Mandarin as the official language Beijing made Mandarin (also known as Putonghua) the nation's sole official language in 1982, leading to bans on other languages at many radio and television stations. This status was confirmed by the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, which went into effect on January 1, 2001. This law implements the provision in the
Constitution of the People's Republic of China that the state promotes nationwide use of the language.
Use of Cantonese on television Due to Mandarin's status as the official language, use of the country's other languages in television as well as radio and film is rigorously restricted by the
State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT). Permission from national or local authorities is required for using a dialect as the primary programming language at radio and television stations. One elementary school in
Yuexiu, Guangzhou reportedly requires students to speak Mandarin not only in classes but also during their spare time, and threatens to deduct points from their records if they fail to comply. This has caused some children to become reluctant to learn and use Cantonese or unable to understand or communicate in Cantonese at times. Also contributing to the decline is the influx of
migrant population into Guangzhou as a result of the city's economic and developmental advantages in the country. The migrant worker population in China is estimated to be a huge 250 million, with most of them in big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Guangdong is the major destination of migrant workers in China, there is estimated to be over 20 million migrant workers. According to authorities, a big part of the migrant workers in Guangdong province come from Hunan. Increase of non-Cantonese-speaking population in the city leads to an increased number of non-Cantonese-speaking teachers in schools, forcing students to speak Mandarin on more occasions than Cantonese. Non-Cantonese speakers' name-callings online during debates, such as calling Cantonese as language for "barbarian", "uncivilized", "uneducated" people etc., has further deepened the hostility between the two groups. Despite some decline in Cantonese usage in Guangdong province, its survival is still doing better than other Chinese dialects due to the local cultural prestige, pride, popularity, and especially with the wide availability and popularity of Cantonese entertainment and media from both Guangzhou and especially from Hong Kong, which is maintaining the encouragements of the local Cantonese speakers to want to continue to preserve their culture and language versus other Chinese dialectal speaking regions which are much more limited with their encouragements to maintain their local dialects as they have very limited to no media or entertainment outlets to cater to their local dialects. Back in the 1980s-90s, migrants from many parts of China settling in Guangzhou or anywhere in Guangdong showed more interest to learning Cantonese and wanting to integrate into the local cultural environment seeing it as trendy and rich due to the popularity of Hong Kong entertainment, but since the 2000s, the newer migrant settlers increasingly showed less interest in the local culture and very often strictly demanding the official obligations of the local residents to command speaking Mandarin as the official Chinese language to them. Though as of the 2020s, some additional renewed efforts to preserve the Cantonese language and culture have been introduced with some schools in Guangzhou now starting to teach some limited Cantonese language classes, activities related to Cantonese language and culture and as well as hosting Cantonese appreciation cultural events. Many local Cantonese speaking families in Guangdong province overall in general including in Guangzhou have started placing more stronger emphasis to encourage the use of Cantonese with their children to preserve the local language and culture. In a 2018 report study by Shan Yunming and Li Sheng, the report showed that 90% of people living in Guangzhou are bilingual in both Cantonese and Mandarin, though fluency will vary depending on if they are locally born to the city and the surrounding Guangdong province or migrants from other provinces, which shows how much importance the Cantonese language still has in the city despite the strict policy rules from the government to be using Mandarin as the country's official language. Although there have been some declines of new migrants willing to learn Cantonese when arriving into the Guangdong province including the city of Guangzhou compared to in the past, there are still significant amounts of new migrants that still show interest in wanting to learn Cantonese and immerse into the culture in the province especially in Guangzhou and other surrounding outlying towns and this is all due to the wide availability and popularity of Cantonese entertainment and many engage with the local Cantonese speaking residents whom show a lot of cultural pride in their culture. There are two Cantonese language TV competition
game shows in the Guangdong province, which they are based in Guangzhou called,
Speaking Cantonese The Better () and
Classic Cantonese Culture () showing contestants trying to prove how much they know Cantonese language and the traditional Cantonese culture.
Speaking Cantonese The Better consist of contestants who are natively from other parts of China, but have settled to Guangzhou or other surrounding towns and have willingly signed up to be a contestant on the show and compete against each other to prove how much Cantonese language and culture they have learned from being in the region with some of them having decent fluency in the language and culture while some are much more limited in such. Its name itself is a pun, as 粵 (Cantonese) and 越 (to exceed) are
homophones, both pronounced as
yuè/
jyut6.
Classic Cantonese Culture are mainly school age contestants locally from different parts of the Guangdong province including from Guangzhou as well as even from Hong Kong and Macau where they compete with each other and are put to the test of how much they know about their own Cantonese language and culture. These shows are examples of how Cantonese language and culture is still thriving in the local province including in Guangzhou and still attract some significant amount of new migrants to want to immerse in learning the Cantonese language and culture as well as there are still significant amounts of local youths still having pride in their own Cantonese language and culture despite China's strict influential policies of using Mandarin as the official language.
Guangxi, the neighbor province, used to be a Cantonese-speaking area, especially in the capital
Nanning. Since the promotion of Mandarin from the 1990s, the number of Cantonese speakers has been dropped to less than 30% according to an unofficial statistic years later, most of who are the elder generations. Besides the decline of Cantonese in Guangzhou, there is also fear of Cantonese declining in Hong Kong. Stephen Matthews, an associate professor of linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong commented that "It is difficult to calculate the timing but in the medium- to long run, Cantonese is an endangered language". He added "It might survive for 50 years or so but after 50 years it may well be on its way out". Thomas Lee, professor of linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong doesn't believe the situation is as stark, but maintains that Cantonese needs to stay in the mainstream education or it will end up like Shanghainese, now spoken by less than 50% of the Shanghainese people. Even as far away as overseas, the Chinatowns have seen Cantonese being pushed out by Mandarin, reflecting different immigration patterns. Peter Kwong, professor of Asian American studies at Hunter College in New York City commented that "Mandarin's ascent comes with the realignment of power in Chinese-American communities, where the recent (non-Cantonese) immigrants are gaining economic and political clout".
Earlier moves by Guangzhou TV in adopting Mandarin In 2009, Guangzhou TV shifted its Financial Channel from Cantonese to Mandarin at a cost of 30 million
yuan. ==CPPCC Guangzhou Committee proposal==