No other country on earth has more profound lingual diversity than China, whose 1.3 billion inhabitants fall within eight major linguistic groups. Mainland academics may argue that all Chinese people are linked by the universal characters of written Chinese, but this assertion fails to address the simple fact that the eight localized spoken dialects, though related, are mutually incomprehensible.

Efforts to standardize spoken Chinese date back to 1913, when the Qing dynasty collapsed and the first Chinese republic was created. The delegates of this new representative government regarded a common language, or guoyu, as an ideological imperative, but regional loyalties threatened to scuttle the attempt from the start. Southern Chinese resented the thought that Mandarin, the language of the north and east that was spoken by the vast majority of Chinese, would be adopted as the official tongue at the expense of much of their own Cantonese terminology. In fact, it was the dialectic subtleties that helped widen the rift between the north and south when the northern Mandarin leader, Wang Zhao, attacked southern delegate Wang Rangbao after Zhao mistook a mundane utterance for an insult.

Further attempts to establish guoyu were revisited with rare fervor in the 1930s under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek, who went so far as to order that all literature not written in guoyu be confiscated and burned. When the Communists seized power in 1949, a common language fit perfectly with the party’s plans for universal ideology according to Stalin’s teachings. And still, the mutual enmity between the north and south persisted, as northerners rallied around the cry of “Force the south to follow the north!”

Modern China’s government has succeeded in bringing about a universal language, now referred to as putonghua, which is now the standardized version of modern Chinese language that is taught in universities and spoken by government members in official addresses. Putonghua has become the language of the urban and educated, but it has yet to permeate the more rural areas of the country, where local dialects predominate. Even those who can speak putonghua have such thick regional accents as to make it impossible for a Mandarin farmer in Beijing to understand his southern counterpart in Shanghai. Further, the Taiwanese and Cantonese languages have undergone a new resurgence as part of the counterculture at universities and along China’s southern coastline. Chinese have made laudable inroads toward unifying their lingua franca, but China’s size, coupled with its increasing growth rate, suggests that local tongues will persevere for a long time to come.

1. According to the passage, the most consistent obstacle that the prospect of a unified language has encountered is

A. political uncertainty
B. government censorship
C. widespread ignorance
D. regional pride
E. a lack of nationalized education

2. As a result of the events of the twentieth century in China as described in the second and third paragraphs of the passage, the author would probably agree with which of the following statements?

A. Putonghua will persist in Chinese culture because its characters are far more universal than those of guoyu ever were.
B. In very populous countries, government edict is not always strong enough to resist the will of the people.
C. The resurgence of counterculture is a constant phenomenon, but the individual events seldom have the staying power to become anything more than passing fads.
D. Mandarin may yet become China’s national language because most Chinese speak it already.
E. A government cannot call itself a representative democracy as long as it sanctions the destruction of literature.

3. According to the passage, each of the following has influenced the adoption of a universal language in China EXCEPT

A. Chiang Kai-shek
B. members of the Qing dynasty’s royal family
C. Communists
D. resistance from Cantonese speakers
E. the modern Chinese government