China Plans 80 Percent Mandarin Speaking by 2020

source: newsweek.com

China disclosed a plan Monday to increase the number of citizens speaking Mandarin to 80 percent by 2020. The figure represents a sharp rise from the current figure, estimated by the government to be around 70 percent, which leaves several hundred million people speaking other dialects.

The plan, issued by China’s Ministry of Education and State Language Commission, specifically called for improved speaking abilities among teachers. It sets out guidelines for training teachers from ethnic minority regions, with all new teachers having to meet Mandarin speaking standards before being granted a job.

A statement from the State Council said there was still “a huge gap” between different regions and groups of people. While the rate of people speaking Mandarin exceeded 90 percent in large cities, the figure dropped as low as 40 percent in a number of rural areas.

Mandarin is by far the world's most widely spoken language, with close to a billion native speakers. However, China’s Education Ministry said in 2013 there were about 400 million people in the country of around 1.3 billion who could not speak the national language.

Cantonese remains the official language in Hong Kong and Macau and there is significant spillover into the southern province of Guangdong. In all, 72 million people in China speak Cantonese, according to the web-based publication Ethnologue.