Ethnic minorities have the right to use and develop their own spoken and written languages. The state takes concrete measures to ensure the legitimate use of ethnic languages in the administrative and judicial sectors, news and publication, radio, film and television, culture and education, and other areas. Ethnic minority students can use their own languages in the college entrance examination. China National Radio and local radio stations broadcast in 21 ethnic languages on a daily basis, and the coverage of radio and television broadcasts in ethnic languages in border areas has further increased. The state promotes bilingual teaching in ethnic areas. By 2013 bilingual teaching was done in the classroom in more than 10,000 schools around the country, and 29 languages of 21 ethnic minority groups were used together with standard Chinese-Putonghua. China has 15 institutions of higher learning for ethnic minority students, with approximately 240,000 students on campus. The state continues the preferential policy toward ethnic minority students in college admissions by lowering the admission scores for or granting extra scores to them, and by granting priority admissions to these students when they are competing with Han students under the same conditions. Special consideration is also given to students from ethnic minority groups with small populations.

The learning and use of the Tibetan language is protected by law. Both the Tibetan language and standard Chinese are used in the decisions and regulations passed at the people's congresses at all levels in the Tibet Autonomous Region, as well as in the official documents and public notices issued by people's governments at all levels and their subordinate departments. In judicial litigation the Tibetan language is used during trials when there are Tibetan parties involved, and the legal instruments are written in Tibetan in such cases. Both Tibetan and standard Chinese appear in the official seals, credentials, forms, envelopes, letter paper, writing paper, insignias of different entities, and are used in the signs and plaques of government organs, factories and mines, schools, train stations, airports, stores, hotels, restaurants, theaters, tourism spots, stadiums and libraries, and on street nameplates and road signs. Tibet has 14 journals and ten newspapers published in the Tibetan language. The Tibet People's Radio Station runs 42 programs broadcast in Tibetan (including the Kangba dialect), broadcasting 21 hours of news programs in the Tibetan language and 18 hours of radio programs in the Kangba dialect on a daily basis. The Tibet Television Station Satellite Television broadcasts around the clock in Tibetan. In 2013 the Tibet Autonomous Region published 780 titles of books written in Tibetan, printing a total of 4.31 million copies. For many Tibetan-language users, reading, listening to and watching domestic and international news and getting other information through the Internet, mobile phones and other platforms compatible to the Tibetan language have become part of their daily life.

In Xinjiang, there are 13 ethnic groups who have lived there for generations, and they use ten different spoken and written languages. During the performance of official business, organs of the autonomous region and the autonomous prefectures and counties use both standard Chinese and the local ethnic languages. The languages of the ethnic minorities are also widely used in the press, publication, radio, film and television. The Xinjiang Daily is published in the Uygur, standard Chinese, Kazak and Mongolian languages; the Xinjiang Television Station broadcasts in the Uygur, standard Chinese, Kazak and Mongolian languages; and the Xinjiang People's Publishing House publishes in the Uygur, standard Chinese, Kazak, Mongolian, Kirgiz and Xibe languages. More than 70 percent of the books and audio-visual products published by publishing houses in Xinjiang are in local ethnic languages. In 2013 subtitles in ethnic languages were added to 100 films and 5,975 episodes of TV series, and four TV dramas were made with ethnic minority themes.