From Promotion to Suspicion: Shifting Attitudes Towards English Language Teaching in Chinese Official Media

Since the 1980s, English language proficiency has been considered as a crucial tool for China’s modernization and economic development and has been actively promoted within the education system (Adamson 2004; Vickers & Zeng 2018). However, the status of English has become a debated topic within Chinese society in recent years, with some political representatives proposing a reduction in its importance. This topic has also been discussed in Chinese official media. While in 2019 an article published on the Renmin Ribao still emphasized the importance of the study of foreign languages (Liu et al. 2019), more recently, the media have given significant space to voices who are critical towards English and its dreaded negative effects on society, and to analyses of policies which indirectly downsized its role in the education system, such as the ‘double-reduction’ policy (shuang jian zhengce 双减政策). This contribution analyzes the representation of the public debate on English teaching in the Chinese official media, especially the Renmin Ribao, based on a corpus of articles published between 2019 and 2023. The aim is to reveal a substantial shift in attitude by the Chinese government. Relying on a qualitative approach based on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003; van Dijk 2011), it particularly examines how social meanings and attitudes towards English are produced in the articles, with a special focus on ‘ideology’ (Gramsci 1971). In doing so, it attempts to contribute to the academic discussion on the relationship between education policies, public consensus, and media in China.