- ISO 639
zh- Its own name
- 中文
- Script
- CJK
- Direction
- Left to right
Chinese
Chinese (中文) is spoken by 1.3B people across 20 territories in CLDR, and is official nationally in 5 of them. China holds 96% of its speakers. One translation covers all of it, which is why localization is planned by language and launched by market.
At a glance
What one translation into Chinese buys, before anyone argues about which market to enter first.
Speakers
1.3B
China 96% · Taiwan 2% · Hong Kong SAR China 1%
First and second language speakers, summed across the 20 territories CLDR records. The bar splits them by territory, largest first.
Online speakers
1.2B
0%100%
90% of speakers, once each territory's speaker count is scaled by its World Bank internet rate. Territories with no internet figure contribute nothing, so this is a floor.
Concentration
96%
0%100%
96% of speakers live in China. Treat this as one market with a diaspora, and take the tone and conventions from there.
Territories
20
5 where it is official nationally, 5 where at least one person in five speaks it. The rest are diaspora and minority populations, which CLDR does record.
Reachable GDP
$75.2T
Combined GDP of every territory where the language appears at all. An upper bound on the market, not a revenue forecast: it counts the whole economy, not the speakers' share of it.
Translation rate
1.20×
1.0×1.6×+
About 20% above a mainstream pair, reflecting how many vendors work in it. Feeds the budget estimator directly.
Where Chinese is spoken
Every territory CLDR records, largest speaker count first. Share is of that territory's own population, so the column does not add up to anything.
| Territory | Share of that market | Speakers | Online | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChinaCN | 90% | 1.3B | 1.2B | official |
| TaiwanTW | 95% | 22.4M | — | official |
| Hong Kong SAR ChinaHK | 100% | 7.3M | 7M | official |
| MalaysiaMY | 17% | 5.9M | 5.8M | minority or diaspora |
| SingaporeSG | 77% | 4.6M | 4.4M | official |
| IndonesiaID | 0.92% | 2.6M | 1.9M | minority or diaspora |
| United StatesUS | 0.69% | 2.4M | 2.2M | minority or diaspora |
| ThailandTH | 2% | 1.3M | 1.1M | minority or diaspora |
| VietnamVN | 1% | 1.2M | 979K | minority or diaspora |
| CanadaCA | 3% | 1M | 988.3K | minority or diaspora |
| PhilippinesPH | 0.73% | 863.4K | 580.8K | minority or diaspora |
| Macao SAR ChinaMO | 103% | 663.8K | 596.2K | official |
| AustraliaAU | 2% | 562.1K | 540.4K | minority or diaspora |
| United KingdomGB | 0.30% | 205.4K | 196.1K | minority or diaspora |
| BruneiBN | 11% | 54.1K | 52.1K | minority or diaspora |
| MongoliaMN | 1% | 45.9K | 39.1K | minority or diaspora |
| French PolynesiaPF | 8% | 23.7K | 17.2K | minority or diaspora |
| SurinameSR | 1% | 7.1K | 6.2K | minority or diaspora |
| PanamaPA | 0.13% | 5.8K | 4.2K | minority or diaspora |
| French GuianaGF | 3% | 5K | — | minority or diaspora |
The long tail matters. CLDR does record diaspora populations, so a language usually appears in more territories than its home markets, at small shares. Those rows rarely justify a launch on their own. They are why a language's total reach is larger than any one country page shows. A dash in the online column means the territory has no World Bank internet figure, and it does not mean zero.
What it takes to ship
The work that is not translation: the writing system, the grammar your message format has to survive, and what the words cost.
Writing system
CJK
Lays out left to right, the same as the source. Bundle a webfont: platform defaults do not reliably cover this script.
Plural categories
1
No grammatical plural agreement, so counted messages need one arm.
Rate index
1.20×
Prices about 20% above a mainstream pair.
Engineering note. No grammatical plural. SC vs TC glyph variants.