BEIJING’S efforts to promote Mandarin Chinese as the lingua franca in China ahead of a huge array of regional accents and dialects are in danger of turning into a game of cat and mouse. And not just any cat and mouse — Tom and Jerry, to be precise.

Dubbed into the rich regional dialects of Yunnan, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Shanghai, the cartoon duo have been a huge success in China but the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has ordered an end to broadcasting foreign-made TV shows in dialect.

Everything must now be in the dominant Mandarin, including Tom and Jerry, translated into Mandarin as Cat and Mouse. The TV watchdog wants broadcasters to ensure that they provide “a healthy language environment for adolescents”. Beijing says that the policy is essential to promote a common Chinese identity in a country of 1.3 billion people, made up of 56 ethnic groups and seven main Chinese dialects spoken by the Han ethnic majority.

Leading commentators and language experts have reacted angrily to the ban. “Dialect is an integral part of Chinese culture,” said Yu Jie, a noted scholar at Beijing University. “It will have a negative impact on efforts to maintain a pluralistic culture if we replace all dialects with Mandarin.

“The use of dialects will not decrease the influence and popularity of Mandarin; on the contrary, it can supplement Mandarin, bringing it to life. All the local operas must be sung in dialects. Will we cancel them all and only keep Peking Opera?”

Su Jie, a linguist and a deputy professor at Fudan University, said that Mandarin was China’s working language and the mainstream tongue but dialects were precious cultural assets.

Promotion of Mandarin began in the 1920s and became policy in 1955, six years after the Communists came to power. Among many Chinese, speaking Mandarin is perceived as a sign of good breeding and an inability to speak it as a sign of poverty.

Li Changyan, a teacher at Yangchushan Middle School in Harbin, in northeastern China, opposes having TV programmes in dialect on moral grounds. “Cartoons in dialect will have a negative influence over the study of Mandarin. And the dirty words in dialect are especially bad for the young,” she said.

There are campaigns to encourage wider use of Mandarin and party cadres have to attend classes on pronunciation.

As every child knows, Tom and Jerry did not speak in the original cartoons.

The dialect versions give them voices they never had — which has also raised hackles. “The most obvious characteristics of a Tom and Jerry cartoon is that it is a silent movie. But from their exaggerated actions, it is easy to tell what they are doing,” said Li Guangbin, an artist in Heilongjiang.

“Now with the dialect dialogue, even though it is funny, the aesthetic feeling is completely destroyed. Dialects are more popular in many regions than Mandarin and don’t need protection at all.”

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