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Su's remarks follow a proposal put forward earlier this month by members of the Guangzhou Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) asking local broadcaster Guangzhou Television to air programs in Mandarin on its news channel and channel one.

The proposal immediately drew strong opposition from local residents, who worry the dialect will be abandoned.

According to a poll on the official website of the CPPCC's Guangzhou Committee, 80 percent of the 30,000 respondents were opposed to withdrawing Cantonese from local TV channels.

A senior official from the Guangdong provincial capital has denied rumors that the city will scrap Cantonese to promote Mandarin in the near future.　"Promoting Mandarin does not mean Guangzhou has to eliminate its dialect," Su Zhijia, deputy Party secretary of Guangzhou, said on Monday.　"The city government has never had such a plan to abandon or weaken Cantonese," he said.