Move to Limit Cantonese on Chinese TV Is Assailed

More than 1,000 people gathered July 25 in Guangzhou, in southern China, to demonstrate against a local politician's proposal to force a major local television network to stop broadcasting in Cantonese and switch to the country's official language, Mandarin.

The protest, which was raucous and impassioned, ended peacefully after the police broke up the crowd. But any mention of the demonstration was wiped from many Internet forums on Monday, and only one national newspaper carried a detailed report, indicating that the pro-Cantonese groundswell had become a politically delicate matter. Cantonese is widely spoken in Hong Kong, Guangdong Province -- whose capital is Guangzhou -- and neighboring areas. Some call it a dialect of Mandarin, a language spoken commonly in the north, but a growing number of linguists say Cantonese is a separate language. Northerners generally do not understand it, but are used to its strongly pitched sounds because of the ubiquity of Hong Kong movies and Cantonese pop songs. Concern over the loss of languages and dialects in China is growing. In Tibet and Xinjiang, some ethnic Tibetans and Uighurs say the use of Mandarin as the official teaching language in schools has weakened the fluency of the local languages among many young people. Officials say mastering Mandarin is important for students to compete for jobs and university slots.