The 1981 Inner Mongolia student protest, which took place in Inner Mongolia from 22 August to 15 November 1981, opposed a package of new policies that would worsen steppe degradation in the Inner Mongolia steppe and worsen the political representation of Chinese Mongols. [1] The new policies included "we shall have 100 million cattle within the next decade", "the influx of rural-to-urban migrants from neighboring provinces shall be settled rather than be blocked" and "placing Mongol officials in place in Mongol-majority settlements and Han officials in place in Han-majority settlements". [2] The protest were mostly organized by the students of Inner Mongolia University. The policies were proposed by then Inner Mongolia Chief party secretary Zhou Hui and sanctioned by the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party at its meeting on 16 July 1981, chaired by then top party secretary Hu Yaobang. [2]
Hu, known for his restraint approach towards students, ordered Zhou Hui to not arrest any students. As promised, the students were left unscathed, but many bureaucrats, school headmasters and teachers were demoted. [1]
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes two-thirds of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a small section of China's border with Russia. Its capital is Hohhot; other major cities include Baotou, Chifeng, Tongliao, and Ordos.
Hu Yaobang was a Chinese politician who was a high-ranking official of the People's Republic of China. He held the top office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1981 to 1987, first as Chairman from 1981 to 1982, then as General Secretary from 1982 to 1987. After the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Hu rose to prominence as a close ally of Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China at the time.
Zhao Ziyang was a Chinese politician. He was the premier of China from 1980 to 1987, vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1981 to 1982, and CCP general secretary from 1987 to 1989. He was in charge of the political reforms in China from 1986, but lost power for his support of the 1989 Tian'anmen Square protests.
The Shanghai clique, also referred to as the Shanghai gang, Jiang clique, or Jiang faction, refers to an informal group of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials who rose to prominence under former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin while he served as the party chief and mayor of Shanghai.
China Youth University of Political Studies is a university in Beijing, established in 1985 by the Communist Youth League of China. Since then the university has been affiliated with the league, and the leader of the league usually holds the presidency of the university. Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China, was once the president of this university. The university's 12-hectare (30-acre) campus is located in Xisanhuan Bei Lu in Beijing. The China Youth University of Political Studies ceased operation as a public university in 2017. It is now a co-brand used by the Central School of the Communist Youth League of China, a training school run by the Communist Youth League.
Hu Qili is a former high-ranking politician of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), known as a champion of the country's economic reform program in the 1980s. He was the first secretary of the CCP Secretariat from 1985 to 1989 and a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee from 1987 to 1989. Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he was purged for his sympathy toward the student protesters and his support for General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's opposition to the use of armed force. However, he returned to politics in 1991. In 2001, he became chairman of the Soong Ching-ling Foundation.
Donghu was a tribal confederation of "Hu" (胡) nomadic people that was first recorded from the 7th century BCE and was taken over by the Xiongnu in 150 BCE. They lived in northern Hebei, southeastern Inner Mongolia and the western part of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang along the Yan Mountains and Greater Khingan Range.
Mongols in China, also known as Mongolian Chinese, are ethnic Mongols who live in China. They are one of the 56 ethnic groups recognized by the Chinese government.
The city of Beijing has a long and rich history that dates back over 3,000 years.
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The Tuanpai, or Youth League Faction, is a term used by political observers and analysts to describe an informal political faction in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which includes cadres and government officials who originated from the Communist Youth League. There have been two "Youth League factions" in recent memory, without direct political lineage between each other. The first, which emerged in the 1980s, comprised cadres of Youth League background who supported CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang: the term "Tuanpai" was originally used to criticise Hu Yaobang for over-reliance of cadres of Youth League background. The second, from the 2000s, comprised CCP general secretary Hu Jintao and his group of populist associates and other political allies. As of 2022, there is little evidence that the group still exists.
Mongolia under Qing rule was the rule of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China over the Mongolian Plateau, including the four Outer Mongolian aimags and the six Inner Mongolian aimags from the 17th century to the end of the dynasty. The term "Mongolia" is used here in the broader historical sense, and includes an area much larger than the modern-day state of Mongolia. By the early 1630s Ligdan Khan saw much of his power weakened due to the disunity of the Mongol tribes. He was subsequently defeated by the Later Jin dynasty and died soon afterwards. His son Ejei handed the Yuan imperial seal over to Hong Taiji in 1635, thus ending the rule of the Northern Yuan dynasty in Inner Mongolia. However, the Khalkha Mongols in Outer Mongolia continued to rule until they were overrun by the Dzungar Khanate in 1690, and they submitted to the Qing dynasty in 1691.
The Dzungar people are the many Mongol Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically, they were one of the major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation. They were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word "Dzungar", and as the "Kalmyks". In 2010, 15,520 people claimed "Ööled" ancestry in Mongolia. An unknown number also live in China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei state, the Rouran Khaganate (330–555), the First (552–603) and Second Turkic Khaganates (682–744) and others, ruled the area of present-day Mongolia. The Khitan people, who used a para-Mongolic language, founded an empire known as the Liao dynasty (916–1125), and ruled Mongolia and portions of North China, northern Korea, and the present-day Russian Far East.
On the night of May 10, 2011 an ethnic Mongol herdsman was killed by a coal truck driver near Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia, China. The incident, alongside grievances over mining development in the region and the perceived erosion of traditional lifestyle of indigenous peoples, led to a series of Mongol protests across Inner Mongolia. Some 2000 students participated in protests at Communist Party headquarters of the West Ujimqin Banner, followed by demonstrations by secondary school students in the Xilinhot area. Select secondary schools and universities with large ethnic Mongol populations were reportedly under "lockdown". The Inner Mongolia government under Hu Chunhua tightened security in Inner Mongolian cities, including dispatching People's Armed Police troops to central Hohhot.
The Beijing Students' Autonomous Federation was a self-governing student organization, representing multiple Beijing universities, and acting as the student protesters' principal decision-making body during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Student protesters founded the Federation in opposition to the official, government-supported student organizations, which they believed were undemocratic. Although the Federation made several demands of the government during the protests and organized multiple demonstrations in the Square, its primary focus was to obtain government recognition as a legitimate organization. By seeking this recognition, the Federation directly challenged the Chinese Communist Party's authority. After failing to achieve direct dialogue with the government, the Federation lost support from student protesters, and its central leadership role within the Tiananmen Square protests.
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Zhou Hui was a People's Republic of China politician. He was born in Guannan County, Jiangsu Province. His birth name was Hui Jue. He was the younger brother of Hui Yuyu, two-time governor of Jiangsu Province. He changed his name in 1938, when he joined the Chinese Communist Party and went to Yan'an, using his mother's surname as his own. He was Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Hunan Province and Inner Mongolia from 1981 to 1982. At the Mountain Lu Conference in Jiujiang in 1959, Zhou Hui and his predecessor in Hunan, Zhou Xiaozhou, along with Huang Kecheng and Zhang Wentian, gave their support to Peng Dehuai. Unlike Zhou Xiaozhou, Huang and Zhang, Mao did not punish Zhou Hui for his support of Peng. Policies proposed by Zhou resulted in the 1981 Inner Mongolia student protest.
The 2020 Inner Mongolia protests was a protest caused by a curriculum reform imposed on ethnic schools by China's Inner Mongolia Department of Education. The two-part reform replaces Mongolian with Standard Mandarin as the medium of instruction in three particular subjects and replaces three regional textbooks, printed in Mongolian script, by the nationally-unified textbook series edited by the Ministry of Education, written in Standard Mandarin. On a broader scale, the opposition to the curriculum change reflects racism in China and the decline of regional language education in China.