More and more Chinese nowadays are able to communicate using Chinese Mandarin ... the standard spoken language also known as putonghua.
Agreed, it is confusing, ASp. But I think the confusion is resolved if one understands the words "putonghua" and "Madarin" to have exactly the same meaning.
It's probably the same difference as the difference between "Peking" and "Beijing".
In the passage below which creates the confusion, it is not putonghua which is "complementary", it is "the use of dialects" which is "complementary".
"Yin said her dialect gives her a feeling of home, however, she said the use of dialects will not decrease the influence and popularity of putonghua. "It is complementary to Mandarin," she said."
I understand Yin to mean that speaking her dialect at home and putonghua [Mandarin] at work is equivalent to wearing slippers at home and dress shoes at work. "Complementary" is not the best word to describe that thought, and that adds to the confusion.
Yin's dialect is not really "complementary" to Mandarin, but it is not injurious to Mandarin either.
