About 80.72 percent of China's population spoke Putonghua, or Mandarin Chinese, in 2020, up 27.66 percentage points from 2000, an official with the Ministry of Education said on Wednesday.
To promote the use of Putonghua, authorities have advanced the establishment of related language promotion bases and improved the training and testing system for the national common language.
Nearly 5.28 million people on the Chinese mainland have so far taken the Putonghua proficiency test, figures from the MOE (Ministry of Education) show.
In September last year, China launched a week-long nationwide campaign to promote Putonghua or Mandarin Chinese.
The campaign focused on popularizing the use of Putonghua in the country's impoverished areas to lift the language barriers impeding poverty eradication, according to a circular issued by the Ministry of Education.
It aims to use various fun-oriented activities to promote Putonghua. Quizzes, short videos, emojis, among others, will be put on social media as part of the campaign.
This year's campaign is the 23rd since its launch in 1998. The annual event, which is held in the third week of September, has emerged as an important platform for promoting Putonghua and the essence of Chinese traditional culture.
But in some severely impoverished areas, only a 61.56 percentage of people speak Putonghua.
Last year, China stepped up efforts to improve impoverished groups' communication and vocational skills through strengthened Mandarin Chinese education, reinforcing the fight against poverty.
