Article 15 of the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, which came into effect on July 1, states, “The state respects and protects the learning and use of minority languages and scripts, promotes the standardization, normalization and informatization of minority languages and scripts, and supports the protection, collation, research and utilization of ancient books of minority groups.” Namgyal Tashi, deputy director and research fellow at the Research Centre for Fostering a Stronger Sense of the Chinese Nation as One Community, Xizang Academy of Social Sciences, noted that the promulgation and implementation of the law establishes a clear institutional framework for the scientific protection of ethnic languages and scripts—namely, standardization, normalization, and informatization—which has long been the shared goal of governments and academic communities at all levels. 

“Tibetan is a supra-dialectal written language. Although pronunciation varies across different dialect regions, the written script remains unified,” Namgyal Tashi said. Over nearly a thousand years of development, Tibetan has evolved into a unified writing system that enables speakers of different dialects to communicate through the same written language, thereby preserving its supra-dialectal character and cultural cohesion. Standardization, he emphasized, is therefore the cornerstone of the scientific preservation of ethnic languages and scripts.