The 25th National Promotion Week of Mandarin started from September 12 to 18, 2022. This time we invited assistant professor Shun Sun from SUSTech Center for the Humanities to introduce the significance of promoting Mandarin in today's prosperous society.
 
College teachers and students are one of the groups with the best level of Mandarin, and it is obvious that the scale of application of Mandarin is expanding day by day. All of this can lead us to the wrong conclusion that the promotion of Mandarin is no longer necessary. This perception is actually due to a lack of understanding of the strategic value and the current focus of Mandarin promotion work.
 
The strategic value of Mandarin includes the following four aspects, each of which is of great significance.



1. Mandarin is the center of Chinese language communication. It is the common language of various regions in China. This is particularly important for our country, which has numerous ethnic groups and is rich in dialect since the ancient times. Mencius says that if you want to teach a child to speak the dialect of Qi, you should not use a teacher from Chu. It is recorded in Shuoyuan that the nobility of Chu could not understand the song from Yue. All these show that the dialect caused a barrier of communication in the vast ancient China. To overcome these obstacles, people at that time had begun to communicate with each other using a language called “Yayan”. This can be regarded as an early form of common language. The more frequent the communication activities are, the more need to standardize and popularize the common language. Since the reform and opening up, the economy of our country has been developed rapidly, mass circulation of goods, extensive exchange of information, great flow of talent and labor force is flourishing unprecedentedly. In this case, dialects are far from being able to undertake the corresponding task of communication, and we can only rely on the promotion of Mandarin.
 
2. Mandarin is an important pillar to solidify the sense of community of the Chinese nation. From the perspective of history and culture, one of the important reasons why the Chinese civilization has been able to continue until now is that it has always had a unified language. The promotion of Mandarin just means “writing the same characters” and "unifying languages" in history. President Xi pointed out that the common language is the key of connecting with each other. If there’s no common language then it will be difficult to communicate, then difficult to understand and to form identification. Language is one of the most important symbols of identity. A unified Chinese nation must have a unified national common language, and it needs to be popularized in an all-round way. On the contrary, all kinds of national separatist forces are trying to elevate the status of certain dialects, national languages and even foreign languages, deliberately confusing the concept and role between "mother tongue" and "language for daily use", in order to open a gap and ruin our sense of community from here. Therefore, it is of great significance to promote Mandarin to safeguard national unity and ethnic unity.
 
3. Mandarin is an important tool for rural revitalization. The promotion of Mandarin concerns many aspects of rural development. Language communication is one of the factors hindering the economic development of ethnic minority areas and rural areas. The popularization rate of Mandarin is obviously correlated with the level of economic development. Professor Li LAN and his team from the Southern University of Science and Technology Center for the Humanities have been investigating ethnic languages in Guizhou Province for several years. The dialects of the local people make the communication difficult even for masters or doctors of linguistics. This will lose many opportunities for local economic cooperation with the outside. Rural e-commerce, home accommodation and other new forms of rural revitalization are all inseparable from Mandarin, this basic communication tool. The promotion of rural cultural and political construction also needs the help of Mandarin, in order to learn advanced culture, change bad habits and outdated rules, eventually form a new civilized fashion.
 
4. Mandarin is an important tool for international exchanges and the promotion of the international status of Chinese. Foreign exchange requires the use of both domestic and foreign languages. When using the native language in foreign activities, Mandarin plays a dominant role. Meanwhile, with the reform and economic growth, Chinese has increasingly become an important choice for foreign language acquisition in other countries. Mandarin shall be taught in Chinese course for foreigners. Mandarin is the symbol of China. In addition to standardizing and improving the teaching and training capabilities of Mandarin, we should also make efforts enhancing the influence of Chinese in the international community, expanding the utilization of the country’s common language, so as to match the national strategy of the new era.
 
These values of Mandarin will not weaken but become more important in the new era. It is because of these roles that our country has long established its priority in the form of law. Article 19 of the Constitution clearly stipulates that "the state shall promote the common spoken Mandarin throughout the country". The Law of the People's Republic of China on General Language adopted in 2000 has made specific legislation on this article of the Constitution.
 
In addition to the great value of Mandarin, the change in the focus of the current popularization work also requires us to make great efforts to popularize.
 
The Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Comprehensively Strengthening the Language Work in the New Era pointed out that the popularization work in the new era should "focus on ethnic minority areas and rural areas", and "significantly improve the popularity of the national common language in ethnic minority areas and the level of rural Mandarin". At present, most of the places where the popularity of Mandarin is not high are rural areas and remote ethnic minority areas. It is much more difficult to popularize Mandarin in these areas. Poor traffic conditions, low education level, relatively backward educational resources and economic conditions require us to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to overcome these unfavorable factors.
 
It can be seen that it is still a tough task for us to continue to promote Mandarin, which is of great strategic significance. Southern University of Science and Technology will carry out various forms of publicity, promotion activities and language and culture support activities in this semester to attract the attention and participation of teachers and students, so as to create an atmosphere of standardized use of language and characters, improve the cultural quality of the campus, and contribute to the promotion activities.