What is the official language of mainland China?

The official language of mainland China is Standard Chinese, also called Putonghua or Mandarin Chinese.

Standard Chinese is based largely on the pronunciation of Beijing Mandarin and uses grammar associated with Mandarin varieties. The People’s Republic of China designated Putonghua as its standard national language to support communication across the country’s many regional languages and dialects.

Standard Chinese is written mainly with simplified Chinese characters in mainland China. This distinguishes it from Taiwan, where Traditional Chinese characters are generally used, although both places use closely related standardized forms of Mandarin.

“Mandarin” can refer either to the broad group of Chinese varieties or to the standardized language. Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka, and other Sinitic varieties remain important spoken languages, but they are not the official national standard of mainland China.