Chapter 9

Language resources of Yunnan in “the Belt and Road” project

As a multi-ethnic and multilingual province, Yunnan has very rich resources in the minority languages. Among the 25 ethnic minority groups, 22 groups speak 26 languages, belonging to the Tibetan-Burmese, Zhuang-Dong, Miao Yao and Meng Khmer language branches of the two major language families of Sino-Tibetan and Austro-Asiatic. The 16 cross-border ethnic groups are mainly distributed outside in Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and other countries bordering China. The languages and characters of these cross-border ethnic groups have become important language resources in Yunnan in the construction of “Belt and Road Initiative”. How to fully develop and make full use of these languages to meet the language needs of ethnic groups in these countries along the route and to achieve cooperation and win-win results under the framework of equal language and cultural identity is an urgent problem to be studied and solved by the Chinese government. This paper will make an in-depth analysis of the current language policy in Yunnan and its efforts in the protection of cross-border language resources, in the hope to provide some ideas for the scientific protection and utilization of cross-border language resources.