A meeting of the Language Resources Protection Project was held on May 16 in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Province. A hundred representatives from language-related departments under the Ministry of Education (MOE), the Guangxi provincial education department, local language commissions and the project’s expert committee attended.

The meeting reviewed progress made in the second phase of the project and clarified focus areas for the next stage. It also emphasized that government authorities need to offer guidance and enhance coordination during the implementation of the project. In addition, experts were encouraged to increase cooperation and explore innovative ways to develop and utilize language resources.

At the meeting, some key project outputs were released, including collections of local language and cultural resources in different provinces, cities and counties.

The Language Resources Protection Project was jointly launched in 2015 by the MOE and the State Language Commission with the aim of carrying out surveys of local language resources so that they could be effectively protected and shared with the public. The first phase of the project included establishment of the world’s largest language database, which contains over 10 million entries of original language resources covering 120 dialects, collected from 1,700 field surveys. The second phase started in 2021 and has already produced a series of remarkable results.