China says 85% of citizens will use Mandarin by 2025

BEIJING (AP) — China is launching an aggressive campaign to promote Mandarin, saying 85% of its citizens will use the national language by 2025. The move appears to put threatened Chinese regional dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien under even greater pressure, along with minority languages such as Tibetan, Mongolian and Uyghur. The order issued Tuesday by the State Council, China’s Cabinet, said use of Mandarin remains unbalanced and inadequate and needs to be improved to meet the demands of the modern economy. Critics have sporadically protested changes to the education system and employment requirements that have steadily eroded the role of minority languages, calling it a campaign to eradicate cultures that don’t conform with the dominant Han ethnic group.