China is a nation with linguistic and ethnic diversity. Putonghua, which translates to "common language" is the common spoken language in mainland China, also known as Standard Chinese historically and Mandarin Chinese in English, has been actively promoted for over half a century aiming at facilitating communication among people with…

As a linguistically heterogeneous nation, China has 290 languages and nearly 2000 distinct "fangyans" (dialects or subdialects) with "Putonghua" as the national language. These languages and language varieties are hierarchically ranked, based on their wider communicative and socioeconomic values. This paper reports on how…

In the past, the lack of data on people with disabilities living in low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) has contributed to the invisibility of disability as a development priority. This is beginning to be addressed. While the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) did not specifically mention disability, it is increasingly being recognised that…