Among the many different aspects of China which have fascinated the West are the sheer size of its popula­tion, its remote and mysterious culture, and the in­tricate difficulty of its language. Equally, the West has always intrigued China, with its technological advancement despite its "barbarity", its cultural diversity within a small space, and the way in which one of its languages - English - has man­aged to become the lingua franca of the world.

China originally felt no need of the West, in fact deliberately avoided all contact, for fear of cultural contamination. The bomb­ing of the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo war was a terri­ble setback in relations which had been steadily improving. However, despite this, partly because of its desire to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), China has welcomed and lis­tened politely to leaders of Western countries as they gave their views on democracy and human rights. The language in which President Clinton spoke, during his visit to China, was of course English. President Jiang Zemin made his replies in Chinese. But each was backed up by a team of first-class interpreters, who made smooth communication possible.

Formal training in interpretation is comparatively recent in China. It was only in 1978 that the first programme for Transla­tors and Interpreters started at the Beijing Foreign Language Institute. The programme subsequently developed into the pres­tigious school of translation in the Beijing Foreign Studies Uni­versity.

The learning of English in China, however, has a longer history and now occupies the attention of millions of its people. How many million is hard to say, since much depends on the level of proficiency one takes as the norm (Crystal, 1985). But there are probably in the region of three hundred million actively engaged in the job of learning English.

China's reasons for learning English were well summed up twenty years ago by a team from the U.S. International Commu­nication Agency after visiting five cities and many educational institutions in China: "The Chinese view English primarily as a necessary tool which can facilitate access to modem scientific and technological advances, and secondarily as a vehicle to pro­mote commerce and understanding between the People's Re­public of China and countries where English is a major lan­guage" (Cowan et al., 1979).

This basic motivation has not changed, as can be seen from the Report of the English 2000 Conference in Beijing, sponsored jointly by the British Council and the State Education Commis­sion of the People's Republic of China, in which reasons for the learning of English by Chinese were summarised: "They learn English because it is the language of science, specifically per­haps of the majority of research journals. They learn it because it is the neutral language of commerce, the standard currency of international travel and communication. They learn it because you find more software in English than in all other languages put together" (Bowers, 1996:3). The story of English language learning is not uniform through­out China. Maley (1995:7) warns anyone embarking on a study of contemporary China about the difficulty of "making sensible generalisations about it, since China is not one place geographi­cally, but many". The learning of English in the mountainous provinces near Tibet is very different from the way it is studied in the cities of Nanjing, Shanghai or Beijing. Nevertheless, there are sufficient general characteristics about the history of the learn­ing of English in different parts of China to justify a brief re­view, if only to remind us of the pendulum swings of China's history this century. Those who wish to find the story more fully told may consult Dzau (1990) and Cortazzi and Jin (1996). Al­though there is mention of English language teaching (ELT) in China in the mid nineteenth century during the Ching Dynasty, it first figured in the syllabus of schools in 1902 in "His Majes­ty's Teaching Standards for Primary and Secondary Institutions". In those early days the model for education in China was that of Japan. The method of ELT was traditional, with emphasis on reading and translation. There was much grammar and vocabu­lary learning, with pronunciation learned by imitation and rep­etition. This was the norm for about the first twenty years of the century.

In 1922 there was a change of direction, with a swing away from the Japanese system of education, and towards more West­ern models. Schools were obliged to follow the "Outlines for School Syllabuses of the New Teaching System". These put more emphasis on listening and speaking skills. There was more use of the target language and of the new teaching resources offered by the mass media. The best schools tended to be Christian mis­sionary schools, which gave more class-hours to English than other schools.

1949 was a crucial date in the history of China - the founding of the People's Republic of China. Education had now to serve the proletarian purpose. All textbooks became vehicles for govern­ment propaganda, loaded with messages of service to the people and the motherland. The Ministry of Education issued a new "Scheme for English Instruction in Secondary Schools" in which the goal of English language learning was clearly stated as be­ing to serve the New Republic. All capitalist thinking, espe­cially educational ideas from the United States and Britain, were condemned as unpatriotic. The place of English was taken in school syllabuses by Russian and by 1954 Russian had become the only foreign language taught in Chinese schools.

This phase did not last long, however, since China was already trying to extend her markets throughout the world and immedi­ately felt its lack of English. Accordingly, in 1955 the Ministry of Education announced that-English teaching should be restarted in secondary schools. In big cities, like Shanghai, it was also reintroduced at primary level. Initially the textbooks were based on the former Russian models, which, like their Japanese pred­ecessors, were very traditional. Methodology too was backward:

the teacher was seen as the provider of knowledge and the stu­dents dutifully assimilated the teacher's words of wisdom, work­ing their way ploddingly through the textbook.

However, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a minor revolution in education took place in China, as the need to open up to the international scene became more urgent. The importance of English was accepted and a significant step was taken in 1962 when English became part of the entrance examination for col­leges and universities. New teaching materials appeared, with listening and speaking again given prominence. The Ministry of Education issued guidelines for textbook writers, recommend­ing that English textbooks should include material on the cul­ture of the English speaking countries. It began to look as though better days had come for ELT in China (Price, 1971).

But it was not to be. With distressing inevitability. The Chinese pendulum swung, and the progress made in the early 1960s was swept aside by the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and lasted for ten dreadful years. English was .again banned from schools. Foreign language teachers were branded as spies. Some universities were closed, others were subjected to re-education visits. Dow (1975:254) describes the situation thus: "During the Cultural Revolution, when workers' propaganda teams for the spreading of Mao Tse-Tung's thoughts came to China's colleges, classes were stopped altogether, and the students travelled in­stead all over the country in order to take part in criticism and debate and to exchange revolutionary experiences".

By 1977 the Cultural Revolution had exhausted itself and the country with it. There is an old Yorkshire saying: "There's nowt like religion when it's bent". Those who lived through the Cul­tural Revolution in China would challenge that saying, main­taining that distorted political ideology can be much worse than bent religion.

However, happier times were ahead for China and for ELT in China.

In 1978 the Ministry of Education held an important conference on foreign language teaching. English was given prominence again in schools, on a par with Chinese and Maths. By the early 1980s it had been restored as a compulsory subject in the college entrance exam. It has not looked back since then (Kang, 1999) and the fervour for learning English has been fanned by Teach Yourself English programmes on television, watched by hun­dreds of millions of people.

As China opened up more and Chinese scholars were allowed abroad, the need for both social and academic English became apparent. As markets also opened up and more foreigners were allowed into the country to do business, the appetite for Busi­ness English among all levels of Chinese people has become insatiable. The Chinese are a diligent and intelligent race and are surely destined to make a significant mark on the history of the twenty-first century.

On a personal note, one of my first ELT jobs, in 1979, was teach­ing a small group of excellent Chinese students on an intensive summer course in England. They were the pick of the Chinese crop - scholars who had suffered under the Cultural Revolution, but who were now being given the chance of graduate studies in British universities. I have never had keener, more hard-work­ing students, and teaching them was one of the most memorable experiences of my life (Boyle, 1980).

We have seen, then, in this brief review how English has twice come and gone in China in the course of the twentieth century. To us now it seems unlikely that such swings will happen again and on present evidence the continued popularity of English seems assured. However, history is full of examples of the un­predictable.

For one thing, China's own language is liable to become of more global importance in the future. As Graddol (1997:3) advises:

"We may find the hegemony of English replaced by an oligarchy of languages, including Spanish and Chinese". Machine trans­lation will also undoubtedly increase in sophistication and per­haps make the learning of English' less essential. English may not be as inevitably the lingua franca of the world as some may like to think.

Nevertheless, at this stage in the last few years of the millen­nium, it does looks as if China will continue to want English, and want it badly. As Maley (1995:47) says: "China is in a phase of industrial, scientific and commercial expansion which will make it the world's largest economy by the early years of the next century. In order to function efficiently in this role, it needs to bring large numbers of its people to high levels of proficiency in the use of English for a wide variety of functions". English looks set to flourish in China - at least for the next ten or twenty years. But anyone who knows anything about the history of China would be slow to predict much beyond that.

References

Bowers, R. 1996. English in the world. In, English in China. The British Council.

Boyle, J. 1980. Teaching English as communication to Main­land Chinese. English Language Teaching Journal 24, 4, 298-301.

Cortazzi, M. and Jin, L. 1996. English teaching and learning in China. Language Teaching 29, 61-80.

Cowan, J., Light, R., Mathews, B. and Tucker, G. 1979. English teaching in China: a recent survey. TESOL Quarterly 12,4,465-482.

Crystal, D. 1985. How many millions? The statistics of English today. English Today 1, 7-9.

Dow, M. 1975. The influence of the cultural revolution on the teaching of English in the People's Republic of China. English Language Teaching Journal 29, 3, 253-263.

Dzau, Y. 1990. English in China. Hong Kong: API Press. Graddol, D. 1997. The Future of English. The British Council.

Kang, Jianxiu. 1999. English everywhere in China. English Today 58, 2, 46-48.

Maley, A. 1995. Landmark Review of English in China. The British Council.

Price, R. 1971. English teaching in China: changes in teaching methods from 1960-66. English Language Teaching Journal 26, 1,71-83.

Joe Boyle teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He can be reached at jpboyle@cuhk.edu.hk