Northeast refers to the three northeastern provinces. The accent there is very different than Beijing.
How they divide north, east, south, and west provinces is a bit confusing. Some places are both south and east China. Literally some southern provinces and technically more east.
Come on, Dongbei is Dongbei.
As opposed to Chinese from like… Brazil? 
So. Not an expert but it seems weird to lump China in tbh. To the extent of bringing Beijing into this?? Like, why would I compare the Pride and Prejudice accent with how they talk on Friends. Or whatever
Fixed
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Nice work 
Oh Dear … As I age , I am sounding exactly like this man…apologies 
No need to apologize. That’s a damn sexy accent.
Agree with milker 'tis unnecessary. Although 
Did you forget that we don’t actually hear you on these message boards
Would you like a special recording ? 
I was really mentioning it because it appears to be normal ( as per the post) , to have an accent in the UK. I have had my fair share of teasing about it in the UK, but people in most other countries do not appear to notice .
I am not “Upper Class”, but had to fit in to the Old School British accent in my early years.
Gave me a headache when I joined the Family firm in the factory. They were pretty harsh with me, to the extent that i tried my best to change my speaking.
I respected my Father , as he never attempted to adjust his accent , even when I felt embarrassed by it. I felt like an Alien at times. Much like JRM…whom I suspect , has the same issue .
It is confusing. Sichuan is clearly in the center but they say is western. Beijing is clearly northern but it’s consider center. Fujian is both south and east depending on a person. Shanghai can also be considered southern China if you divide China by north and southern Chinese.
It drives me mad Trying to figure out where things are when they say chengdu is the western part of China. It’s clearly in the middle damn it!
why not? it’s all technically the same language. interesting to compare differences.
I don’t see any reason not to compare Chinese across the strait, or English from across the Atlantic. I know very little about the Spanish language but I know it has variants between regions, countries, etc.
Don’t really see what the problem is.
For western or southern, or eastern, yes the meaning varies depending on context and may make more or less sense depending on how you look at it, and people rarely use those terms anyway.
But for Dongbei, nope, its Dongbei, its common to refer to it, and its not confused.
Why would I compare them under the same social context?
“this is more prestigious” “that is more coveted”
A standard British accent might sound “fancy” in Manhattan or LA but it would not suggest to most educated Americans a definitive elite or upper class status, and no sane American would want to adopt it – that’d be weird.
You are welcomed to compare apples to oranges (they are both palm-sized fruits!), just know that you are comparing apples to oranges.
Thread is talking about accents in a language - Mandarin Chinese - that has ‘correct’ pronunciations, and where the standardization was broadly based on pronunciations in Beijing.
No weird lumping.
remember the 11th commandment:
thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s accent
I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.
My point in the original comment is is there’s no particular Chinese or Taiwanese accent that’s really considered much more prestigious than the others. People here are still pretty classist about speech, but only insofar as how objectively good your Chinese sounds. Your accent or choice of words might belie the region you hail from, but that’s not really a big deal as long as you talk pretty.
Basically, Chinese speakers admire and aspire to Chinese that is spoken accurately, not one particular regional accent over the other. Putonghua technically has a standard for pronunciation that is considered most “correct.” I just incorrectly believed that Beijingers had the best Chinese by those standards.
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As a proud honorary Pekinese (woof woof) I thought I might weigh in on this discussion…
Normative Putonghua or standard mandarin was initially based on the Beijing dialect. The pronunciation of most native Beijingers today is therefore, not surprisingly, quite close to standard mandarin (e.g. CCTV 1 News). There are, however, differences, the R sound (erhuayin) perhaps being the most conspicuous. Of course there are people from all over China, especially younger people, who speak very standard mandarin.
Guoyu was initially synonymous with standard mandarin or Putonghua. Guo referred to Zhongguo, not the non-existent Taiwan Guo 
Today, however, what most Taiwanese refer to as Guoyu (as well as the type of pronunciation you hear in most tv/radio news broadcasts) is quite different from standard Putonghua – among other things, the tones of many words are pronounced differently.
As for prestige… Well that’s pretty subjective. Many mainland Chinese would consider a Taiwanese accent chic (“wow, you sound just like a celebrity!” is not an uncommon reaction) On the other hand many mainlanders, especially northerners, would consider the Taiwanese accent, when spoken by a man, as rather girly. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a girly man, of course… As for the provincial insufferably insular self-satisfied dirt ignorant Taiwanese (I’m generalising, of course, mwah, mwah) they tend to be like that Nelson kid from the Simpsons – saying ha-HA! at anyone (mainlanders, HKers) who doesn’t pronounce things exactly as they do.
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For Taiwanese the ‘prestige’ variety - if you want to call it that - and as far as I know - is the Tainan accent, which is also not entirely dissimilar to Xiamen Hokkien.
Today is the key word. The kids today speak a pretty clear, standard Mandarin, partly because the standard isn’t too far from Beijing speech, and partly because they’re all exposed to the same media. But the traditional Beijing dialect, as still spoken by the older generation, is anything but clear. This is why, for so many years, people from the Northeast were chosen for news anchor positions.