15 years ago today, a Mongolian herder named Mergen was killed by a Chinese coal truck. I built an interactive map of every mine that has come for the same land since. 423 named. 4,843 visible from satellite. 10,000+ counted.
@soyonbo.bsky.social
I measured every People's Daily front page for the last 17 months, to the pixel. A single article has not exceeded 16% of the page in that window — unless the subject is Xi Jinping. open.substack.com/pub/soyonbo/...
The 16 Percent Ceiling: a rule only Xi can break
PropagandaScope has new findings
open.substack.com
Bill Bishop flagged it. I checked the data. He was right. 人民领袖 ("People's Leader") is trending back into Chinese state media — a Mao-era honorific that's been off-limits since 1978. Full analysis in today's Sinocism. Data via PropagandaScope. sinocism.com/p/the-people...
PropagandaScope in Newsweek. Our data shows China's "ethnic unity" slogan is amplified up to 15x more in minority regions like Xinjiang, Tibet, and Southern Mongolia compared with the national People's Daily. This is what the platform was built to reveal. The data is public and growing.
"Soul Casting": Leaked Document Reveals How China Controls What Minority Students Read open.substack.com/pub/soyonbo/...
"Soul Casting": Leaked Document Reveals How China Controls What Minority Students Read
An internal directive from Inner Mongolia University establishes a five-step system to politically vet every minority-language textbook.
open.substack.com
I obtained an internal Party document from Inner Mongolia University, stamped "strictly prohibited from external distribution," that details 19 directives for eliminating the Mongolian language. The original Chinese PDF is also available for download. open.substack.com/pub/soyonbo/...
'Must Be Corrected': A Leaked University Document Reveals China's Plan to Erase the Mongolian Language
An internal Party directive from Inner Mongolia University
open.substack.com
Using his new PropagandaScope tool to monitor 28 provincial Party newspapers, @soyonbo.bsky.social examines how Xi Jinping's new Party education campaign to promote a “correct view of political achievement” has been discussed to varying degrees across the PRC.
Xi Launched a Political Campaign. I Measured How 21 Provinces Responded.
PropagandaScope tracked one million articles to find out
soyonbo.substack.com
I built PropagandaScope, a website that automatically scans party newspapers across 20 Chinese provinces to measure how political keywords propagate through China's propaganda system. propagandascope.org/about
About | PropagandaScope
propagandascope.org
"Mongolian is a backward language, it can only describe nomadic culture like cows, sheep, or grassland." - my re-education teacher in 2020
High Peaks Pure Earth@hpeaks.bsky.social · 5mo agoNew legislation will require schools to use Mandarin by default, taking priority over minority ethnic languages such as Tibetan, Uyghur and Mongolian. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
"The online space has become our very last [classroom], museum, and community hall,” journalist @soyonbo.bsky.social tells PEN America. #InternationalMotherLanguageDay
Thanks to PEN America. When a language is taken away, it’s not just words that are lost, it’s memory, connection, and the ability to speak.
PEN America@penamerica.bsky.social · 7mo ago🧵 Over 6 million Mongolians live in China. Today, they face erasure of their identity online. In a new report, PEN America and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center document the Chinese government’s tactics to silence cultural expression. pen.org/press-releas...
What is happening to #Mongolian #language and culture online in China? pen.org/inner-mongol... via @penamerica.bsky.social #minority #langsky
What is happening to Mongolian language and culture online in China?
More than six million Mongolians living in China are having their culture, language, and identity ripped away from them.
pen.org
Grateful to collaborate with Professor Leibold on this work. What mattered most in this process was taking policy discussions out of abstraction and grounding them in lived institutional realities. It is an honor. madeinchinajournal.com/2026/01/20/r...
Rectifying Names, Erasing Mongols: The Unmaking of Mongolian Education in China
On a clear October morning in 2025, two massive cranes rolled up to a middle school in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Workers prised off the large Chinese and Mongolian signs running along the ...
madeinchinajournal.com
pen.org/report/inner... This new report from PEN America matters because it moves beyond policy language and looks at how repression actually works inside institutions. Highly recommended.
“Save Our Mother Tongue”
Beijing has silenced Mongolian voices, all the while expanding its arsenal of tactics to influence the information ecosystem.
pen.org
"The Weekly printed the piece, and it launched my career – which came to an end five years later, in 2020, when the government abruptly shuttered the magazine." —Soyonbo Borjgin for the first issue of @equatormag.bsky.social
The Xi Jinping School of Journalism • Articles • EQUATOR
The education and reeducation of a Mongolian reporter
equator.org
Mongolians in Exile Welcome U.S. Senators Introducing Bipartisan Bill to Address Human Rights Violations in Southern Mongolia. For decades, many Mongolians have faced relentless efforts to erase our language, traditions, and way of life. From the closure of schools teaching in our (thread)