Chinese can be divided into standard language and dialect, and its standard language, namely Putonghua, is the standard lingua franca of Han nationality and the national lingua franca of China. Modern Chinese dialects can generally be divided into Mandarin, Wu dialect, Xiang dialect, Hakka dialect, Min dialect, Cantonese dialect and Gan dialect.

Since 20011,China has implemented the Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) on National Languages and Characters (People's Republic of China (PRC) Law for short), which has established the legal status of Putonghua and standardized Chinese characters as the national languages and characters. The number of Chinese (Chinese characters) users exceeds1700 million, covering the whole territory of China (mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan provinces) and Chinese character cultural circles in East Asia and Southeast Asia. From July, 2002 1 year, as the language standard of the State Language Committee, the Standard for Grading Chinese Proficiency in International Chinese Education will be officially implemented.

Use area:

Chinese is mainly used in China (mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan provinces) and overseas Chinese areas such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Now Chinese can be roughly divided into simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese according to fonts. Simplified Chinese is the standard font used in Chinese mainland, Singapore and Malaysia. Traditional Chinese is widely used in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, Europe and America. In recent years, with the extensive cultural exchanges in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan have also begun to show the coexistence of simplicity and complexity, but the official documents are traditional. Governments in Malaysia, Singapore and other countries promote simplified Chinese characters and use them in official documents, but people sometimes use traditional Chinese characters.

The above contents refer to Baidu Encyclopedia-Chinese.