International students’ linguistic entrepreneurship: motivation, ‘Chinese fever’ and the neoliberal burden

ABSTRACT

Against the backdrop of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the number of educational migrants from the member states, particularly African international students, has dramatically increased over the past decade in China. Much of previous research on international student mobility (ISM) and its ensuing language learning has exclusively focused on the East-West flow of students and their investment in English, while ignoring the emerging atypical ‘South-South’ migration pattern and rise of Chinese as a global language. Engaging with interviews with 59 African international students, I trace their ways of thinking and approaches to Chinese language learning which strongly resonate with practices of ‘linguistic entrepreneurship’, as each of them demonstrate self-responsibilisation and constant self-development, while suffering a growing sense of linguistic insecurity. This article debunks the myth of English as the sole language for socioeconomic success, while making a unique contribution to theorising the previously under-recognised value of the Chinese language with the changing global matrices of power.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• international students
• Chinese language learning
• responsibilisation
• linguistic entrepreneurship
• linguistic perfectionism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The statistics of this figure were sourced from China education yearbook, 2003–2015; Brief statistics of foreign students studying in China, 2012–2015, Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges, Ministry of Education of China.

2. Overall, according to the demographic compositions of international students in China (Ministry of Education, 2019), almost 60% (295,043) were from elsewhere in Asia – with South Korea, Thailand and Pakistan led the list of three largest ‘sending’ nations respectively, and 16.57% (81,562) were from Africa, and 14.96% (73618) from Europe.

3. HSK (Chinese Proficiency Test), an international standardised test of Chinese language proficiency, assesses non-native Chinese speakers’ abilities in using the Chinese language in their daily, academic and professional lives. HSK consists of six levels, namely HSK (level I), HSK (level II), HSK (level III), HSK (level IV), HSK (level V), and HSK (level VI).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China – Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (general project) [grant number: 22YH45C].

Notes on contributors

Wen XU

Dr. Wen XU is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Language Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of language, education and society. Currently, her research projects and publications encompass studies of international students’ lived experiences in China.