China's National People's Congress (NPC) is expected to vote on Thursday on a new ethnic unity law that will require schools to use Mandarin as the default language, prioritising it over minority languages such as Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian. The law is part of a suite of legislation being approved at this year's annual two sessions gathering, which also includes a new environmental code and the 15th five-year plan.
The NPC, often described as a rubber-stamp parliament, has never rejected an item on its agenda. Delegates have spent the past week debating Beijing's proposed bills, which are all but certain to pass. The ethnic unity law reflects President Xi Jinping's policy of 'sinicisation', aiming to assimilate minority cultures into the Han ethnic majority. Xi has said that China's ethnic groups should be like 'pomegranate seeds that stick together'.
Under the new law, Mandarin must also be displayed more prominently than minority scripts on public signage. Recent reports from Inner Mongolia suggest that some signs have already been renovated to show Mandarin characters more prominently than Mongolian script. Yalkun Uluyol, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the law 'is a blatant move by Beijing to legalise forced assimilation and political control'.
According to NPC Observer, a website tracking Chinese politics, the ethnic unity law has been treated with particular importance by the Chinese Communist Party. In 2025, the CCP's full politburo, led by Xi, discussed a draft of the law—something not reported in four decades.
The NPC is also expected to approve a new ecological and environmental code, which will replace various laws on pollution and environmental protection as China moves towards its 'dual carbon' goals of peaking emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2060. Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the code 'represents a step forward in the development of China's environmental legal system'.
Additionally, the NPC will vote through the annual budget, the government work report, and the 15th five-year plan, which sets an economic growth target of 4.5% for 2026—the lowest in decades.
