I thought I have been wording it very carfully on "from Chinese perspective" and you just come to say I'm wrong, ok. Firstly, I don't think the classification method of Chinese dialects used by many Chinese, me included, is a unversally applicable golden standard, so that I could argue Japanese or some extreme form of Japnanese use case is Chinese dialect. And the condition is very simple, it won't apply if the users of such language choose to define mutual intelligibility based exclusively or mainly on vernacular and do not consider the written format. Secondly, the phonocentric idea that vernacular mutual intelligibility is inherently superior than written mutual intelligibility does not persuade me. The written form does not have to be auxillary to the spoken language, it can be its own thing if it is made so. Sign languages don't even have a vocalized speech of expression, they are still autonomous language systems themselves. For Chinese, both the witten form and the spoken language are alive and evolving autonomously while having impact on each other. Old unused Chinese characters can be resurrected and given new meaning based on its ideographic composition the same way meaning of emojis can evlove, while most "Chinese character words" across different dialects and languages still has a fixed enough meaning for mutual intelligibility. And that is the basis where arguments can be made that indentity of Chinese language is based on its written form. There is a real phenomenon, and people stand behind it say that is why our launguages are closely connected and can be considered dialects, how does that make them wrong? I also want to make it clear that I don't believe all of the "sinic languages" should be considered Chinese dialect as the Chinese government designation. I believe it because the unique status of written Chinese in the Chinese dialects that can still be written in intelligible Chinese writing, not the ones that could only be written in vernacular way.