'chinese' can refer to the written or the spoken languages. although there are many spoken chinese languages, they use the same writing system. differences in speaking are reflected in differences in writing. official china adopts a similar policy to the one in the soviet union, using one official language so people can understand each other. the standard chinese language is referred to as mandarin in english, "pǔtōnghuà" or "common to everybody speech" in mainland china and "guóyǔ" or "language of the whole country" in taiwan. all official documents in pinyin are written in mandarin and mandarin is taught all over china. it is also a standard for language teaching in some other countries.