Preserving China’s minority languages

China is a diverse multi-ethnic country with a huge population of 1.4 billion people. It’s home to a rich array of ethnic groups who speak a wide range of languages.

Around 90 percent of the population speak Chinese, including some 84 million Cantonese speakers which is considered by many a separate language, not to mention several hundred million speakers of Shanghainese , Hokkien, Hakka and other Chinese dialects that are mutually intelligible to Mandarin Chinese.