The Chinese language usually refers to the standard language and its dialect used by the Han nationality which makes up 93.3 percent of the total population. Most of the minority nationalities in China have their own languages. Both numerically and in the extent of its distribution, Chinese is the most important language in China and also one of the five official working languages of the United Nations. It is also one of the richest and highly developed languages in the world.

    Chinese is also spoken by many overseas Chinese: it is the common language of more than 10 million overseas Chinese and persons of Chinese descent in Southeast Asia alone. At present, more than one billion people, approximately one fifth of the world’s population, speak Chinese as their mother tongue.

    A written form of the language was developed as early as 6,000 years ago. From the point of view of its origin, it belongs to the Sino-Tibetan Language family. Chinese includes mandarin Chinese and all kinds of Chinese dialects and even Chinese guys grasp them difficutly. The most difficult Chinese dialects are Shanghai dialect, Fujian dialect, Guangdong dialect, Nantong dialect, and so on. Nowadays with the promotion of Chinese culture, more and more foreigners can speak Chinese dialects and language is free and without national boundary.