Recently, a South African media has posted an article concerning China's Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which only repeats a familiar stereotypical tone against China's ethnic policy. Here is what this law is really about:

First, it is a law of unity and equality. China is home to 56 ethnic groups. The law affirms that all citizens and all ethnic groups in China are equal. It attaches great importance to preserving ethnic minority cultures and heritage, and lawfully safeguards the right of all ethnic groups to preserve, use and develop their own spoken and written languages. It also upholds and improves the system of regional ethnic autonomy, and requires the state to protect the lawful rights and interests of all ethnic groups. In a country of 56 ethnic groups, more than 1.4 billion people and a vast and diverse territory, such a legal framework in China is essential to ensure that every community is protected by the same constitutional order.

Second, it is a law for shared development and common prosperity. It commits the state to integrating ethnic areas into national development strategies, strengthening their capacity for self-development, and closing gaps in infrastructure, education, healthcare and employment between ethnic regions and the rest of the country. This is the same logic that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty across China over the past two decades, including in Xizang (Tibet). Investment in roads, bridges, schools, clinics and hospitals enables high-altitude, rural and remote communities to take part in national development. Only in this way can the whole country achieve common prosperity, and ensure that no one is left behind in the modernisation of the country.

Third, it is a law safeguarding China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and opposing secession. There are some forces in the world that do not wish to see a united and developing China, and that seek to make use of ethnic issues to meddle in China's internal affairs. Under this law, all ethnic groups are masters of the country together, and are at the same time obliged to safeguard national unity and solidarity among ethnic groups.

It is telling that such kind of criticism almost never comes from those who actually lived in Xizang Autonomous Region of China. The mindset behind the above-mentioned article seems to remain stuck in the old Xizang, a society in which more than 90 percent of the population were held, by institutional design, as serfs and second-class citizens. That order had been overthrown by the Chinese people after Xizang was peacefully liberated in 1951. Today Xizang enjoys social stability, economic growth and ethnic solidarity, with local people's lives improving year on year, and the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law gives that progress a firmer legal foundation.

We welcome South African friends to travel to Xizang and see the truth and the current conditions there for themselves.