What dialect of Chinese is spoken?

We speak Chinese Mandarin (often referred as just Chinese). Mandarin is the official language/dialect in China, Taiwan and is also the formal language of instruction for overseas Chinese. We think that learning any second language is great for kids, but Chinese will be especially useful because of the below reasons:

• artistic & fun language, made up of pictorial characters
• plenty of people to practice with (over 1.2 billion speakers worldwide)
• the language of Australia’s largest trading partner
• the language of the world’s 2^nd largest economy, expected to be the largest by 2030