what is the official language of china called?
Standard Mandarin
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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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 Chinese characters do not reliably indicate their pronunciation , even for one dialect . It is therefore useful to be able to transliterate a dialect of Chinese into the Latin alphabet or the Perso @-@ Arabic script Xiao 'erjing for those who cannot read Chinese characters . However , transliteration was not always considered merely a way to record the sounds of any particular dialect of Chinese ; it was once also considered a potential replacement for the Chinese characters . This was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement , and it gained further support with the victory of the Communists in 1949 . Immediately afterward , the mainland government began two parallel programs relating to written Chinese . One was the development of an alphabetic script for Mandarin , which was spoken by about two @-@ thirds of the Chinese population ; the other was the simplification of the traditional characters — a process that would eventually lead to simplified Chinese . The latter was not viewed as an impediment to the former ; rather , it would ease the transition toward the exclusive use of an alphabetic ( or at least phonetic ) script . 

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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 . 
