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China: 400 Million Cannot Speak Mandarin China: 400 Million Cannot Speak Mandarin
(about 3 hours later)
More than 400 million Chinese are unable to speak the national language, Mandarin, and large numbers in the rest of the country speak it badly, state news media said Thursday as the government began another push for linguistic unity. China’s governing Communist Party has promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of dialects and numerous minority languages, but that campaign been hampered by resistance that has sometimes led to violent unrest as well as by the country’s size and lack of investment in education, especially in poor rural areas. A Ministry of Education spokeswoman, Xu Mei, said that only 70 percent of the nation could speak Mandarin. Yet many who do speak it do so poorly, and the remaining 30 percent, or 400 million people, cannot not speak it at all, the Xinhua news agency reported. More than 400 million Chinese are unable to speak the national language, Mandarin, and large numbers in the rest of the country speak it badly, state news media said Thursday as the government began another push for linguistic unity. China’s governing Communist Party has promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of dialects and numerous minority languages, but that campaign has been hampered by resistance that has sometimes led to violent unrest as well as by the country’s size and lack of investment in education, especially in poor rural areas. A Ministry of Education spokeswoman, Xu Mei, said that only 70 percent of the nation could speak Mandarin. Yet many who do speak it do so poorly, and the remaining 30 percent, or 400 million people, cannot not speak it at all, the Xinhua news agency reported.