The Ministry prepared the text along with the State Language Commission and will put it into effect on December 15.

The text establishes standards for the exams’ content, scope, and assessment criteria for fifth and sixth-graders and middle school students.

The document seeks to ‘strengthen the development and promotion of the standardized system of the unified national language and characters.’

China plans to implement actions to achieve that 85 percent of the population speaks Mandarin or Putonghua languages in daily communication by 2025.

Chinese Mandarin has become a United Nations official language since 1946. April 20 was the date chosen to honor Cang Jie, who was an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters.

In February 2021, the World Tourism Organization also included Chinese Mandarin in the list of languages used in its work and official documents, along with Spanish, Arabic, Russian, English, and French languages.

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