中國表示到2025年會有85%的公民使用普通話

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

China says 85% of citizens will use Mandarin by 2025

Tue., November 30, 2021, 11:55 p.m.

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, known in Chinese as “putonghua" or the “common tongue," 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.

Along with the 2025 goal, the policy aims to make Mandarin virtually universal by 2035, including in rural areas and among ethnic minorities.

The promotion of Mandarin over other languages has sparked occasional protests, including last year in the Inner Mongolia region when the Mongolian language was replaced by standard Mandarin as the language of instruction.

China's ruling Communist Party has denounced all such movements as a form of separatism and repressed them ruthlessly. It says language conformity is necessary for the sake of the economy and national unity.

The policy is backed up by legal requirements and the document issued Wednesday demanded strengthened supervision to “ensure that the national common spoken and written language is used as the official language of government agencies and used as the basic language of schools, news and publications, radio, film and television, public services and other fields."

It calls also on officials to “vigorously enhance the international status and influence of Chinese" in academia, international organizations and at global gatherings.

Government attempts to promote Mandarin through its worldwide network of Confucius Institutes have been controversial, with critics denouncing them as an attempt to promote the party's agenda and quash discussion of topics such its human rights record.

Translation

北京（美聯社）- 中國正在發起一場積極推廣普通話的運動，稱到 2025 年，85% 的公民將使用國語。

此舉似乎使受到威脅的中國地方方言例如粵語和福建話, 以及藏語、蒙古語和維吾爾語等少數民族語言面臨更大壓力。

在週二中國國務院, 即中國的內閣,發布命令稱，使用用 “國語”, 亦叫 “普通話”或 “通用語”,仍然“不平衡和不足”，需要改進以適應現代經濟的需求。

批評者時不時抗議教育制度和就業要求的變化，這些變化穩步削弱了少數民族語言的地位，稱這是一場剷除不符合在主流地位的漢族文化的運動。

根隨着2025 年的目標，該政策旨在到 2035 年使普通話幾乎全面普及，包括在農村地區和少數民族中。

推廣普通話以替代其他語言偶爾會引發抗議，包括去年在內蒙古地區，蒙古語被標準普通話取代作為教學語言。

中國執政的共產黨譴責所有此類抗議運動是一種分裂主義，並對其進行無情鎮壓。共產黨說為了經濟和民族團結，語言統一是必要的。

該政策以法律要求去支撑，週三​​發布的文件要求加強監管，以“確保普通話在語言及文字成為政府機構的官方語;  並在學校、新聞及出版、電台廣播、影視、公共服務等領域作為基本語去使用” 。

它還呼籲官員們在學術界、國際組織和全球聚會上“大力提昇國語的國際地位和影響力”。

政府通過其遍布全球的孔子學院網絡推廣普通話的嘗試一直存在爭議，批評人士譴責這是企圖宣傳黨的議程並打壓其人權記錄等話題的討論。

              So, China is launching an aggressive campaign to promote Mandarin, saying that 85% of its citizens will use the national language by 2025. It also calls on officials to “vigorously enhance the international status and influence of Chinese" in academia, international organizations and at global gatherings. What an ambitious project it is.