Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Language Planning and Policy in China: Unity, Diversity and Social Control

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Language Planning in the Post-Communist Era

Abstract

China has, by one count, 299 mutually unintelligible languages from several different language families, as well as a far greater number of dialects. Linguistic diversity on this scale poses great problems for communication, administration and, in the modern era, national unity and identity. This chapter will explain how the Chinese state has addressed these problems, and it will also explain how the state has regulated language as a strategy of social and ideological control. Its main focus is on the post-totalitarian era that began in 1978, but it will situate that era in the context of Chinese history. It will reveal striking continuities between China’s imperial past and its post-totalitarian present, as well as developments related to the economic, ideological and political changes of the modern era.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Ethnologue: Languages of the World. https://www.ethnologue.com/country/CN. Western scholars usually classify tongues as ‘dialects’ of a single language only if they are mutually intelligible. Chinese scholars, however, often classify mutually unintelligible tongues as ‘dialects’ on the basis of political and social criteria. They regard the many mutually unintelligible tongues of the Han people as dialects of a single ‘Chinese’ language because they are spoken by the culturally unified Chinese people, and because they have a common written form—the ideographs of Chinese characters . Similarly, when neighboring minority groups that speak mutually unintelligible tongues are classified for political reasons as members of a single ‘nationality’, their forms of speech are often regarded as ‘dialects’ of a single language. This introduction of social and political criteria dramatically reduces the total number of ‘languages’, and Chinese scholars like Sun et al. (2007) put the number at 129.

  2. 2.

    As noted above, Chinese scholars call the forms of speech of the Han Chinese ‘dialects’, despite the fact that they are mutually unintelligible. Western scholars usually bow to this convention, and I will adopt it here.

  3. 3.

    This account of the 1992 directive and related policies is based on Chen (1999: 59).

  4. 4.

    Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language, Articles 14 and 16. http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/Law/2007-12/11/content_1383540.htm

  5. 5.

    This account of the protests is based on Tong and Lei (2014: 136–137), Liang (2015: 5–9), Gao (2012), Branigan (2010a), Lau (2014), and Pomfret and Master (2010).

  6. 6.

    I have calculated the percentages of ‘outsiders’ from the figures in China Daily (2014).

  7. 7.

    Law on Regional Autonomy 1984, articles 10, 21, 36, 47, 49. https://www.cecc.gov/resources/legal-provisions/regional-ethnic-autonomy-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-amended

  8. 8.

    Law of the PRC on Regional National Autonomy 2004, Article 37. http://www.china.org.cn/english/government/207138.htm

  9. 9.

    Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law 2001, Article 37. https://www.cecc.gov/resources/legal-provisions/regional-ethnic-autonomy-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-amended

References

  • Brady, Anne-Marie. 2006. Guiding Hand: the Role of the CCP Central Propaganda Department in the Current Era. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 3 (1): 58–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2008. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Branigan, Tania. 2010a. Protesters Gather in Guangzhou to Protect Cantonese Language. The Guardian, 26 July. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/protesters-guangzhou-protect-cantonese

  • ———. 2010b. Tibetan Student Protests Spread to Beijing. The Guardian, 22 October 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/tibetan-school-pupils-protest-language-china

  • ———. 2012. Tibetan Students Injured during Protests in China. The Guardian, 27 November 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/26/tibetan-students-injured-protests-china

  • Chen, Ping. 1999. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, Feng. 2008. Worker Leaders and Framing Factory-Based Resistance. In Popular Protest in China, ed. Kevin J. O’Brien. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • China Daily. 2004. Greater Numbers Speak Mandarin. China Daily, 26 December. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/26/content_403419.htm

  • ———. 2014. Top 10 Most Popular Cities for Migrants. China Daily, 23 May. http://www.china.org.cn/business/2014-05/23/content_32468996.htm

  • Coblin, W. South. 2000. A Brief History of Mandarin. Journal of the American Oriental Society 16 (1): 537–552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Francis, John. 1950. Nationalism and Language Reform in China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dwyer, Arienne M. 2005. The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and Political Discourse. Washington: East West Center.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farrer, Peter. 2016. China’s New Generation of Urban Immigrants. The Diplomat, 29 June 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galambos, Imre. 2004. The Myth of the Qin Unification of Writing in Han Sources. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung 57 (2): 181–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Orthography of Early Chinese Writing: Evidence from Newly Excavated Manuscripts. Budapest: Department of East Asian Studies, Eotvos Lorand University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gao, Xuesong. 2012. ‘Cantonese is not a Dialect’: Chinese Netizens’ Defence of Cantonese as a Regional Lingua Franca. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33 (5): 449–464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo, Longsheng. 2004. The Relationship between Putonghua and Chinese Dialects. In Language Policy in the People’s Republic of China: Theory and Practice since 1949, ed. Minglang Zhou and Hongkai Sun, 45–54. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Guo, Zhenzhi. 2012. Dialects and Local Media: The Cases of Kunming and Yunnan TV. In Mapping Media in China: Region, Province, Locality, ed. Wanning Sun and Jenny Chio, 47–61. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Chad. 1992. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Mette Halskov. 1999. Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henry, Clémence. 2016. The Chinese Education System as a Source of Conflict in Tibetan Areas. In Ethnic Conflict and Protest in Tibet and Xinjiang: Unrest in China’s West, ed. Ben Hillman and Gray Tuttle, 97–121. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Idema, Wilt. 1980. Review of Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China. T’oung Pao 46 (4/5): 314–324.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ji, Fengyuan. 2004. Linguistic Engineering: Language and Politics in Mao’s China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2011. Language, State, and Society in Post-Mao China: Continuity and Change. In Legacies of Totalitarian Language in the Discourse Culture of the Post-Totalitarian Era, ed. Ernest Andrews, 183–207. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. Linguistic Engineering in Hu Jintao’s China: The Case of the ‘Maintain Advancedness’ Campaign. In China’s Thought Management, ed. Anne-Marie Brady, 90–106. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lau, Mimi. 2014. Guangzhou Locals Seek ‘Cantonese Day’ to Help Preserve Mother Tongue. South China Morning Post, 25 July. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1558497/guangzhou-locals-seek-cantonese-day-help-preserve-mother-tongue

