"National Language" in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

I have encountered what seems to be an anomaly in contemporary Chinese usage, and have been assured that you are among those most capable of addressing it.

I was reading an analysis by a Darren Byler, a "Xinjiang Scholar," of a 2017 classified directive from Zhu Hailun, Gauleiter of Xinjiang, on how properly to run the concentration camps in that territory (https://supchina.com/2019/12/04/a-xinjiang-scholars-close-reading-of-the-china-cables/). (I have not looked either at the full English translation of these directives, or the Chinese text, although both are available. I figured the analysis would give the gist of them.)

The increasing use of the term guoyu 国语 for what was once generally called Hanyu 汉语 (even, in Xinjiang vernacular sometimes, 汉话）and putonghua (common speech) 普通话 fits into a broader ideological shift in China: the rise of the Xi / CCP centered party-state cult, and the deemphasizing of the former minzu system, rhetorically but now even institutionally) in favor of the pan-Chinese national identity Zhonghua minzu 中华民族 . This is evident in many ways: Xi's playing up of Confucianistic language and rituals; the push for "national studies" 国学 in universities, the sinicization 中国化 of religion campaign with its odd focus on domes and other architectural features of mosques as "Arab" and therefore to be expunged as well as the anti-Halal and de-Saudification campaign and similar attacks on Christian architecture; the flag-raising ceremonies and mandatory posting of lists of Xi quotes and CCP aphorisms in religious institutions. On the popular level, the Hanfu "Chinese clothing" movement that Kevin Carrico wrote about, reflects a kind of popular Han "white nationalism" arising around similar sentiments, though often arrayed in southern China against the use of Cantonese (if I remember Kevin's book correctly).

Here, the switch to "guoyu" has little or nothing to do with the KMT / Guomindang use of the term, and CCP now is on very good terms with the KMT in any case, deploying means both open and surreptitious to interfere in Taiwan's elections on behalf of the KMT presidential candidate. (This raises a question–is guoyu still the common term for "Chinese language" used in Taiwan? Incidentally–that KMT candidate's given name is in fact Kuo-yu, and he's running against someone named Ying-wen–the pun only works in Romanization).

In the Xinjiang context, the argument is this: Uyghurs need to learn the "national language," therefore extraordinary measures must be taken. Besides guoyu, another term one hears and reads often is 国家共同语言 the national common language–which has a slightly different, more nationalistic, connotation than "common speech" 普通话。The goal, I assume, is to disassociate Mandarin from the Han minzu per se, and to argue through terminology that the "common national language" is that which much be spoken by all Zhonghua minzu. It's nativism challenging the institutional and linguistic legacy of a formerly pluralist system (though pluralism often only observed in the breach) and similar in many ways to Modi's Hindutva in India, which is claiming, contrary to founding principles of modern India, that Hinduism and the Hindu language are the national religion and language of India. In China, it's the CCP cult and northern Mandarin that are now being raised up as central and supreme to other beliefs and languages.

Usually states teach "the national language" to kids in schools. PRC has had 70 years to do that, but according to its own rhetoric, the effort has apparently been an abject failure in Xinjiang. Now, then, they argue that middle-aged men must learn mandarin in concentration camps aka "concentrated educational transformation training centers."

There's a Chinese-language bilingual charter school in DC called Yuying.  I met a kid who's been going there for a few years (her parents brought her to a party at my house).  She speaks pretty good conversational Mandarin. I asked her what they called the language, e.g. when the teachers scold them "don't speak English, speak Chinese," how do they say that in Chinese?   Her response was "Zhongwen"  "中文。  我们必须说中文。"    That's a sample size of one, and she's five years old, but I'd be curious what the generic term for "Chinese" is in Mandarin in these schools and similar settings outside of PRC and Taiwan.  "Zhongwen" is used for the spoken language as well as written, and does more or less avoid ethno-national connotations.