The use of language isn’t just about gaining economically, it’s somewhat too shallow to only look though such a lens While China also has been arguably the biggest beneficiary of the global trades since it joined the WTO.
Language is also the window to a culture, to understanding your life better, to have a different perspective. It’s really hard to explain to anyone what 缘分or幸福 means in English.
Languages serve as the gateway that can benefit in less visible but have profound long term impact
It's not particularly hard. I have one friend who continually claims the near impossibility of translating/explaining various idioms or characters, who gets flustered when I explain what those idioms or characters mean back to her. I think it's a problem shared by both Chinese and English speakers. It's a subtle exclusionary or...ahem...elitist idea creating a gatekeeping perspective on who belongs and who really understands...and who doesn't. It doesn't have to be that way.
I wholeheartedly agree (also with Thomas Dai); Chinese students should certainly learn English and other foreign languages by all means. But at the same time far more Westerners should study Chinese! There is a need for better mutual understanding.
I can understand why some Chinese people are pushing back against pressure to learn English. But it is hard to deny that English has become a world language. I believe the underlying problem is the sheer difficulty that non-Chinese people have in learning Chinese. I have spent around 12,000 hours since I retired 13 years ago on studying Chinese, mainly in order to read it. I have achieved a good level of reading ability and mainly focus on biographies and memoirs of Chinese personalities from the 1920s to the 1970s. I decided to pursue Chinese partly because it is so difficult, and so it has proved. I am reasonably fluent in French, but compared with Chinese, English and French are basically two 'dialects' of the same language. I have only been able to achieve my present level of proficiency in Chinese because I am retired and have had sufficient time to do it. I expect that people outside China will continue to have serious difficulties in acquiring a high level of Chinese proficiency. Meanwhile it would be helpful if more Chinese publications could produce translations in Chinese (e.g., 三联生活周刊).
I recently watched an interview of an Australian English As A Foreign Language Instructor who taught 10+ years in Japan, and currently teaches in a Chinese University after 3 years teaching in Hunan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA7CTWK9Pgo
She said the quality of English in China on average was vastly superior to Japan. That's a single datum, but it does match my experience having spent 4 decades in China with extensive travel in Japan. This does indicate that not only the instruction, but that the opportunity to make use of English in China is much higher. More importantly, like the Great Wall indicates in a way that China has always been aware of the outside, and that it must deal with it, Japan was insular and seems be heading back into self-isolation. I hope you might consider a report on immigration in China, both policy and statistical.
The ineffectiveness of English teaching in Japan is well known and something of a national obsession. I’m not sure this demonstrates that Japan is slipping into insularity, though.
I think it is a mistake to believe China needs to look outside of itself for the kind of linguistic understanding that the West only came to realize the 19th and 20th centuries. When you look at the Chinese Bone Script and then step back, one has to wonder in amazement that not only was this level of sophistication understood, but it's importantance was understood to the extent that they built it into the language characters themselves.
Very interesting piece, as usual! I see quite a bit of this in my work here in China.
As you and others in the comments say, learning another language is more than just gaining another channel for information. Exposure to another language gives us insight into our counterparts' ways of thinking and frames of reference (and it does so efficiently, since not everyone can afford the more effective way - spending years abroad to gain the same insight).
In that sense, languages remain valuable even as AI increasingly removes the practical need for it.
Another aspect of the argument against English I find a bit disingenuous (as most nationalistic stances seem to be upon further scrutiny these days): more and more Chinese companies are going abroad, where their leaders have three choices. Stick to Chinese, speak English, or learn the local language. Speaking English still feels like a sensible choice after all.
Great article, cool insights. I'm learning Chinese and it's really hard, but it also makes me realize how hard English is.
I definitely think the point about Chinese learning English but Americans not bothering to learn Chinese resonates w me a lot and is for sure a byproduct of a cultural haughtiness which is, frankly, regrettable.
I feel like a broad emphasis on English education also has a levelling effect. It doesn't really matter who or where you are, speaking good English has a strong relationship with making more money. If China deemphasized English education in primary schools and gaokao, then rich parents would still make their kids learn English so they can go make money in the US or Europe or Africa or wherever, and the democratizing effects of the whole gaokao system would be eroded.
Also English is just a great language that is cool and weird and fun and there are a lot of good English media like Moby Dick and Sponge Bob Squarepants.
