China is At War With Its Own Words

Jemma Tan | China Fellow

Image sourced from Kale Design via Unsplash

When China’s rubber-stamp parliament passed the “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress” during its annual Two Sessions in March 2026, it attracted immediate international furor lamenting its Mandarin standardisation requirements in schooling. For vulnerable ethnic minority languages including Tibetan, Uyghur and Mongolian, these new legislations signalled further restrictions under Xi Jinping’s ongoing assimilationist project enshrining Han-centric identity within China’s national image. However, while mainstream coverage was concentrated on classrooms, the revision of the “Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language” in January 2026 had quietly foregrounded standard Mandarin across online publications in the Chinese cyberspace. The target of this twin legislative move is not solely the ethnic other, but rather seeks to extend language control across the constantly adapting vernacular of China’s 1.12 billion netizens. The tension no longer simply concerns which languages are permitted, but who holds jurisdiction over the one that remains.

Chinese Cyberspace’s Unprecedented Legal Intrusion

The new “Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language” landed with little to no media scrutiny, yet it is decidedly not an incremental policy. Over 25 years have passed since its release in 2000 as the first dedicated national policy stipulating the scope, norms and standards for the usage of Mandarin Chinese. All cultural programs, web series, movies, games and other forms of digital publications must now mandate Mandarin as the sole language of online communication. Digital platforms have simultaneously been made legally liable for its implementation and regular monitoring, reflecting the paradigmatic shift of censorship from reactive to structural and anticipatory.

China’s Great Firewall censorship project historically operated under a subtractive logic; identifying incendiary phrases, accounts, apps or hashtags, and reactively blocking, banning and deleting them from cyberspace. Yet this latest revision represents the transition to a more totalising ambition of pure substitution, whereby dissent is not simply removed but the very language through which to express it is proactively limited. Censorship is no longer quietly enacted, but publicised in line with a clear ideological purpose to ensure internet content more actively propagates the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s interests. Chinese Language Department’s director Wang Deyan at North China University of Technology corroborated that adapting language regulation to cyberspace will contribute to a “confident and coherent presentation of Chinese culture in the global arena”, fundamentally as a Mandarin-speaking, Han-majority state.

The Target Market Does Not Discriminate

The framing of language policy as an attack on minority rights is not wrong, but the target of these unprecedented digital revisions is even broader; the entire Chinese netizen population. Amid the mutating wave of internet buzzwords weaponised in the post-COVID era, revised laws have acted as a legislative answer to the CCP’s ideological concerns regarding cyberspace as an ungovernable linguistic territory. Homophonic substitutions have long been the driving engine of semantic evasion, whereby words that sound similar to other politically charged words are utilised; notably the word for river crab, hexie, as a euphemism for its homophonic meaning of “harmonious” sarcastically critiquing official discourses. Viral terms like tangping (lying flat) or runxue (running away philosophy) moreover function as social identity forming expressions that allow netizens to lament socioeconomic pressures or express shared community through coded language. Former Weibo censors have revealed authorities are particularly alarmed by this type of slang for its ability to adapt rapidly to encode critique into language itself, and it is precisely this accelerating linguistic creativity that this new law’s standardisation is attempting to curtail.

Ethnic minorities are doubly affected by schooling legislations and this encroachment upon the internet. CCP crackdowns have been tightening control over public gatherings for decades, systematically dismantling any form of shared spaces that facilitated community building and forcing minority groups to form online sanctuaries. The Mandarin standardisation law is a pressure alongside the accelerating deletion of chat groups, websites and entire apps that previously allowed minorities dynamic forms of cultural expression. Over 89 per cent of Mongolian-language websites have been shut down or converted into Mandarin Chinese, even those focused on language preservation or educational resources. Simply sharing personal photos or existing as a minority wearing ethnic clothing can also come under digital scrutiny, reflecting discomfort with any autonomous cultural expressions that are not state-approved. The only avenue for dissent against Mandarin standardisation ironically must now be conducted through the language itself, and only though vernacular that is state approved.

Can You Legislate a Living Language?

While the net of this new law stretches widely across China’s digital ecosystem, embedded within it is a level of unenforceability. This push-pull of erasure and resilience has shaped the contours of digital communities from their very beginnings, consistently evolving into new platforms and digital spaces to evade censorship. Sociolinguist Xuan Wang affirms that being able to entirely ban languages as they continue to evolve is neither realistic or tenable, reflecting that “wherever there is censorship and control, there is resistance”. 

Therein lies a glaring soft power contradiction; the law strives to project Chinese culture in the global arena yet facilitates domestic efforts to stamp out any creativity from its own language. Since January 2026, there has been a prominent surge in China’s affective soft power through the proliferation of the ‘Chinamaxxing’ trend across Western social media reshaping perceptions of China, with users performing traditional practices like taichi, drinking hot water or, importantly, learning Mandarin. Trends like “city bu city”  (city or not city?) in particular benefit from the increasing popularity of exporting Chinese culture through the hybridisation of English-Chinese into slang which would be untenable under new language laws.

The “Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language” exposes the paradox inherent in China’s efforts to promote itself as a champion of globalisation, while simultaneously operating a model of internet sovereignty over its language and diverse ethnic cultures. In a digital ecosystem where ‘being Chinese’ is gaining greater salience, the CCP remain legislating against the linguistic creativity of its own citizens, regardless of their ethnicity.

Jemma is a 5th year student majoring in Finance and Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney, with an interest in how nurturing international ties can capitalise on the advantages of Australia’s multicultural society. Her connection to China is rooted in her heritage and lifelong appreciation of Chinese language and culture, strengthened during a transformative year abroad at Peking University in Beijing sponsored by the Westpac Asian Exchange Scholarship. 

In 2026, she will be working towards an Honours thesis in Chinese Studies centred around exploring Chinese internet language and its impact in social identity formation, working to bridge Australia’s prominent gap in Asia-capability across numerous sectors.

She is excited to contribute to YAIA as a fellow integrating her interests in finance, second language acquisition, economic policy, history and culture into insightful pieces commenting on international interactions with China.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Young Australians in International Affairs. All content is original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.