(TibetanReview.net, Dec27’25) – China’s top legislature has passed a revised Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language on Dec 27 and it will come into force on Jan 1, 2026. The new law will have grave implications for linguistic identity of the people in the ethnic monitory areas, given President Xi Jinping’s ongoing signature campaign to Sinicize them in the name of strengthening the sense of the Chinese nation as one community.
To begin with, the new law designates the third week of September as the week for a nationwide promotion for the standard spoken and written Chinese language. In the ethnic minority areas, this event will no doubt be used to demonstrate what percentage of their populations had attained proficiency in Mandarin and, by extension, decline in fluency in their own mother tongues.
The standard spoken and written Chinese language is an important symbol of the nation, said China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Dec 27.
The revised law is designed to strengthen the promotion, standardization, and use of Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) and standardized Chinese characters across Chinese society — including education, public services, international events, and cyberspace. It also reinforces legal obligations and penalties related to language use, noted China party mouthpiece People’s Daily.
The chinadaily.com.cn report said that a dedicated chapter on legal liability specifies law enforcement departments and outlines penalties in detail. It cited the law as saying interference with others’ learning or use of the standard spoken and written Chinese language will be subject to criticism and education by relevant departments, along with orders for correction and warnings. Administrative penalties for public security violations shall be imposed if such acts constitute violations of public security management.
Such provisions ring a familiar bell when one remembers the mother-tongue and cultural eduction repression that has been going on in Tibet over past several years, leading to closing down of privately run schools and the arrest of their founders. The law appears to suggest that any criticism of Tibetans lacking proficiency in their own mother tongue while being fluent in Mandarin could be punished.
The revised law stipulates that even international exhibitions, conferences and other events held within China that use foreign languages for signs, labels, or promotional materials should also include the standard Chinese language, noted China’s sate new agency Xinhua Dec 27.
The need for the new law appears to be unnecessary unless it specifically targets the ethnic minority areas. This is because the report noted that at present, over 80% of the population can speak Mandarin, and more than 95% of the literate population — which stands at 97.33% — uses standardized Chinese characters.
Under China’s Constitution and ethnic autonomy system, ethnic autonomous regions (eg, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Ningxia) have the right to use one or more local languages alongside the national language, in government affairs, education, and everyday life, according to local statutes and the regional autonomy laws. But these provisions and practices already stand severely eroded under Xi’s rule for the last more than 10 years.
The language law first took effect in 2001.