Western cultural influence making inroads in China
wchao37  Updated: 2004-04-16 09:43

The average level of English proficiency in Hongkong SAR is not very high even today.

It is a common misconception that because it was formerly a British colony, most if not all of its inhabitants must have attained high competence in the English language.

I remember that most of the kids who graduated from Form Five at the end of secondary school did not pass the required English Language examination in those days, and as of today the way the Cantonese-speaking population in Hongkong pronounce English words still leaves much to be desired.

To be sure, no one in pre-1997 colonial Hongkong was coerced into passing English proficiency exams. Curiously, in the colony you never had the feeling that society at large was emphasizing the study of English over that of traditional Chinese literature. Obviously the Brits would love to have English studies taking priority over everything else too but this was not the case.

Yes, Chinese parents could choose to send their kids to either a secondary school using Chinese as the main medium of communication in class (like Pei Zhen) or one in which English was used in most of the classes (like St. Paul's, Wah Yan, Queens, King's, DBS, LaSalle), but no one actually rushed to send their toddlers to all-English schools back in those days.

Pre-1997 Hongkong did emphasize the official status of English in all its governmental functions, including that of judicial and administrative proceedings. And since it was an international city acting as a magnet for tourists in transit to the mainland, use of English was pretty widespread in the service sectors of the economy.

Not all cities in China should aspire to be like Hongkong as far as English studies are concerned because the regional characteristics and developmental emphasis of many of them are fundamentally different from that of Hongkong or any of the major coastal cities, and that's why I believe a national emphasis on the study of English to the exclusion of everything else irrespective of local conditions is not cost-effective in the long run.

For example, even a cursory look at what the Northwest Regions (Da Dongbei) need would tell you that many tasks cry out to be done and they all need matching funds for their completion within a certain time frame. In the educational systems, they have far too few community or trade schools. They need vocational schools to re-train those displaced workers from previous SOEs. Not everyone needs to go to college or study English. To implement such a policy nationwide is therefore a terrible waste of resources.

The study of English is not a priority in China just as it wasn't in Japan, and for any Westerner to master Chinese would be very different from requiring him to master European languages, most of which are phonetic in origin, and one's skills in studying English can easily be adapted or transfered to such studies.

In the same vein, the level of difficulty for the average Chinese student to master English is also very high, and some graduates are already complaining that their careers have been hampered unnecessarily because of impediments in the present policy against Chinese learners who have not passed certain English proficiency examinations despite their high level of skills in their chosen occupation, and these people of course deserve special considerations.

The opening of China and its membership in the WTO means that many of its ports will now be in constant interaction with the outside world and to smooth the day-to-day operations during these interactions, China has opted to require her high schoolers to be able to master English at a certain level of proficiency upon graduation. This motivation is of course understandable and there is no need to challenge the original sponsorship of these propositions.

What people like myself are objecting to is the swing in the pendulum of the nation's mood from one of extreme xenophobia during the CR to one of extreme fondness for English studies to the exclusion of more urgent studies, and from one of total atheism to one of rapid adoption of Christian faiths. You can see this trend in the rapid acceptance of Christmas Holiday Season in the major cities in China.

While Chinese festivals such as the Chinese New Year are still geographically limited to regional ethnically restrictive enclaves in Western cities and regarded mostly as exotic curiosities for tourists visiting those places, Christmas has been firmly established in most major cities of China as a must-celebrate holiday season.

That's the most telling demonstration of Western (especially Anglo)cultural influence making inroads in China without reciprocity.

The above content represents the view of the author only.

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