Mandarin and Chinese Identity

On the BIG question you pose - my view is that language is definitely part of the Chinese identity.

That doesn't follow by speaking Mandarin, one is a Chinese, anymore than speaking English makes one an American.

There are other aspects to being Chinese, besides being the obvious by the DNA. Legal naturalization is another avenue.

I advocate that anyone who identify to being Chinese or subscribe to Chinese culture, values and aspiration should be treated as Chinese.

Speaking Mandarin (Putonghua is a political jargon) or Cantonese or Shanghainese - or English does not in my view affect one's identity as Chinese.

Vernacular is by nature parochial and all languages start as a vernacular.

However, being modern Chinese, even among the more recalcitrant in the Cantonese enclave of Hong Kong, do accept or are beginning to accept the consensus that Mandarin is the unifying or common language for all Chinese. I mean unifying in the sense of being a lingua franca of all Chinese.

Looking back, we Chinese by the Emperor Qin the First's edict have made the decision to unify our written language and now we have since the Republican age decided in favor of Mandarin as the unifying spoken tongue. The decision is partly political and partly social. Yet the decision for Mandarin is not a coorcive one.

I do support the primacy of Mandarin as the unifying spoken tongue for all Chinese, I
strongly caution against Mandarin taking any form of language imperialism.

Bear in mind that there are circumstances and conditions in time and space where mandarin speaking and Chinese language learning are challenging. Thus, speaking Mandarin or literacy in Chinese language must not be made the condition to qualify whether a person is a Chinese.

Further, what I described as language imperialism is the phenomena where the more fluent speakers are looking down at or discriminating against the less fluent.

The word of language imperialism is coined after my own observation of how Cantonese always tease the non Cantonese for their less than perfect Cantonese pronounciation and this is institutionalized in the scholl and compulsively practised in the society where it compells the second generation of non Cantonese Hong Kongers to give up their own in subservience to the ruling vernacular.

The ultimate primacy of a language is seduction and not compulsion. Hence, I believe in the soft power. Natually I favor inclusiveness in promoting Mandarin and retaining vernaculars. The best word to describe inclusiveness in Chinese is - 有容乃大.

Actually, over here in Mainland, there are now radio news broadcast in the vernacular. I heard them in Shanghai and in Guangzhou. These development are welcome as long as the vernaculars are not promoted for furtherance of a parochial identity.

Let's call on all Chinese to strive to master the Mandarin and literacy in Chinese language to the best they can, besides whatever their vernacular, dialect or foreign language they may prefer. Mandarin is the temporal tongue that connect us all and the Chinese literacy is the transcedental link that ties us through the generations.