By Wei Liu
Image from Wix
In the post-World War I USA, German turned from a popular foreign language to a tongue
of the enemy, and German instruction was discouraged for fear of ill ideological influence
on American children.
The post-World War II Soviet Union, on the contrary, encouraged foreign language education in school curriculums in order to promote the Communist ideology among the capitalist enemies in the languages of the capitalist enemies.
And in post-Communist Eastern Europe, Russian was stripped of its superior
status and the teaching of other European languages flourished to align with the western
powers and to gain entry into the global market.
Foreign language policy is closely tied to socio-political allegiances and national identities. What has been the Chinese foreign language policy in the past 2 centuries?
In this study by Wei Liu, the Chinese foreign language policy is discussed in four historical periods:
From the ‘Central Kingdom’ to the ‘Sick Man of Asia’ (1840–1911)
From feudal Confucianism to whole-sale westernization (1912–1949)
Communism as China savior and havoc-wreaker (1949–1978)
From Socialism to Socialism with Chinese characteristics (1978 to today)
China has long self-identified as the Central Kingdom of the world, given its economic and cultural dominance in the geopolitical region. With national identity defined as such, China tried to avoid interaction with the neighbouring countries for fear of ill influence on the supposedly supreme Confucian ideology.
To avoid external contact, China closed the northern border with the Great Wall and forbade trading at the eastern coasts. All foreign languages, other than Mandarin Chinese, were despised as bird languages, and the learning of them was discouraged, if not banned.
However, with the recognition that China had been left behind by Western powers in technical and economic advancement through armed conflicts that were brought to its shores, China has been consistently resorting to foreign language education, be it English, Japanese or Russian, as an important mechanism for nation-building since the second half of the nineteenth Century.
Having fallen into a position as the Sick Man of Asia, the Qing government first started to engage in English education as a way to access advanced western technology, so that China could acquire the ability to resist the aggression of western countries.
Republican China, in the first half of the twentieth century, aimed to turn China into a western-style country by introducing the western scientific tradition, individual freedom and the western educational system. English education was actively pursued as an agent for such a cultural shift, with English brought to the same status as Chinese and mathematics in the public school curriculum.
During Mao’s leadership (1949–1976), the PRC changed course and aimed to build a strong Socialist country, following the model of Classical Marxism, a rival ideology of western capitalism. Russian was uplifted as the national foreign language due to its importance in the Socialist camp.
However, the Socialist path, once thought the only correct path for China, went awry. Realizing the limitation of the orthodox Socialist doctrine during the Cultural Revolution, China once again turned to the West by borrowing the capitalist means of running the economic sector, while maintaining its Socialist government. English education played a major role in China’s reengagement with the western world and in China’s international trade in the globalized economy.
If history is able to give us some wisdom to detect the future trend, what would be China’s next national identity pursuit, and what would be the role of foreign language education in achieving that?
To find out the answer, please read this interesting historical paper on English education in China. If you don’t have access to the full text, please reach out to the author and request it through here:
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