[quote=“Buttercup”]People don’t think; ah, I might be richer if my Mandarin were better, (by ‘people’, I mean the majority of ordinary, working people, children, etc) they simply do what is natural. [/quote]We are in 100% agreement on this.
Here’s a political science definition, courtesy of Dr Margaret Lavinia Anderson of UCal Berkeley. " A language is a dialect with an army" 
I think we know who has the army in this region.
[quote=“H5N1”]Here’s a political science definition, courtesy of Dr Margaret Lavinia Anderson of UCal Berkeley. " A language is a dialect with an army"
I think we know who has the army in this region.[/quote]
That’s a paraphrase of a much older quote.
Edit: Googled it:
[i]
In 1945 the Yiddisch linguist Max Weinreich formulated the much quoted metaphor (in Yiddisch):
“A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot”[/i]
Perhaps one of these:
[ul][li]Percentage of China’s population that can speak Mandarin remains at 53%: PRC MOE[/li]
[li]Using Putonghua.[/li][/ul]
The sources are unclear about just what is meant by “Mandarin.” They perhaps mean largely (but not entirely) the official standard rather than lots of dialects of it (real dialects, not the PRC’s phony use of “dialect” to mean “language”).