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A Matter of Balance — Reflections on China’s Language Policy in Education —

Abstract Although China has a clearly delineated policy on the dominant Han language and ethnic languages and has achieved successes in both status and corpus planning, there has never been a consistent well-designed plan for foreign language education. Policy shifts were often motivated by the political agenda at the time. My argument is that when the political agenda prevails over the educational, foreign language education suffers and that when the political agenda converges with the educational, foreign language education gains. In the early and mid-1950s because of China’s political alliance and economic construction Russian was promoted at the expense of English. Many Russian institutes and departments were set up and Russian soon became the preferred foreign language in the country. The Ministry of Education closed down most departments of English in normal universities and replaced English with Russian at secondary schools. This led to lop-sided development of FL education and a sharp decline of English language teaching. This is a clear case of the political agenda prevailing over the educational. Although efforts were made after 1956 to tackle the existing problems, the situation as a whole did not improve quickly. In the early and mid-1960s because of strained relations with the Soviet Union and increased contact with countries in other parts of the world China needed translators and interpreters of other languages than Russian. Two measures were taken to improve and speed up the training of foreign language graduates. One was the setting up of special foreign language schools and the other was the drawing up of a seven-year plan for developing foreign language education. This time the political agenda coincided with the educational needs of the country and the outcome turned out to be a very positive one. This brief review of past events in the history of China’s FL teaching throws light on the need for a consistent language education policy in which there is a good balance between the political and the educational agenda. This plan should take into full account China’s needs both at the present and in future years and the language use situation in the world. English now holds a predominant position in foreign language teaching in China and there seems to be an insatiable need in China for graduates from English departments. We should fully recognize the increased importance of English as an international language in the world today and give it the place it deserves. But at the same time we should not lose sight of language diversity and the need for other languages than English.