There are older Germans who have been living here for generations and don’t speak standard German. Germans learn it in school now, but not every school insisted on Hochdeutsch in the post-war period, especially in more rural areas.

Generally they all understand standard German, but not all of them can produce it. Their children can often understand and produce both their dialect and standard German, but their grandchildren have mostly lost the ability to produce the dialect.

It’s really sad to lose the diversity of dialects, and it’s a direct result of enforcing a standardized German dialect in schools and government institutions.

China is geographically massive in comparison to Germany and has that much more to lose.

You are changing your question. First it was if you can live there without speaking the language. And that's easy. And we're talking about minorities in China, in some areas you'd be surrounded by a community who speak the same language as you so integration into that area isn't a problem at all.

I mean right wingers push for mandatory language classes (and talk about ethnic unity). This is getting eery. And this is going further in that that it is forcing it as the primary language...