Christopher P. Atwood

In response to a new school policy, Mongols in Inner Mongolia erupted in a social media storm, defending their mother tongue. The social media storm evolved into a student-teacher strike that rocked the region. The Inner Mongolian authorities had been trying to ease the policy in quietly, even covertly, and at first reacted with hesitation. Pushed into action by Beijing, they quickly rallied and moved into action, coaxing and corralling the students, teachers, and parents into line. Within a few weeks, at the cost of numerous arrests, firings, and up to eight suicides by Mongols caught between the demands of the power vertical and their sense of community responsibility, the strike was broken and the policy forced through. All is back to normal, at least on the surface. But the arguments that spilled out online remain with the questions the definition: what happened? And what did it mean? This talk will attempt to understand the rhetoric in terms of three contested terms.