A top university in northwest China has scrapped English tests as a prerequisite for graduation, rekindling a heated debate about the role of the world’s lingua franca in the country’s education system after years of rising nationalist sentiment under leader Xi Jinping.
In a notice Wednesday, the Xi’an Jiaotong University in the capital city of Shaanxi province said students will no longer need to pass a nationwide standardized English test – nor any other English exams – to be able to graduate with bachelor’s degrees.
The announcement caused a stir on social media, with many praising the decision and calling for more universities to do the same.
“Very good. I hope other universities will follow suit. It’s ridiculous that Chinese people’s academic degrees need to be validated by a foreign language (test),” said a comment with more than 24,000 likes on microblogging site Weibo, where a related hashtag attracted more than 350 million views Thursday.
Passing the College English Test, a national standardized exam first held in 1987, has been a graduation requirement at the majority of Chinese universities for decades – although the government has never made it an official policy.
The common practice underlined the importance Chinese universities placed on English – the world’s predominant academic and scientific language – especially when the once-insular and impoverished country was opening up and eager to catch up with the developed world after the turbulence of the Mao Zedong era.
But in recent years, some universities have downgraded the importance of English, either by replacing the national College English Test with their own exams or – as in the case of the Xi’an Jiaotong University – dropping English qualifications altogether as a graduation criteria.
The goal of this is clearly
- to garner pro chinese nationalist public support
- to prevent your smartest students from seeing better opportunities outside of the country
There is no small number of highly educated chinese that leave the country.
They didn’t ban learning English though. They can still learn it if they want. Plenty of country’s universities don’t have such a requirement.
But it de-emphasizes english which would have that effect, at least in small part.
What about
- Reduce the overwhelming academic requirements on students?
Right? They don’t need to, not that the opportunity isn’t there.
“English is important, but as China develops, English is no longer that important,” said a Weibo post from a nationalist influencer with 6 million online followers after the university’s announcement.
“It should be the turn for foreigners to learn Chinese,” the influencer said.
The downgrade comes as China turns more nationalist and inward under Xi, who has called on the country to strengthen “cultural confidence” and fend off “Western influence.”
In schools and universities, teachers have been forbidden from using Western textbooks or talking about “Western values” such as democracy, press freedom and judicial independence.
“It should be the turn for foreigners to learn Chinese,” what an idiotic view, a complex language that doesn’t adapt to current technologies and is only spoken by one country. Have you ever see how difficult it was to create a keyboard for Chinese? CCP is a disgrace for the world and specially for China.
I’m learning Mandarin at a later age now (40). The keyboard stuff is okay but it NEEDS to be a smart keyboard where you typically use pinyin and it’s not that bad for what it is, but my typos are crazy now.
That being said, I’m ethnically Chinese and it’s really difficult to pick up. I know a lot of foreign languages are but Chinese feels rougher. Also, other Chinese people can be bloody rude when I’m trying to speak Chinese. I’m tired of hearing “stop trying to speak Chinese” … well fuck you too, your English isn’t exactly music to my ears either, but I put up with it.
“but Chinese feels rougher” From what I’ve seen so far (correct me if I’m wrong) it’s a very intonation-dependent language, which must be hell to learn, I can hardly get the pronunciation or intonation right speaking a language other than my native one. “Also, other Chinese people can be bloody rude when I’m trying to speak Chinese” they say that French people have this attitude too, and I don’t understand the logic of it, I’m happy when someone is at least trying to speak my language.
French people have this attitude too
The French attitude is generally sympathetic, so long as you’re at least trying.
I’ve often had shopkeepers etc. correct obvious mistakes, “non, c’est 'blabla bla '” “ah, blabla bla ?” “oui”.Except in Paris. Paris, people just want an excuse to be a dick to you.
Except in Paris. Paris, people just want an excuse to be a dick to you.
Lmao. A twitch streamer I watch took a trip to Europe a few weeks ago and Paris was the one place he hated because everyone there were assholes
Paris, the Philadelphia of France
Paris is a terrible city and I am sad it is what most people think of france
I kinda cheated, I’m slightly below conversational Cantonese … which is another dialect of Chinese. I picked up Mandarin because Cantonese is so damned hard to learn on its own rather than Mandarin’s vast learning material out there. The intonation is definitely difficult. I’m still not great at it … the key for me is not really getting bogged down with perfection so far. I just correct myself and move on. It’s easy to get paralysis due to wanting to be perfect.
