Putonghua is another name of modern standard Chinese, which is a common language with Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect (Mandarin) as the basic dialect and typical modern vernacular as the grammatical norm.

As one of the working languages of the United Nations, Mandarin has become an important bridge for cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries and the first choice for foreigners to learn Chinese. By 20 15, 70% of the population in China has the ability to use Putonghua, and about 400 million people are limited to one-way communication.

The Implementation Plan of the National Common Language Popularization Project plans to basically popularize the national common language in the whole country by 2020. Specifically, the average popularization rate of Putonghua in the whole country is over 80%.

Extended data:

After Zhu put forward the word "Putonghua", it was not widely used. At that time, people called it "Lan Qing Mandarin", "Lan Qing" means impure, and "Lan Qing Mandarin" means Beijing dialect mixed with local dialects.

Because this kind of words are mostly used in officialdom, they are called "Mandarin". Later, everyone began to say this kind of words that everyone understood, and the use of this kind of words was no longer limited to "officials".

In the early years of the Republic of China, the word "Mandarin" appeared and replaced it. Compared with "Mandarin", "Mandarin" has the flavor of "people".

When the People's Government carried out the reform of writing after the founding of New China, language experts made a serious scientific demonstration on the use of the word "Putonghua" and thought that it obviously could not be called "Mandarin". It is also inappropriate to call it "Mandarin".

Because China is a multi-ethnic country, not all people use Chinese, so we can't call the common Chinese * * * as "national language". "Common Chinese" is too long to be used directly, so it is shortened to "Mandarin".

Reference source: Baidu Encyclopedia-Mandarin