On the ethnic and linguistic demographics of China

This a href="http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/07/han-vs-tang.php" article /a on Gene Expression highlights the fact that over 90% of the inhabitants of China see themselves as 'Han' ethnically - although in the south they sometimes refer to themselves as Tang. However, the number of people who identify themselves as belonging to a national minority seems to have increased. This could well be due to better recording and data-collection from the census and so it might not really mean much. However, if it is significant it could be because people who considered themselves Han no longer do so. Or the birth rate could be higher among national minorities than the Chinese average.br /br /Although there is this strong sense of common ethnicity which is held by the clear majority of the population of China, this doesn't stop there being large variations in the dialects spoken in different areas. It is only for political reasons - and because they use the same script - that Chinese is considered one language.br /br /Mandarin is spoken by about 53% of the Chinese population. It is lower in rural areas. This does suggest that about 40% or so of the population consider themselves Han but are only familiar with their local dialect and can not communicate in the national standard form of the Chinese language.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/38622711-2338332756863469195?l=vinospoliticalblog.blogspot.com'//div

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