what is the official language of china and 3 other dialects?
Standard Mandarin
neutral
 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 . 

neutral
 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 . 

neutral
 There are as many as 292 living languages in China . The languages most commonly spoken belong to the Sinitic branch of the Sino @-@ Tibetan language family , which contains Mandarin ( spoken natively by 70 % of the population ) , and other Chinese varieties : Wu ( including Shanghainese ) , Yue ( including Cantonese and Taishanese ) , Min ( including Hoochew , Hokkien and Teochew ) , Xiang , Gan , and Hakka . Languages of the Tibeto @-@ Burman branch , including Tibetan , Qiang , Naxi and Yi , are spoken across the Tibetan and Yunnan – Guizhou Plateau . Other ethnic minority languages in southwest China include Zhuang , Thai , Dong and Sui of the Tai @-@ Kadai family , Miao and Yao of the Hmong – Mien family , and Wa of the Austroasiatic family . Across northeastern and northwestern China , minority ethnic groups speak Altaic languages including Manchu , Mongolian and several Turkic languages : Uyghur , Kazakh , Kyrgyz , Salar and Western Yugur . Korean is spoken natively along the border with North Korea . Sarikoli , the language of Tajiks in western Xinjiang , is an Indo @-@ European language . Taiwanese aborigines , including a small population on the mainland , speak Austronesian languages . 

neutral
 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 ) . 

entailment
 Chinese dialects vary by not only pronunciation , but also , to a lesser extent , vocabulary and grammar . Modern written Chinese , which replaced Classical Chinese as the written standard as an indirect result of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 , is not technically bound to any single dialect ; however , it most nearly represents the vocabulary and syntax of Mandarin , by far the most widespread Chinese dialect in terms of both geographical area and number of speakers . This version of written Chinese is called Vernacular Chinese , or 白話 / 白话 báihuà ( literally , " plain speech " ) . Despite its ties to the dominant Mandarin dialect , Vernacular Chinese also permits some communication between people of different dialects , limited by the fact that Vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic in non @-@ Mandarin dialects . This role may not differ substantially from the role of other linguae francae , such as Latin : For those trained in written Chinese , it serves as a common medium ; for those untrained in it , the graphic nature of the characters is in general no aid to common understanding ( characters such as " one " notwithstanding ) . In this regard , Chinese characters may be considered a large and inefficient phonetic script . However , Ghil 'ad Zuckermann ’ s exploration of phono @-@ semantic matching in Standard Chinese concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional , conveying both semantic and phonetic content . 
