Did Cantonese almost replace Mandarin as standard Chinese?

This was originally a question on Quora. Here is my answer:

No. This is a common misconception, and it’s not what really happened in history.

An article published in the October 2008 issue on the magazine of Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong (香港中国语文学会) quoted linguist Yao Dehuai (姚德懷) as saying, the common belief in Hong Kong that, in the early years of the Republic of China, Cantonese lost to Beijing dialect only by one vote, is groundless. And the fact that such misconception was held by quite a few academics is shameful. (Commemorating 110th Anniversary of Mandarin/Putonghua Movement / 紀念國語普通話運動110周年)

First it was not 1911. There was indeed a meeting to determine the national dialect, but it was first convened only in 1913.

According to A History of the National Dialect Movement (国语运动史纲) written by linguist Li Jinxi (黎锦熙), by the time the Pronunciation Unification Council (读音统一会) first convened in Feb 1913, nearly a third of its members were from Jiangsu and Zhejiang (both provinces are near Shanghai). Only 4 were from Guangdong. Even if some other dialect could become national standard, rather than that of Beijing, it could have been the Wu dialect spoken in the provinces near Shanghai. Besides, actually each province only had one vote in the later meetings of the Council. It would be unimaginable that a representative from some other province would willingly vote for the dialect of Guangdong.

And even if Cantonese had lost the contest to Beijing pronunciation, it would not happen by only “one vote”.

It was not a law that simply said “Let’s all speak Cantonese”. It was a more complicated process with fierce debate. All provinces in China use the mostly same set of characters. What matters to set a national dialect is to unify the pronunciation of those characters. Later on that council, after heated discussion, the standard pronunciation of more than 6,500 characters were decided one by one. And in that process, each province only had one vote. For any dialect to become national, it would take thousands of votes. The pronunciation is largely based on Beijing pronunciation, with some exceptions.

The closest point of Cantonese to national status was in 1926, on the 2nd national congress of Kuomintang. The meeting was held in Guangzhou (aka Canton) and Cantonese was taken as official language for that meeting. Mandarin speeches delivered by “Northerners” were interpreted by Cantonese party members. But that was only ad hoc. On the provincial education meeting held later in that same month in Guangzhou, Cantonese was not allowed in official speeches. (Source [Chinese])

A blog provides a lengthy account here 方言的“一票之差”国语情结. That blog is written in Chinese and I just summarized his arguments. Most of the information that I give here comes from there.