This is the consensus reached this week during the annual campaign to popularize putonghua.

Ordinary residents, academics and officials of the vast region where ethnic groups are widely distributed were surveyed.

When the development drive was launched three years ago in the western region, Professor 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 the east and central China, and possibly attract more investment and contracts, he added.

According to Li Kai, a member of Qinghai Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political and Consultative Conference, 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, Macau 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 Municipality has received plenty of advice 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 the westernmost Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where ethnic minority people comprise more than 60 percent of the 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 that it could bring them into the wider world, Wei said.

Soinam Domjor, deputy magistrate of Tianjun County in Qinghai Province, said that with 98 percent of the county's population Tibetan, previously outsiders had to come with interpreters to do business in the county.

(eastday.com September 19, 2002)