About 400 million Chinese can not speak mandarin

Email|Print|Comments       twitter     facebook     Sina Microblog     reddit    

About 30 percent of the Chinese population, or 400 million people, can not speak mandarin, said the Ministry of Education here Thursday.

Although the remainder of 1.3 billion Chinese can communicate in mandarin, also known as "putonghua," a large number of them do not speak it well, and the country still needs to invest in promoting mandarin, said Xu Mei, the ministry's spokeswoman, at a press conference.

The government has held a campaign to promote mandarin in the third week of September every year since 1998.

This year the ministry will focus on the remote countryside and areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, Xu said.

• Loss of dialect a crisis for ancient language
• New novel sparks interest in dialect literature
• Old dialects struggle to survive under new
• Pudong airport to use Shanghai dialect
• Tourist venue adopts Shanghai dialect
• How to make dialect hip for younger folks
• Mandarin makes its voice heard in South Africa
• Mandarin fever in Pakistan

We Recommend

• Mountain of garbage in Nairobi
• Highlights of MAKS 2013 Int'l Aviation and Space Show
• 10th China-ASEAN Expo opens in Nanning
• Eagle Boy takes to sky to break another record
• 12-year-old boy becomes pillar of the family
• Police name attacker who took boy's eyes
• Top 10 naked hotels in the world
• The most gorgeous Chinese women in the eyes of foreigners
• A collection of bizarre rooftop buildings around China