> But that process will depend on foreigners having stronger reasons to learn Chinese...
& why would foreigners learn Chinese when Chinese themselves are already learning English?
There is no incentive pressure to do so hence your contrived logic is flawed inherently.
Since (not even an IF) translation services already do the heavy lifting (in practical real world people-to-people scenarios, which are the most relevant use cases) the mental gymnastics to posit that dedicating enormous time to a Foreign Language that won't be & isn't used practically anyway is just farcical.
Argument would've made fair sense IF English proficiency was credibly high among Chinese but it objectively isn't & they reached the point they did (Rise & Development) with having even fewer capacity/dedication/intuitional-pressure of that language policy. Meaning it simply was not relevant in the Modern China Story. AT ALL.
You mentioned China's scale, yet that itself is sufficient to capture those among China that want to or rather will be incentivized to seek English proficiency for professional or knowledge/strategic domains. China is big enough, not all/majority need to learn English. It's pretty simple.
English is a pathway for socio-economic-cultural upward mobility in the world (& internally in many domestic situations of many countries) that exist in a lower hierarchy of class, status (especially Economic).
A place that has bypassed that hierarchy by already having achieved upward mobility doesn't require English for anything. It is your mental/cognitive colonization that brings you to a narrative position that it still "matters". It DOES NOT.
There are certain dangers, I would argue, to a "little knowledge of English". It does make one more susceptible to foreign propaganda in general - a side effect of the dominance of liberal normative oratory that even the Western right wing struggles with on some level (though it has become more balanced in recent years). This is still the soup in which we live in (here we are, communicating in English).
At the end of the day, that which is communicated on the Internet, in English, eloquently, becomes the truth.
That said - I don't think the solution is to downgrade English. The solution is to learn it really well, but without worshipping it, and without worshipping the West itself. Only then can you see through it. Easier said than done, but a necessary step on the path to true superpower status, and in some ways I think a necessary step to 中华人民伟大复兴. To not just economic or manufacturing or technological or even military power, but to harness the true power of cultural and ideological normative dominance.
The use of language isn’t just about gaining economically, it’s somewhat too shallow to only look though such a lens While China also has been arguably the biggest beneficiary of the global trades since it joined the WTO.
Language is also the window to a culture, to understanding your life better, to have a different perspective. It’s really hard to explain to anyone what 缘分or幸福 means in English.
Languages serve as the gateway that can benefit in less visible but have profound long term impact
It's not particularly hard. I have one friend who continually claims the near impossibility of translating/explaining various idioms or characters, who gets flustered when I explain what those idioms or characters mean back to her. I think it's a problem shared by both Chinese and English speakers. It's a subtle exclusionary or...ahem...elitist idea creating a gatekeeping perspective on who belongs and who really understands...and who doesn't. It doesn't have to be that way.
I wholeheartedly agree (also with Thomas Dai); Chinese students should certainly learn English and other foreign languages by all means. But at the same time far more Westerners should study Chinese! There is a need for better mutual understanding.
I can understand why some Chinese people are pushing back against pressure to learn English. But it is hard to deny that English has become a world language. I believe the underlying problem is the sheer difficulty that non-Chinese people have in learning Chinese. I have spent around 12,000 hours since I retired 13 years ago on studying Chinese, mainly in order to read it. I have achieved a good level of reading ability and mainly focus on biographies and memoirs of Chinese personalities from the 1920s to the 1970s. I decided to pursue Chinese partly because it is so difficult, and so it has proved. I am reasonably fluent in French, but compared with Chinese, English and French are basically two 'dialects' of the same language. I have only been able to achieve my present level of proficiency in Chinese because I am retired and have had sufficient time to do it. I expect that people outside China will continue to have serious difficulties in acquiring a high level of Chinese proficiency. Meanwhile it would be helpful if more Chinese publications could produce translations in Chinese (e.g., 三联生活周刊).
Thanks for the interesting article.
I recently watched an interview of an Australian English As A Foreign Language Instructor who taught 10+ years in Japan, and currently teaches in a Chinese University after 3 years teaching in Hunan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA7CTWK9Pgo
She said the quality of English in China on average was vastly superior to Japan. That's a single datum, but it does match my experience having spent 4 decades in China with extensive travel in Japan. This does indicate that not only the instruction, but that the opportunity to make use of English in China is much higher. More importantly, like the Great Wall indicates in a way that China has always been aware of the outside, and that it must deal with it, Japan was insular and seems be heading back into self-isolation. I hope you might consider a report on immigration in China, both policy and statistical.
