If you want to send a text message in Mongolian, it can be tough – it’s a script that most software doesn’t recognize. But for some people in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in northern China, that’s a good thing.

When authorities in Inner Mongolia announced in 2020 that the language would no longer be the language of instruction in schools, ethnic Mongolians — who make up about 18% of the population — feared the loss of their language, one of the last remaining markers of their distinctive identity. The news and then plans for protest flowed across WeChat, China’s largest messaging service. Parents were soon marching by the thousands in the streets of the local capital, demanding that the decision be reversed.

Why did we write this story?

The AI industry so far is dominated by technology built by and for English speakers. This story asks what the technology looks like for speakers of less common languages, and how that might change in the near term.

With the remarkable exception of the so-called Zero Covid protests of 2022, demonstrations of any size are incredibly rare in China, partially because online surveillance prevents large numbers of people from openly discussing sensitive issues in Mandarin, much less planning public marches. With automated surveillance technologies having a hard time with Mongolian though, protestors had the advantage of being able to coordinate with relative freedom.