Mandarin: The BBC Chinese Service has made its last radio broadcast in Mandarin after nearly 70 years. Shortwave programming in Mandarin is a casualty of spending cuts announced by the BBC World Service in January.
From now on, Mandarin-speakers will be served only by the BBC’s Chinese-language websites; a weekly radio broadcast in Cantonese will continue.
BBC managers say they have had to make tough choices because of a 16 percent cut in UK government funding.
BBC World Service Mandarin programming began back in 1941, pre-dating by eight years the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China.
To a country starved of information, BBC Chinese carried news from inside and outside China – most notably of the Vietnam War and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.
In June 1989, with the world’s attention on the democracy protests in China, more and more Chinese tuned in.
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