in from the Han Chinese. In his chapter, James Leibold examines the PRC’s extensive regime of affirmative action policies in the state schooling sector. In particular, he explores Han reaction to the policy that provides extra points to minority students, regardless of their socioeconomic and geographic position, on the university entrance exam (gaokao). Tracking both online and offline reactions to a 2009 incident where a group of Han students in Chongqing falsified their minzu identity to garner extra points, he argues that the reification of minzu categories in China and the creation of a system of benefits based on these identities can foster community resentment and actually hinder the development of genuine cultural pluralism

In her chapter, Yu Haibo explores the attitudes of Han university administrators, and stresses the importance of listening to and surveying mainstream attitudes on ethnic minorities and minority education. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty university administrator in 2010 and 2011, Yu demonstrates how a range of opinions co-exists among Han educators, including discriminatory perceptions of minorities as slow, violent and/or backward. She calls for further education, but also stresses that the minorities themselves have an important role to play in leading by example, allowing their own efforts to shine through with the help of their teachers and other educators.

With the support of the Ford Foundation, Professor Teng Xing of Minzu University in Beijing has overseen a long-term project aimed at promoting the educational opportunities among the Lahu minority girls of the remote and mountainous Muga township, which is situated along Yunnan province’s border with Burma. In his chapter, Teng and his colleagues reflect on the impact of the specialized Lahu girls’ classes they helped to establish in 2001, and chronicle the impressive academic achievements of two cohorts of students. Putting forward the “Lahu classes” as a successful example of “multicultural integration education,” they argue that the classes provide their lucky participants with the rudiments of a modern education—fluency in Putonghua, basic academic skills and a cultural toolkit—which enables them to survive outside their isolated, rural communities. At the same time, it is argued that the classes help the girls to take pride in their indigenous culture and language through the use of local curriculum materials and pedagogical strategies, while simultaneously promoting the integration of the Lahu minority into mainstream society and the cultural diversity of the Chinese nation

Deeply informed by Western scholarship on multicultural education, Postiglione argues that China is at a crucial turning point as the rapid pace of economic and social reforms opens up new divisions and ethnic tensions within Chinese society. He puts forward two possible directions: the sort of plural monoculturalism discussed by Amartya Sen or a more harmonious, and arguably indigenous, form of multiculturalism. Despite some encouraging signs, Postiglione warns that in terms of educational policy, China appears to be heading in the direction of emphasizing assimilation over any harmonious acceptance of diversity. When compared to Western multiculturalism, Chinese society, with its tradition on Chinese culturalism, exhibits a much more conservative form of multiculturalism than any that currently operates in the West.

In her chapter, Linda Tsung draws on her fieldwork in primary schools in southern Xinjiang, and asks the question of what happens to educational outcomes when English is introduced into a bilingual curriculum in the XUAR. She concludes that due to poor teaching materials, inadequate teacher training, and limited resources, Uyghur students struggle to keep up with their Han peers in this sort of trilingual environment, and the end result is poor academic achievement, and increased disparity between Uyghur and Han students. This situation is further exasperated by the gap between urban and rural schools, with urban schools and students better equipped for bilingual and trilingual education, while rural Uyghur students fall further and further behind. Finally, in her opinion, the government-backed merge of schools in Xinjiang has largely failed to address these inequalities, with significant barriers remaining in place (linguistic, cultural and institutional), which prevent any meaningful interaction either inside the classroom or on the playgrounds

In her chapter, Zhao Zhenzhou examines a group of ethnically Mongolian university students who are studying outside their autonomous region following their graduation from an experimental trilingual class in middle school. She demonstrates how neo-liberal market reforms in China are slowly squeezing out minority languages, like Mongolian, which are increasingly undervalued within the Chinese linguistic marketplace. The emphasis placed on English by the state and its schools intensifies this problem, as minority students are now required to master three languages to achieve success in the state educational system, and often feel like they cannot keep up. Despite some sense of “imagined empowerment.” Zhao argues that the state has distorted the linguistic marketplace in China by attaching greater symbolic importance to English, despite its still-limited role in Chinese society. She calls for a “diversification of international language learning in China,” which would allow minority languages to be viewed as an asset in today’s increasingly globalized world.

