ABSTRACT
There are 56 nationalities in China. The Han Chinese comprise 90% of China’s 1.3 billion people; the other 55 nationalities are minorities, representing approximately 130 million people (Information Offi ce, State Council of People’s Republic of China, 2000). The Han Chinese control most institutions and government agencies (Veeck, Pannell, Smith, & Huang, 2007). Almost half of China’s territory is occupied by minority nationalities, and they inhabit the inner border regions where there are either deserts or mountains (Veeck et al., 2007). Tibetans and Uygurs constitute the majority in Tibet Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygurs Autonomous Region in western China, respectively. In China, 53 nationalities have their own spoken languages; Manchus and Hui speak Mandarin Chinese (Veeck et al., 2007). There are about 120 mother tongues in minority regions, but only 30 minority languages have written scripts; 20 languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers (Sun, 2004).
