One decade before the demise of the
Qing dynasty in 1912, Mandarin was promoted in the planning for China's first
public school system.
Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) has been promoted as the commonly spoken language for the People's Republic since 1956, based
phonologically on the
dialect of Beijing, grammatically and lexically on various
Mandarin varieties, and
stylistically on the writings of
Mao Zedong and
Lu Xun. In September 1951, the
All-China Minorities Education Conference established that all minorities should be taught in their language at the primary and secondary levels when they count with a writing language. Those without a writing language or with an "imperfect" writing language should be helped to develop and reform their writing languages. The
Tibetan Government-in-Exile argues that social pressures and political efforts result in a policy of sinicization and feels that Beijing should promote the
Tibetan language more. Because many languages exist in China, they also have problems regarding diglossia. Recently, in terms of Fishman's typology of the relationships between bilingualism and
diglossia and his
taxonomy of diglossia (Fishman 1978, 1980) in China: more and more minority communities have been evolving from "diglossia without
bilingualism" to "bilingualism without diglossia." This could be an implication of mainland China's power expanding. In 2010,
Tibetan students protested against changes in the Language Policy on the schools that promoted the use of Mandarin instead of Tibetan. They argued that the measure would erode their culture. In 2013, China's Education Ministry said that about 400 million people were unable to speak Mandarin. In that year, the government pushed linguistic unity in China, focusing on the countryside and areas with ethnic minorities. Mandarin Chinese is the
prestige language in practice, and failure to protect ethnic languages does occur. In summer 2020, the Inner Mongolian government announced an education policy change to phase out Mongolian as the language of instructions for humanities in elementary and middle schools, adopting the national instruction material instead. Thousands of ethnic Mongolians in northern China gathered to protest the policy. The
Ministry of Education describes the move as a natural extension of the ''Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language'' () of 2000. In 2024,
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping called for wider use of Mandarin by ethnic minorities and in border areas. He stated that it is necessary to guide all ethnic groups in border regions to "continuously enhance their recognition of the Chinese nation, Chinese culture and the Communist Party". ==Study of foreign languages== . Front to back:
French, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, and Korean.
Indo-European English English has been the most widely-taught foreign language in China, as it is a required subject for students attending university. After the
Reform and opening up policy in 1988, English was taught in public schools starting in the third year of primary school.
The Economist reported in 2006 that up to one fifth of the population was learning English.
Gordon Brown, the former
British prime minister, estimated that the total English-speaking population in China would outnumber the native speakers in the rest of the world in two decades. In China, English is used as a
lingua franca in several fields, especially for business settings, and in schools to teach Standard Mandarin to people who are not Chinese citizens. English is also one of the official languages in
Hong Kong, as prescribed by Chapter 1, Article 9 of the
Basic Law of Hong Kong.
German As of 2015, about 170,000 people have studied the
German language in China.
Spanish Due to growing interest in
Latin America within China, about 20,000 people in China have studied the
Spanish language as of 2016. As of 2018, there are about 120 Spanish-language departments nationwide.
Portuguese Interest in
Portuguese has increased greatly, due in part to Chinese investment in African nations such as Angola, Mozambique, and Cape Verde. although with government backing since then, interest in it has increased. Macau is used by China as a hub for learning Portuguese and diplomatic and financial ties with Brazil and Portuguese-speaking African countries. As of 2018, there are about 40 Portuguese-language departments nationwide. For example,
Jianwen Foreign Language School, a high school located in the city of
Shenzhen, has offered a Russian program since 2011.
Arabic There have been a growing number of students studying
Arabic, due to reasons of cultural interest and belief in better job opportunities. The language is also widely studied amongst the
Hui people. In the past, literary Arabic education was promoted in Islamic schools by the
Kuomintang when it ruled mainland China.
Esperanto Esperanto became prominent in certain circles in the early 20th century and reached its peak in the 1980s, though by 2024 its prominence had declined.
Japanese As of 2012, a little over one million people in China were studying
Japanese, and there were 16,752 Japanese-language teachers. Learner motivations included interest in Japan's society and culture.
Korean There are about 2 million
Korean language speakers in China.
Korean language education in China began in the year 1945 at the
National Oriental Language College. Some non-Korean families have learned Korean because they expect to attain educational success or to increase their business connections with South Korea. ==See also==