Chaak-ming Lau, an assistant professor of linguistics at the Education University of Hong Kong, believes that despite increased use of Mandarin in Hong Kong society, the city is not at risk of losing Cantonese. In Hong Kong’s 2021 census, over 6.3 million people aged 5 and up still have Cantonese as their usual spoken language. The Hong Kong government’s official stance is promoting biliteracy in English and written Chinese, and trilingualism in English, Putonghua, and Cantonese. And in the Ethnologue, the world’s most comprehensive catalog of languages, Cantonese—as part of the Yue Chinese family—has “institutional vitality,” which means communities and institutions use it extensively. “Cantonese is very far from being endangered,” Lau tells TIME.

6.3 million out of 7 million people still use it as their main language. I can see how calling for the “preservation of Cantonese” could be viewed as a separatist dogwhistle. The essay that caught the attention of the government was one that described the future of Hong Kong as one where Cantonese and local culture is all but wiped out by the mainland government in 20 years. One character in the story calls the protagonist who grew up in England “more qualified to be a Hong Konger than any of us” because they were saved from the see see pee mind virus. It’s very funny.