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China Literacy and Language Reform
The continuing campaigns to eradicate illiteracy also were a
part of basic education. Chinese government statistics indicated
that of a total population of nearly 1.1 billion in 1985, about 230
million people were illiterate or semiliterate. The difficulty of
mastering written Chinese makes raising the literacy rate
particularly difficult. In general, language reform was intended to
make written and spoken Chinese easier to learn, which in turn
would foster both literacy and linguistic unity and serve as a
foundation for a simpler written language. In 1951 the party issued
a directive that inaugurated a three-part plan for language reform.
The plan sought to establish universal comprehension of a
standardized common language, simplify written characters, and
introduce, where possible, romanized forms based on the Latin
alphabet. In 1956 putonghua was introduced as the language
of instruction in schools and in the national broadcast media, and
by 1977 it was in use throughout China, particularly in the
government and party, and in education. Although in 1987 the
government continued to endorse the goal of universalizing
putonghua, hundreds of regional and local dialects continued
to be spoken, complicating interregional communication.
A second language reform required the simplification of
ideographs because ideographs with fewer strokes are easier to
learn. In 1964 the Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written
Language released an official list of 2,238 simplified characters
most basic to the language. Simplification made literacy easier,
although people taught only in simplified characters were cut off
from the wealth of Chinese literature written in traditional
characters. Any idea of replacing ideographic script with romanized
script was soon abandoned, however by government and education
leaders.
A third area of change involved the proposal to use the pinyin
romanization system more widely. Pinyin (first approved by the
National People's Congress in 1958) was encouraged primarily to
facilitate the spread of putonghua in regions where other
dialects and languages are spoken. By the mid-1980s, however, the
use of pinyin was not as widespread as the use of putonghua.
Retaining literacy was as much a problem as acquiring it,
particularly among the rural population. Literacy rates declined
between 1966 and 1976. Political disorder may have contributed to
the decline, but the basic problem was that the many Chinese
ideographs can be mastered only through rote learning and are often
forgotten because of disuse.
Data as of July 1987
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