what is the official language in china?
Nepali Language Standard Tibetan Chinese language Zhuang languages Korean Language English Language Esperanto Language Mongolian language Portuguese Language Cantonese
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 Standard Mandarin , a variety of Mandarin based on the Beijing dialect , is the official national language of China and is used as a lingua franca in the country between people of different linguistic backgrounds . 

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 Chinese characters are also used within China to write non @-@ Han languages . The largest non @-@ Han group in China , the Zhuang , have for over 1300 years used Chinese characters . Despite both the introduction of an official alphabetic script in 1957 and lack of a corresponding official set of Chinese characters , more Zhuang people can read the Zhuang logograms than the alphabetic script . 

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 Chinese uses traditional logograms for writing the unit names , while in Japanese unit names are written in the phonetic katakana script ; in both cases , symbols are also written using the internationally recognised Latin and Greek characters . 

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 China officially recognizes 56 distinct ethnic groups , the largest of which are the Han Chinese , who constitute about 91 @.@ 51 % of the total population . The Han Chinese – the world 's largest single ethnic group – outnumber other ethnic groups in every provincial @-@ level division except Tibet and Xinjiang . Ethnic minorities account for about 8 @.@ 49 % of the population of China , according to the 2010 census . Compared with the 2000 population census , the Han population increased by 66 @,@ 537 @,@ 177 persons , or 5 @.@ 74 % , while the population of the 55 national minorities combined increased by 7 @,@ 362 @,@ 627 persons , or 6 @.@ 92 % . The 2010 census recorded a total of 593 @,@ 832 foreign citizens living in China . The largest such groups were from South Korea ( 120 @,@ 750 ) , the United States ( 71 @,@ 493 ) and Japan ( 66 @,@ 159 ) . 

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 Simplified Chinese is standard in the People 's Republic of China , Singapore , and Malaysia . Traditional Chinese is retained in Hong Kong , Taiwan , Macau and overseas Chinese communities ( except Singapore and Malaysia ) . Throughout this article , Chinese text is given in both simplified and traditional forms when they differ , with the traditional forms being given first . 