  • Lee, Thomas H.C. 2000. Education in Traditional China: A History. Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leibold, James. 2003. Rethinking Guomindang National Minority Policy and the Case of Inner Mongolia. In China Reconstructs, ed. Cindy Yik-Yi Chu and Ricardo K.S. Mak, 103–124. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liang, Sihua. 2015. Language Attitudes and Identities in Multilingual China: A Linguistic Ethnography. Cham: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Xingwu, and Alatan. 1988. China’s Policy towards Her Minorities. Social Scientist 16 (1): 136–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norman, Jerry. 1988. Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pang, Laikwan. 2010. Hong Kong Cinema as a Dialect Cinema? Cinema Journal 49 (3): 140–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pomfret, James, and Farah Master. 2010. Chinese Regions Fight Back against Surge of Mandarin. Reuters, 22 November. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-language-idUSTRE6AL16K20101122

  • Radio Free Asia. 2012. Student Protesters Sentenced. Radio Free Asia, 17 August. http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/sentenced-08172012161712.html

  • Rawski, Evelyn S. 1979. Education and Popular Literacy in Ch’ing China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanft, Charles. 2014. Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China: Publicizing the Qin Dynasty. Albany: State University of New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sant, Shannon. 2012. Tibetan Protests Erupt in Western China. Voice of America, 9 November. http://www.voanews.com/a/tibetan-protests-erupt-in-wester-china/1542677.html

  • Schiller, Bill. 2010. Tibetan Students Protest in China over Language Instruction. The Star, 20 October 2010. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2010/10/20/tibetan_students_protest_in_china_over_language_instruction.html

  • Schluessel, Eric T. 2007. ‘Bilingual’ Education and Discontent in Xinjiang. Central Asian Survey 26 (2): 251–277.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schoenhals, Michael. 1992. Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics: Five Studies. Berkley: Institute of East Asian Studies and University of California.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shek, Miranda. 2011. Local Dialect in Danger of Vanishing. Global Times, 22 February. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/625698.shtml

  • Snavely, Andrea E. 2004. A Review of the Chinese National Minority Education Program. Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 4 (1): 35–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sun, Hongkai, Hu, Zengyi, and Huang, Xing. 2007. Zhongguo de Yuyan [Languages of China]. Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tavor, Ori. 2014. Naming/Power: Linguistic Engineering and the Construction of Discourse in Early China. Asian Philosophy 24 (4): 313–329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, Patricia. 2004. Comrades and Collectives in Arms: Tax Resistance, Evasion, and Avoidance Strategies in Post-Mao China. In State and Society in 21st-Century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation, ed. Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen. New York and London: Routledge Curzon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tong, Yanqi, and Shaohua Lei. 2014. Social Protest in Contemporary China, 2003–2010: Transitional Pains and Regime Legitimacy. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kalsang, Wangdu. 2011. China’s Minority Education Policy with Reference to Tibet. Tibetan Review, June: 19–23.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, Edward. 2012. Tibetan Protesters Injured in Crackdown; Self-Immolations Continue. New York Times, 27 November 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/world/asia/tibetan-protesters-injured-in-crackdown-self-immolations-continue.html

  • Xinhua. 2017. China to Increase Mandarin Speaking Rate to 80 Pct. Xinhua News Agency, 3 April. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-04/03/c_136179843.htm

  • Zang, Xiaowei. 2015. Ethnicity in China: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zenz, Adrian. 2010. Beyond Assimilation: the Tibetanisation of Tibetan Education in Qinghai. Inner Asia 12 (2): 307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Xin. 2006. The Concept of ‘Local’ in Local Chinese Television: A Case Study of Southwest China’s Chongqing Television. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 3 (1): 28–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Xiaoling, and Zhenzhi Guo. 2012. Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony: the Politics of Dialects in TV Programs in China. Chinese Journal of Communication 5 (3): 300–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, Bin. 1999. Mouthpiece or Money Spinner? The Double Life of Chinese Television in the Late 1990s. International Journal of Cultural Studies 2 (3): 291–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, Minglang. 2003. Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages 1949–2002. Berlin: De Gruyter/Mouton.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2010. The Fate of the Soviet Model of Multinational State-Building in the People’s Republic of China. In China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present, ed. Thomas P. Bernstein and Hua-Yu Li, 477–503. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. Historical Review of the PRC’s Minority/Indigenous Language Policy and Practice: Nation-State Building and Identity Construction. In China’s Assimilationist Language Policy: The Impact on Indigenous/Minority Literacy and Social Harmony, ed. Gulbahar H. Beckett and Gerard A. Postiglione, 18–30. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Nation-State Building and Rising China: PRC’s Discourse on the Chinese Language since the Turn of the 21st Century. In Contemporary Chinese Discourse and Social Practice in China, ed. Linda Tsung and Wei Wang, 59–80. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of East Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Fengyuan Ji

Authors
  1. Fengyuan Ji
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Ernest Andrews

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Ji, F. (2018). Language Planning and Policy in China: Unity, Diversity and Social Control. In: Andrews, E. (eds) Language Planning in the Post-Communist Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70926-0_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70926-0_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-70925-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-70926-0

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation