 A Mongol musician playing an Inner Mongolian–stylemorin khuur (horsefiddle) | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 6,290,204[1][2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| |
| Languages | |
| Religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Mongols in China | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 中国蒙古族 | ||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 中國蒙古族 | ||||||
| |||||||
Mongols in China,[4][5] also known asMongolian Chinese[6][7] orChinese Mongols, are ethnicMongols who live in China. They are one of the56 ethnic groups recognized by the Chinese government.
As of 2020, there are 6,290,204 Mongols in China, a 0.45% increase from the 2010 national census.[1][2] Most of them live inInner Mongolia,Northeast China,Xinjiang andQinghai. The Mongol population in China is nearly twice as much as that of the sovereign state ofMongolia.
The Mongols in China are divided between autonomous regions and provinces as follows:
Besides the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, there are other Mongol autonomous administrative subdivisions in China.
Prefecture level:
County level:
China classifies various Mongolic groups, such as the Buryats and Oirats, together with the Inner Mongols under a single category of “Mongol.” The Chinese government also classifies theTuvans as Mongols, despite Tuvans being a Turkic, non-Mongolic ethnic group.[8] The official language used for all of these Mongols in China is a literary standard based on the Chahar dialect of Mongol.[9]
The ethnic classification might be inaccurate due to lack of information regarding the registering policy.[10][11]
Some populations officially classified as Mongols by the government of the People's Republic of China do not currently speak any form ofMongolic language. Such populations include theSichuan Mongols (most of whom speak a form ofNaic language), theYunnan Mongols (most of whom speaka form of Loloish language), and the Mongols ofHenan Mongol Autonomous County in Qinghai (most of whom speakAmdo Tibetan and/orChinese).[citation needed]
As of July 2023[update], official publications have avoided references to Mongolians in China and instead used the term "northern frontier culture" (bei jiang wenhua).[12]
Among the Mongols of China,mitochondrial haplogroup D was in first place (27.07%), followed by mitochondrial haplogroups B (11.60%), F (10.77%), Z (8.01%), G (7, 73%), C (6.91%), A (6.08%), N (5.25%) and M7 (5.25%). Other mitochondrial haplogroups (HV, H, I, M8, M9, M10, M11, R, T, U, W and Y) were sporadically distributed among the studied Mongols of China with frequencies of no more than 1.66%.
Guang-Lin Heet al. (2022) examined a sample of current Mongols of China (n=175, includingn=97 from Inner Mongolia,n=27 from Liaoning,n=10 from Heilongjiang,n=10 from Jilin,n=3 from Qinghai,n=3 from Xinjiang, andn=25 from elsewhere in China) and found differenthaplogroup O subclades (107/175 = 61.1% in total) to be the most frequently observed Y-DNA haplogroup:
The second most frequently observed Y-DNA haplogroup among the sampled Mongols from China wasC2 (22.9%, including 16.6% "Northern"i.e. Mongolian/Siberian C2b1a, 1.7% typically Mongolic C2c1a1a1-M407, and 4.6% "Southern"i.e. East Asian C2c1(xC2c1a1a1)), followed byN1-CTS3750 (6.3%, including 2.9% N1a2a1a~, 1.1% N1a2b2a1c~, 1.1% N1b2a2~, 0.6% N1a1a1a1a3a, and 0.6% N1b1),Q (4.6%, including 4.0% Q1a1a1 and 0.6% Q2a1a1),R1a1a1b2a-Z94 (2.3%), andD-M533 (1.1%). Y-chromosomal haplogroup E1b1b1a1b2 (V22) was observed in one Mongol individual fromHohhot, G2a2b2a1a1a2a1a (L654.2) was observed in one Mongol individual fromAlxa League, and I2a1b2a1a1a1 (BY128/Y5596) was observed in one Mongol individual fromHinggan League.[13]
Not all groups of people related to the medieval Mongols are officially classified as Mongols under the current system. Other official ethnic groups in China which speakMongolic languages include:
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Mongols in China facediscrimination by the currentChinese government on the goal of assimilating the Mongolian population into the Han population.[14][15][16]
TheNPC declared "minority language-medium education is unconstitutional (People's Daily)," enforcing this within Inner Mongolian schools, banning the teaching of the Mongolian language, along with riding of different kinds of Mongolian material that are deemed to de-emphasize Chinese nationality and common identity.[17][15] In 2023, a book on the history of the Mongols was banned for "historical nihilism."[18]
The Chinese government alleges that Mongolherders/nomads causeclimate change in order to justify the forced relocation of Mongols out of their ancestral land.[16] Under theecological migration policy, the Chinese government has moved thousands of Mongols into urban areas on the basis that the Mongolian nomadic lifestyle is destroying the grasslands and causing climate change symptoms likedesertification andsandstorms.[16] The Chinese government also justifies the movement of Mongols, calling it poverty relief, as hundreds of thousands of Mongols live in extreme poverty, however many of the displaced Mongols actually fall deeper into poverty, while also feeling out of their element and feeling like outcasts in their new homes.[16][19]
The quest for the standardization of Mongolian [language] inInner Mongolia was a product as much of a domestication of the Mongols in China as a protest against the imposition of Chinese [Standard Beijing Mandarin] as the national standard language to which all minority languages were forced to conform.
The decline of Mongolian is part of a years-long push by the central government to assimilate ethnic minorities across China.
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