By Li Hongmei
More than 400 million Chinese are unable to speak Putonghua, meaning "common tongue," or "the national language Mandarin," and large numbers in the rest of the country speak it badly, according to the Xinhua news agency.
China has actually promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of often mutually unintelligible dialects and numerous minority languages, but has been hampered by the country's size and lack of investment in education, especially in poor rural areas.
Ministry of Education spokeswoman Xu Mei said that only 70 percent of the country can speak Mandarin, many of them poorly, and the remaining 30 percent, or 400 million people, could not speak it at all, Xinhua reported.
"The country still needs to invest in promoting Mandarin," it quoted her as saying, ahead of an annual campaign to promote Mandarin held every year since 1998.
"This year the ministry will focus on the remote countryside and areas inhabited by ethnic minorities," Xu said.