China launches campaign to get 85% of its people speaking Mandarin by 2025

Tibetan Buddhist monks study their text books as part of lessons in Mandarin (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

China is launching an aggressive campaign to promote Mandarin, saying that 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 Uighur.