How China is backtracking on the English language
According to Xi Jinping, China must show more "cultural trust", starting with the elimination of the English language which only a few years ago was seen instead as a "tool for the Chinese people to set out and understand the world". Economist Report
When China made English a compulsory subject in primary school in 2001, the same year it joined the World Trade Organization, it was taken as a sign that the once isolated country was opening up. The education ministry said the new language requirement was part of a national strategy to "address modernization, the world and the future".
Two decades later, in the midst of a wave of nationalism, English seems to be falling out of favor. Those traveling by subway in Beijing will notice that the language has been removed from some station signs and maps (often replaced by pinyin, the Romanized form of Mandarin). Some smaller cities, such as Taiyuan and Shenyang, are making similar changes. The province of Hainan has launched a campaign to "clean up and rectify" the names of kindergartens, eliminating a variety of words, including "world", "global", "bilingual" and "international" – writes The Economist .
Other moves have served to downgrade English teaching. During last year's legislative meetings, a government adviser proposed removing English and other foreign languages from core school subjects and college entrance exams. The Chinese, he argued, spend too much time learning English and too few use it. However, machine translation technology will soon obviate these needs, he said. Shanghai officials share these doubts. The city has long sought to downplay the importance of English as an exam subject.
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, wants his country to show more "cultural trust". A dark side of this campaign was revealed in 2013, the year after taking power, when the Communist Party circulated "Document Number Nine," a leaked political document, filled with paranoia about foreigners fetishizing constitutionalism and universal values, and which seek to "infiltrate the ideological sphere of China". He asked for oversight of foreign diplomats, journalists and scholars. Some Chinese intellectuals believe that anti-English measures are part of this push for ideological purity.
The pandemic has accentuated the closure of China. Its borders have been closed for over two years. Last month, Chinese scholars were barred from attending an Asian Studies conference in Hawaii. It was no surprise given China's strict controls on Covid. But, bizarrely, officials have cited the same Covid restrictions to keep scholars away from online sessions.
On social media, some have questioned anti-English moves. In doing so, they could invoke the words of the Party itself. Just a few years ago, its official spokesperson, the People's Daily, made a passionate online argument in favor of multilingualism: “Learning foreign languages has become a tool for the Chinese people to take the initiative to go to the world and understand the world ".
(Extract from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-la-cina-sta-facendo-marcia-indietro-sulla-lingua-inglese/ on Mon, 18 Apr 2022 05:01:07 +0000.