Xu believes it is a mistake to promote the learning of putonghua against learning ethnic languages. Her long-term studies have concluded that China's most bilingual ethnic groups, including Korean, Bai and Zhuang, have enjoyed economic development levels and education levels higher than the average level for ethnic minority peoples.

Xu expects a lot from the general plan for ethnic minorities released in March, which intends to introduce pilot programs to create a bilingual cultural environment in ethnic minority regions. Xu's opinion was solicited to create a draft for the plan. One intention of the pilot program is to improve bilingual education. For the time being, more than 10,000 primary and middle schools in ethnic minority regions teach courses in 21 ethnic languages. Ideally she would like children in the plan's pilot regions to begin to cherish their native languages and have no difficulty accessing quality education whether they speak putonghua or not.

Spoken and Written Languages in China

The Han people's spoken and written language is the most commonly used language in China, as well as one of the most commonly used languages in the world. Chinese, also known as hanyu or Han Chinese, comprises seven major dialect groups that are composed of over 100 sub-dialects. These dialects are major components of Chinese culture, playing a unique role in the formation and development of the Chinese nation.

Generally speaking, one ethnic group uses one language, but there are those that use two or more languages. These languages, except for Korean and Gin, whose relationships have not been classified, belong to the Sino-Tibetan family, the Altaic family, the Austro-Asiatic family, the Austronesian family and the Indo-European family of languages.

Archaeological findings and research results indicate a total of 57 ethnic minority scripts have been used within the boundaries of China since ancient times, and 22 ethnic minorities in China are using 28 written languages of their own. In China, the spoken and written languages of ethnic minorities are widely used in the fields of law and justice, administration, education, political and social life, and other areas. When important meetings, such as the national congresses of the Communist Party of China and sessions of the National People's Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, are held, documents of the meetings are available in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak, Korean, Yi and Zhuang, and simultaneous interpretations in those languages are also provided.

The minority groups of Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz, Korean, Yi, Dai, Lahu, Jingpo, Xibe and Russian have their own scripts, most of which have a long history. Of these, Mongolians in the Mongolian-inhabited areas use alphabetic scripts, written vertically, while those living in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region use different alphabetic scripts that fit local dialect features. The Dais in Yunnan Province use four kinds of scripts in different areas.

Most Lisu Christians use a Lisu script based on the Roman alphabet, which uses only upper case letters as well as inverted upper case letters. There are also a small number who use syllabic Lisu writing, created by locals. The Va Christians in Yunnan use a Va script based on the letters of the Roman alphabet. Some Zhuang, Bai and Yao peoples use ethnic scripts that are prominently influenced by Han Chinese scripts.

The Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Korean and Yi languages have coded character sets and national standards for fonts and keyboards. Software in the Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur and Korean languages can be run in the Windows operating system, and laser photo-typesetting in these languages has been realized. Applied software in the languages of ethnic minorities are emerging one after another, and some achievements have been made in research into the OCR (optic character recognition) of languages of ethnic minorities and machine-aided translation.

(Source: China: Facts and Figures 2006)