Challenge: Have English be more prominent as a language in mainland China

It's also not entirely out of question that English is more prominent as a language in mainland China without a nasty brutal colonial era or whatnot. For instance, an earlier modernization push with more odd/wonky ideas (I believe IOTL there was a movement to completely romanize the language, prompting 赵元任 to write 施氏食狮史 in response) could see a much larger push to teach western languages for trade/diplomatic/etc. purposes.

Zhao actually wrote "施氏食狮史" to illustrate how Classical Chinese would be insufficient to represent spoken Chinese, as he was a proponent of using vernacular Chinese in writing. Given that he (helped to) develop General Chinese and Gwoyeu Romatzyh, both of which were phonetic systems, it's safe to say that he also favored romanization.

However, China under Mao eventually decided to use Simplified Chinese for various cultural, political, and practical reasons.
 
If China effectively splits apart in mid 1800s as a result of the Taiping Rebellion, southern China might become part of a British sphere of influence opening it up to British economic interests. We then might see an East India Company scenario or even outright colonization. A 50-100 year era of British colonialism (in some form) might make English language as widespread in southern China as it is in Hong Kong.

Area of English use would probably be limited to the coastal areas and Pearl River as a "natural area" for British seapower. This would include provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and possibly Yunnan. These are generally areas where non-Mandarin dialect (Hakka, Min, Cantonese) is spoken or ethnic minorities. English might be an acceptable lingua franca as it was in India.

If the British made an effort to expand their zone of control and build railroads, they might make it to dominate Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi and thus the central Yangtze, but I think English is less likely to "take root".

Even IOTL English made almost no inroads in Hong Kong as a native language. And even today, outside the realms of business/finance/government, English is barely needed at all.

It's plausible a non-Mandarin Chinese dialect becomes the lingua franca, since before radio broadcasting there was no need for a standard spoken Chinese. But wherever the British went, they preserved the pre-existing government structures as much as possible (unless they exterminated the indigenous population and shipped in settlers of course). And given the British civil service was actually modelled on the Chinese one, it's fair to assume this will be the case in this British China as well.
 
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