Abstract: China's constitution grants citizens the right to participate in litigation with their own ethnic languages, aiming to realize ethnic equality, to promote ethnic unity, to prohibit ethnic division, and to protect the linguistic and cultural diversity of the Chinese nation, and thus improving China's cultural soft power. However, an investigation of the judicial practice concerning the use of ethnic language reveals that problems exist in such litigation, such as non-standard procedures and violation of the principles of litigation. This hinders protection of the litigation rights of ethnic languages. Such problems are caused by the lack of procedural safeguard of the litigation system. In order to ensure the litigation rights of the ethnic languages, a set of "Ethnic-Chinese bilingual litigation rules" should be established to provide the judicial organs with uniform operating standards. The bilingual litigation rules should define the concept, type of the bilingual litigation and content of the litigation rights of ethnic languages, and set rules for the use of trial language and the litigation language applicable to different litigation types.

Key words: litigation rights of ethnic languages, ethnic-Chinese bilingual litigation, the right to the choice of trial language, the right to translation, ethnic unity