SpeechSynthesis rate is not adjustable

In my app I have:

let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: recognizedTextView.text)
utterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(language: "zh-HK")
utterance.rate = 0.3
synthesizer.speak(utterance)

However, after I upgraded my iOS to 17.1.1 the speed doesn't get adjusted. I tried 0.01 and 0.3 for rate, and there is no difference.