This is the current consensus reached among ordinary residents, academics and officials of this vast region where ethnic groups are widely distributed, during China's annual campaign to popularize Putonghua held this week.

When the development drive was launched three years ago in the western region, Prof. He Feng, vice-president of the Qinghai Institute for Ethnic Minority Nationalities said, communication was the prerequisite for cooperation between the region and the outside world.

Fluency in Putonghua could help the region negotiate better with business people from elsewhere in China, particularly eastern and central China, and possibly attract more investment and contracts, he added.

According to Li Kai, a member of the Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political and Consultative Conference (CPPCC), as China has been opening itself increasingly to the rest of the world, improved education and sophistication levels among locals could be also considered a kind of favorable "soft" investment climate.

Nowadays, some investors from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are not confident and prompt enough to pour their money into western China. One reason is that a variety of local dialects and languages among different ethnic groups in the region make communication somewhat difficult.

The municipal government of Chongqing, west China's only municipality, once received a host of advices on how to improve the local investment environment from Taiwan's business circles. Topping the list is the urgent need to encourage the use of Putonghua on an extensive scale in the city.

Wei Dan, a Ministry of Education official noted that advanced education was widely regarded as an important driving force to launch the local economy. Nevertheless, progress in education would not work without popularizing Putonghua.

In China's westernmost Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where ethnic minority people comprise more than 60 percent of the total population, Putonghua has been heavily encouraged in recent years. A large number of primary and middle schools have set up bilingual education systems to teach students in standard Chinese and Uygur languages.

The local people's enthusiasm for learning Putonghua sprang from their awareness it could bring them into the wider world, Wei said.

Soinam Domjor, deputy magistrate of Tianjun County in Qinghai province, also in northwestern China, said that with 98 percent of the county's population Tibetan, previously outsiders had to come with interpreters to do business there. The language barrier stalled the modernization process in the locality.

But on the bright side, more and more local people have become aware of the importance of learning Putonghua and are dedicatedly learning it, he added.

Experts say the spread of Putonghua will definitely not hinder the development of other dialects or ethnic languages. In China, major ethnic groups like Mongolians, Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs and Koreans have set up comprehensive education systems in their own languages, from primary schools, middle schools to colleges and universities.

China's National Common Language Law stipulates that every ethnic group has the right and freedom to use and develop its own language. The use of ethnic languages should be in compliance with the Constitution, Law on Regional Autonomy of Ethnic Minorities and other relevant regulations.

(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2002)