You are talking about the spoken language,but I think its just one part of chinese language. Writing systems is more importert considering chinese characteristics.You feel cantonese songs expressive and elegant. why? because it uses a formal written system and keep some ancient phonology.thiss...
its nothing with learning Mandarin.the gov cancel cantonese channels and people dont want to acppet that.you neednt to worry much about china. chinese history,civilization,geography and ect.wont allow this hapeen.unification is chinese core values. china cant go anywhere.
no no maybe a few worlds are.VN borrowed chinese characters just as kr. jp did.which means cantonese affected Vietnamese ,so not surprised. both cantonese and mandarin are chinese language because of its lexicon and grammar ect. but Vietnamese,Korean japenese are not,they just borrowed.