Controversies of bilingual education in China

ABSTRACT

In this opening commentary we highlight the tension surrounding the emergence and development of bilingual education programs in mainland China, which has attracted much attention in research. Scholars have contradictory views about efforts aimed at promoting and sustaining bilingualism/multilingualism through education in different parts of China. To contribute to this ongoing discussion, this special issue contains the collective efforts of scholars holding different views and examining three types of bilingual education initiatives in mainland China: bilingual education programs for ethnic minority students, the rise of Chinese-English bilingual education, and the vitality of regional Chinese varieties or dialects in major coastal cities. We contend that all the efforts to promote and sustain bilingualism in the aforementioned aspects are to some extent double-edged and require critical examination.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual education
• bilingualism/multilingualism
• China
• minority students
• dialects
• Chinese-English bilingual education

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Prof. Jean-Marc Dewaele for all the support and encouragement we have received in the process of editing this special issue. We also thank all the authors for their contributions to the special issue and the reviewers for their selfless participation in the peer-review process. The editing of this special issue was generously funded by the Eastern Scholar award by Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (JZ2015008) through Shanghai International Studies University, and the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities in China (15JJD740007).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is an associate professor in School of Education, the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is also a visiting chair professor (Eastern Scholar awarded by Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning, JZ2015008) at the Institute of Languages, Shanghai International Studies University. His research interests include language learner autonomy, language education policy and language teacher education.

Wei Ren is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University, China. He is also a visiting professor at the School of Foreign Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. His research interests include Second Language Pragmatics, Pragmatics and Second Language Acquisition.

Notes

1. We use bilingual education/bilingualism in a loose sense to also include multilingual education/multilingualism.

2. We are fully aware that it is highly problematic to call a particular social group an ‘ethnic minority group’. We use this term here to match previous literature and legal documents in China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Eastern Scholar award by Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning: [Grant Number JZ2015008]; the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities in China: [Grant Number 15JJD740007].