The ineffectiveness of English teaching in Japan is well known and something of a national obsession. I’m not sure this demonstrates that Japan is slipping into insularity, though.
I think it is a mistake to believe China needs to look outside of itself for the kind of linguistic understanding that the West only came to realize the 19th and 20th centuries. When you look at the Chinese Bone Script and then step back, one has to wonder in amazement that not only was this level of sophistication understood, but it's importantance was understood to the extent that they built it into the language characters themselves.
https://steelemethod.substack.com/p/they-shoot-horses-dont-they?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=28h5a2
Very interesting piece, as usual! I see quite a bit of this in my work here in China.
As you and others in the comments say, learning another language is more than just gaining another channel for information. Exposure to another language gives us insight into our counterparts' ways of thinking and frames of reference (and it does so efficiently, since not everyone can afford the more effective way - spending years abroad to gain the same insight).
In that sense, languages remain valuable even as AI increasingly removes the practical need for it.
Another aspect of the argument against English I find a bit disingenuous (as most nationalistic stances seem to be upon further scrutiny these days): more and more Chinese companies are going abroad, where their leaders have three choices. Stick to Chinese, speak English, or learn the local language. Speaking English still feels like a sensible choice after all.
Most adults don’t use algebra or most of the high school math they learned. Does that mean we should also stop teaching math beyond middle school?
Great article, cool insights. I'm learning Chinese and it's really hard, but it also makes me realize how hard English is.
I definitely think the point about Chinese learning English but Americans not bothering to learn Chinese resonates w me a lot and is for sure a byproduct of a cultural haughtiness which is, frankly, regrettable.
I feel like a broad emphasis on English education also has a levelling effect. It doesn't really matter who or where you are, speaking good English has a strong relationship with making more money. If China deemphasized English education in primary schools and gaokao, then rich parents would still make their kids learn English so they can go make money in the US or Europe or Africa or wherever, and the democratizing effects of the whole gaokao system would be eroded.
Also English is just a great language that is cool and weird and fun and there are a lot of good English media like Moby Dick and Sponge Bob Squarepants.
> But that process will depend on foreigners having stronger reasons to learn Chinese...
& why would foreigners learn Chinese when Chinese themselves are already learning English?
There is no incentive pressure to do so hence your contrived logic is flawed inherently.
Since (not even an IF) translation services already do the heavy lifting (in practical real world people-to-people scenarios, which are the most relevant use cases) the mental gymnastics to posit that dedicating enormous time to a Foreign Language that won't be & isn't used practically anyway is just farcical.
Argument would've made fair sense IF English proficiency was credibly high among Chinese but it objectively isn't & they reached the point they did (Rise & Development) with having even fewer capacity/dedication/intuitional-pressure of that language policy. Meaning it simply was not relevant in the Modern China Story. AT ALL.
You mentioned China's scale, yet that itself is sufficient to capture those among China that want to or rather will be incentivized to seek English proficiency for professional or knowledge/strategic domains. China is big enough, not all/majority need to learn English. It's pretty simple.
English is a pathway for socio-economic-cultural upward mobility in the world (& internally in many domestic situations of many countries) that exist in a lower hierarchy of class, status (especially Economic).
A place that has bypassed that hierarchy by already having achieved upward mobility doesn't require English for anything. It is your mental/cognitive colonization that brings you to a narrative position that it still "matters". It DOES NOT.
There are certain dangers, I would argue, to a "little knowledge of English". It does make one more susceptible to foreign propaganda in general - a side effect of the dominance of liberal normative oratory that even the Western right wing struggles with on some level (though it has become more balanced in recent years). This is still the soup in which we live in (here we are, communicating in English).
At the end of the day, that which is communicated on the Internet, in English, eloquently, becomes the truth.
That said - I don't think the solution is to downgrade English. The solution is to learn it really well, but without worshipping it, and without worshipping the West itself. Only then can you see through it. Easier said than done, but a necessary step on the path to true superpower status, and in some ways I think a necessary step to 中华人民伟大复兴. To not just economic or manufacturing or technological or even military power, but to harness the true power of cultural and ideological normative dominance.