A lot of Chinese people come to me to speak English and I grew up in London and lots of Eastern Europeans would struggle speaking English as well. I’m more than happy to work with them and practice. Never saw it as an issue, myself as well.
As someone who used to be so flat in their verbal communication that they were nicknamed Daria (my hero at the time so I wasn’t too upset), and worked really hard to change that so they could function in society, I am certain I would struggle hard with Chinese language if that’s the case.
I studied Mandarin in college and I feel this comment. Keep it up, Mandarin is definitely a difficult language, but it can be blast to learn. There are other keyboards options on smartphone that may be better suited to learning Chinese. Feel free to dm me if u got any questions.
As for the assholes, yeah ignore them. Every language/country has assholes so the best you can do is just not give them attention. Unfortunately China is growing more nationalist and xenophobic, but there are still plenty of people that are ecstatic to speak with newbies like us in their native tongue. Don’t let the worst get you down :)
The lack of tolerance is two things, ignorance or patience. Doesnt matter what country or culture, most folks just dont have the time to try to figure out what gibberish you are trying to say. OR they simply don’t have the intercultural experience to know what to do in situations where a non-native speaker is trying to communicate. It’s the old “yelling doesnt help me understand your language better” scenario. I got it a lot when I lived in Taipei and I see it here in the US with my coworkers.
Oh yeah, okay, let me be clear the scenarios you say make sense and are understandable. However, I’ve had school friends and even friends now who tell me to shut up because I sound embarassing. Or even “what are you even trying to say”.
It’s something that really gets to me because there’s a certain vulnerability when attempting new things or things you’re not good at it.
god imagine trying to write code in languages like Chinese
I think you’re way overstating the keyboard thing? iirc some of the fastest typists (by some metrics) are Chinese.
again, a historic example, not an excuse.
FYI you can type in any pictographic language using a regular keyboard. You can switch between languages on the fly too (windows+spacebar on Windows), it’s pretty handy.
I point this out cause people often mention that as a reason they don’t want to learn a different language
You certainly can, and I’m not using that as an excuse, just a historical example.
I have nothing against the people of China, but why would I learn Chinese? I mean from an objective point of view, in how many places will I be able to speak Chinese? I can go online now and talk to Japanese, Germans, French, Spanish, Russians people in English and even if they can’t speak very well, most of them will understand at least something of what I’ve written. All the major programming languages are in English, all scientific papers have at least an abstract in English. It’s purely a question of relevance.
If the real world was civilization, English would have already won by Culture.
but why would I learn Chinese?
That’s an odd thing to say. Why learn any language? It’s fun, you learn things and it lets you talk to people and engage in things you wouldn’t be able to.
I feel that you are not arguing in good faith, because right afterwards I clarified my point.
There are many new technical papers that are only written in Chinese these days, especially in AI.
You might be 40 years too late with that keyboard comment. Which major language still exists today with no easy way to type with a keyboard?
It was a historical commentary on the kind of problem that pictographic languages have. But to expand on the answer, think about programming languages, scientific writings, films, games, the internet itself - it’s all in English. And to make matters worse, the ccp had the stupid idea of locking the population inside a firewall, which limits exposure to each other, inside and outside china. I mean, even if someone wanted to learn Chinese, who would they talk to for training? I know that where I live I’ve never seen anyone speaking Chinese. “Edit But I’ve had contact with Japanese people (there’s a big community here) and some people from other countries like Germany and Italy, and in those cases the common language was English.”
People forget, but China itself has a population of 1.4 billion people. That’s at least 4 times the population of the US, you never run out of people to talk to in Chinese. Not to mention, there is also Taiwan and Hong Kong, and several countries around Asia that host significantly large racially Chinese diaspora, such as Malaysia or Singapore. I’m not talking about recent Chinese immigrants, but people who have been living there for generations and have never stepped foot in China.
Language is for communicating with people, it’s a rather narrow view to only see the business use for languages. If anyone wants to pick up a second language, Chinese is as good as it’s going to get. You aren’t limited to 1.4 billion communists to talk to with your Chinese skills, try a Taiwanese or Chinese Malaysian or smth.
1.4 billion people locked behind a firewall… anyway as I said where I live I’ve never seen anyone speaking Chinese, sorry if the fact that I don’t see the point in learning a specific language, that I have no one to communicate with, offends you for some reason. I wonder if I said that I didn’t see the point in learning French, would I get the same comments from people who were outraged that I didn’t want to learn Chinese.
