diff --git a/Lib/test/test_re.py b/Lib/test/test_re.py
index 797d85d..0a77e6f 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_re.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_re.py
@@ -1552,8 +1552,7 @@
         self.assertRaises(re.error, re.compile, r'(?au)\w')
 
     def test_locale_flag(self):
-        import locale
-        _, enc = locale.getlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE)
+        enc = locale.getpreferredencoding()
         # Search non-ASCII letter
         for i in range(128, 256):
             try: