So whether or not it simply exists is up for debate. What is clear is that the International Criminal Court does not have a definition for cultural genocide by itself. There’s a past history of politics as to why, but the modern justification is that it’s very hard to commit a cultural genocide without just committing a total genocide. After all, the easiest way to kill a culture is to kill the people that practice that culture. Even the western examples of cultural genocide, like what the europeans did to the native Americans, came about after killing tens of millions of them.

The guy who coined the term “genocide” originally meant what we would call “cultural genocide,” and explicitly wanted it to be recognized. However, cultural genocide is not recognized in international law.

If you’re asking about the situation in Xinjiang, what’s happening there does not qualify as cultural genocide in any case. The Chinese government builds mosques, teaches the Uighur language, and celebrates the Uighur culture. Governments committing cultural genocide don’t do that. The US and Canada didn’t celebrate Native American culture in its residential schools for Native American children, for example.

It is real in that we do it all the time. If you look at the way England operated though most of history to it’s colonies, or residential schools to first nations peoples that is the main idea. However in both cases there were also lots of deaths and refuges, and dehumanizing propaganda.

However yeah, you have it figured out. It is a legally distinct category of stuff so politicians can use it to mean whatever they want mostly