I’m clearly approaching this from the point of view of language as a means to communicate and connect with people, while you see language as something that has to bring you clear benefits. I went to the trouble of writing a whole ass paragraph about how Chinese is not a single country language and there are several countries worth of people outside the firewall using it. Of course no other language under the sun will ever compare to English in terms of practical usefulness, but it’s as good as it’s going to be for a second language, up there with French and Spanish maybe. You don’t have to assume everyone who disagrees is offended.
I mean it may or may not but its funny that this move would have been better a few years ago when it was all the rage. I mean im not going to learn chinese but honestly foreign language has always been my worst subject. Literally. When graduating college it was the remark I most got from my transcript.
Sounds like the best way to cripple your scientific and tech sector.
They didn’t ban learning English though? Plenty of countries don’t have this requirement. They’ll learn it if they they feel like they want to.
It will still mean less people learn it which has the same effect.
straight up economic as well, being lingua franca means it’s the language of business, which nobody would argue… so it’s nothing but retrograde for the actual populace, but great for the political power of a small group of radicals… like burning books in Idaho…
I mean you don’t have to take any english tests for a bachelors degree in Germany either
you can’t get out of the 8th grade in Germany without knowing English, what are you talking about
I’m talking about the bachelors degree, not school.
Maybe I misunderstood the article, but I read it as them not taking english test in uni any more.
if you don’t take an English test at uni in Germany, it’s because you needed at least one to get in AT ALL… are you thick headed…
English speakers really showing themselves in here, huh? I get it, English is my native language too, and it’s definitely convenient for us that others have to learn the language I already know, but you’re being very hypocritical when you say things like “why do I have to learn Chinese?!” You’re also missing the point of the move because this story is about removing the obligation to learn another language. Yes, English is currently the dominant language in a number of areas, but then so was German in the scientific world over a century ago. These things can change, and if that scares you, then I would like you to ask yourself why.
Chinese will never be useful for these purposes, because China is not an open country, and it never will be… so the language will not be at the center of common global efforts toward anything… it is a stupid fascist fantasy… stupid and childish…
What do you mean by “open country”?
perhaps you cannot even imagine what that is, which is exactly my point… you have suffered under a repressive regime, and are unaware of its effects on you and your loved ones… it’s very sad to see from the outside…
the Chinese people have always been wise and strong… it’s unfortunate that their government is so weak and incapable… measures like this one at the University are always a sign of weakness…
and frankly it’s amazing you bring up German in this context… the entire world stopped learning to speak it precisely because they began behaving in this way… it became shameful to speak German… German speaking immigrants in the US wouldn’t allow their children to learn it at home… my own grandmother was one of them…
the Germans all speak very fluent English now, like everyone else…
and England and the US remain open countries…
hi Canada and Australia we love you too
I have suffered under a repressive regime? You mean the USA? It is very sad to see indeed, but not in the way you think. I’ve got news for you: a lot of people around the world are tired of the USA’s shit but you don’t notice because you don’t think you’re affected by the USA’s repressive global world order. In fact, you probably don’t even think it exists and that the USA only stands for truth, justice, and democracy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A top university in northwest China has scrapped English tests as a prerequisite for graduation, rekindling a heated debate about the role of the world’s lingua franca in the country’s education system after years of rising nationalist sentiment under leader Xi Jinping.
It’s ridiculous that Chinese people’s academic degrees need to be validated by a foreign language (test),” said a comment with more than 24,000 likes on microblogging site Weibo, where a related hashtag attracted more than 350 million views Thursday.
Passing the College English Test, a national standardized exam first held in 1987, has been a graduation requirement at the majority of Chinese universities for decades – although the government has never made it an official policy.
The downgrade comes as China turns more nationalist and inward under Xi, who has called on the country to strengthen “cultural confidence” and fend off “Western influence.”
In Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, authorities in 2021 banned elementary schools from holding final exams on the English language, citing the need to ease the academic burden on students.
China made English a compulsory subject in primary and secondary schools in 2001, the same year the country joined the World Trade Organization.
The original article contains 715 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
每个人，无论是西方人，南方人， 北方人， 还是东方人， 都应该学习多种语言，不那么困难，n’est-ce pas ?