China is home to over one million ethnic Koreans who have long thought of themselves as part of the Chinese nation, making significant contributions to the nation’s development. Due to their high educational outcomes, Koreans are often viewed as a “model minority” in China, a cultural stereotype that can carry a weighty burden. Arguing in her chapter that multicultural education requires protective and discursive spaces for minority languages, Gao Fang demonstrates that for ethnic Korean teachers, at least, the pressure to succeed and live up to the model minority tag has led to a gradual hollowing out of Korean-Chinese identity. In place of the Korean language, which is increasingly devalued, commodified cultural practices like kimchi and karaoke have come to define the boundaries of Korean identity in China. Gao’s chapter also highlights the nested yet fluid hierarchy of minzu categories and identities in the PRC, with several of her Korean informants viewing themselves as innately superior to Tibetan and Uyghurs students but still inferior to the Han majority.

In this chapter, Naran Bilik argues that despite the presence of Han linguistic imperialism, there remains a distinct “linguistic-cultural anxiety” in the PRC. On the one hand, there are those that stress the “unity” (yiti) side of Fei Xiaotong’s formula and call for more emphasis on national integration, while on the other hand, there are those that emphasize the “diversity” (duoyuan) side and advocate increased provisions for ethnic pluralism in China. While market forces have sharpened these contradictions, they are also deeply rooted in the history of the Asian continent. Seeking to uncover the fluid and unstable plurality of past notions of “China,” Bilik highlights the polysemy of Chinese terms like minzu, zhongguo, and zhonghua in the Mongolian language, and suggests that by asking and then validating the different ways “you say China in Mongolian,” one can shatter the myth of “mono-cultural centrism” and promote inter-ethnic understanding in China.

In his chapter, Chen Yangbin suggests that given their different responses to the growing complexity of the “Xinjiang problem,” Uyghur graduates from specialized dislocated schools are likely to form a new educational elite group. These Uyghur youth, who attend boarding schools in inland cities (Xinjiangban) and undertook the university entrance exam in Putonghua, have gained access to universities across inland China, including some of China’s most prestigious. Based on an initial survey of these graduates, Chen delineates the uniqueness of their experiences both at university and in their daily lives in eastern China. He demonstrates their feeling of superiority in terms of educational achievement, which they attempt to balance with an equally strong sense of representing Uyghur culture. The chapter also analyzes the implications of this new group of elites when viewed against the background of identity, multiculturalism and ethnic integration in China

In this chapter, the major findings on learner experience in the last half century in China have been summarized and the implications for the study of multilingualism have been discussed. Some current trends in language education in China in the teaching of Chinese, the promotion of English and the development of minority education have been highlighted and a few areas for further research have been pointed out. It remains for me to hope that a multilingual orientation in studying language education in China can continue to be adopted, not only because that is a more fruitful approach to understand the circumstances in China but also because a multilingual outlook to linguistic developments around the world is more culturally enriching. In modern human history, the language that spreads to other nations is often the language that has economic and political power. When the English-speaking world loses its pre-eminence by those yardsticks, other European languages and Asian languages may return to their former positions in the world. Hopefully, no single language will predominate over the globe ever again and the world will be truly multilingual.

In his chapter He Baogang identifies a distinct linguistic trajectory over the longue durée of Chinese history: what he terms a type of “Chinese linguistic imperialism,” which makes multilingual education an unstable, and possibly untenable, proposition in contemporary China. The spread of Han characters (hanzi), he argues, has closely followed the expansion of Han culture and political rule—a sort of “soft power” that has resulted in the gradual, yet inextricable decline of alternative, minority languages. He suggests that this history of linguistic imperialism, as signified by the traditional concept of “Great Unity” (datong) and the administrative tradition of gaitu guiliu (replacing native chieftains with Han administrators), serves as a powerful counterbalance to Fei Xiaotong’s pluralistic unity paradigm, and ultimately presents a serious barrier to any bona fide and practical multicultural education in China. While He Baogang stakes out a normative claim for multilingualism, language is but one element of cultural diversity, and one can point to numerous examples of ethnicity that is not based on language.

In his chapter, Timothy Grose critically interrogates the relationship between social background and religiosity among his Uyghur informants. He explores the complex attitudes Uyghur students in Beijing have towards Ramadan, the obligatory month-long fast observed by Muslims worldwide. He reminds us how fluid and situational ethnic identity is outside official state discourse, and warns against the dangers of reifying educational categories like minkaomin (minority students taking exams in minority languages) and minkaohan (Han students taking exams in Chinese) or projecting cultural stereotypes onto them. He demonstrates how the decision to fast during Ramadan is closely correlated with family background and personal choice rather than educational background. It is an important reminder that while state categories might be rigid, quotidian identity (both group and individual) is anything but.