The principles of China’s language policies, in general, live up to the nearly five-thousand years of traditions with a crucial distinguish feature—unifying. Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. and soon started unifying the Chinese language. But he made it mainly in terms of characters (hanzi, in Chinese pinyin), rather than pronunciations, or more exactly, accents.
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Accordingly, the Chinese language was entitled to a clear standardization
Scholars in and out of China have tried to explore the major causes behind the efforts taken by the Chinese emperors to unify the national language for thousands of years. They all emphasize the role of Chinese culture in China’s language policies. A prime example is Confucianism—
The Western academia often would interpret from the perspective of Confucius’li [natural order] that “China” was not a place so much as it was a civilization, and not only a civilization but, to its adherents, the essence of civilization itself (such as esteemed scholar Arne Westad, Professor of U.S. Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School), while the Chinese scholars tend to find answers from Confucius’ Ren [morals] that “all men are brothers”, and that unifying the Chinese language helps make the huge country feel connected(such as Lin Yutang, a well-known expert in linguistic studies, received a master degree from Harvard, and Ph.D. from the Leipzig University of Germany and founded as editor-in-chief, Studies of the Analects of Confucius).
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Drawn upon the heritage, unifying the Chinese language has been a focal point for China’s language policies since 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was established. Over the course of seventy years of policy adaptations, a thread actually has been built though in different historical contexts—standardizing the Chinese language as a guide to clarifying the language assessment and language use, and promoting the Chinese language to encourage more people to learn it and know about China through it.
Clarity ignites the potential of the Chinese Language for more learners
In 1951, People’s Daily, the most influential newspaper in China, published an editorial which was entitled, “Use the Chinese Language Correctly to Protect the Purity and Health of Our Motherland’s Language”. For the first time, the Chinese people were aware of the implication of language learning for New China. To illustrate the connotation of “correctness” of the language use, People’s Daily, and many other magazines, and journals such as Studies of the Chinese Language launched in 1952 invited the well-recognized scholars primarily in Chinese language studies all over China, for example, LvShuxiang, Zhu Dexi, Ding Shengshu, and so forth to write extensively on correcting the chaotic and conflicting uses of Chinese language from a variety of perspectives including grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and figures of speech, etc.
Then, poverty, backwardness, and illiteracy—the urgent problems were stinging the whole country. In the situation, “clarity” was focused on allowing more Chinese people, in particular those in rural areas amounting to 90% of China’s total population in the 1950s to learn Chinese with more ease. In doing so, China spent nearly two decades in simplified Chinese characters, crafting Chinese pinyin, and promoting standard Chinese (mandarin) in China. Textbooks were compiled and sold at very affordable prices. Free classes are accessible to nearly everyone from workers, and peasants, to housewives.
The Reform and Opening-up launched in 1978 reset the button on the demand for learning in China. Chinese government famously stated, “Knowledge is the first productivity”. Over the forty years afterward, there has been an increased tendency that Chinese language learning has moved from government-driven (the governments push people to learn) to learner-motivated (people want to learn). As a result, “clarity” starts paying greater attention to supporting language learning. China places a particular focus on informatization and the standardization of the Chinese language, which empowers self-learning, distance learning, and more recently, machine learning around China.
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Looking back closely, the beneficiaries of the language policy toward clarity are a greater number of Chinese people. A prime point to this is that illiteracy plummets from nearly 80% of the total population during the early 1950s to that 2.67% in 2022.
Significance endows the Chinese Language with identity
British writer and scientist Francis Bacon stated that “knowledge is power”. In Chinese culture, for thousands of years, mastery of language had been seen as the door to fame, and success. Accordingly, language learning was wrongly compared to a bag of verbal tricks.
In tune with China’s going global, China’s language policies have been more aware of the significance of language in manifold ways. The issues concerning the nature of the Chinese language have become home to concern, such as enhancing the protection of the diversity of language, preserving the heritage of the Chinese language, and building the legal system of the Chinese language, etc. “The National Master Plan of Reform and Development of Chinese Language Cause (2012-2020)” identifies the significance of the Chinese language as a platform for inheriting and communicating Chinese culture.
Stepping into the role of cultural communicator, the Chinese language starts visualizing the world’s stage through outreach programs. UN Chinese Language Day is on April 20, the same day with Guyu (Grain Rain), the 6th of China’s 24 solar terms, to pay tribute to Cangjie, who is claimed to be the inventor of Chinese characters.
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In closing, Chinese for now is the most spoken language in the world. However, it also is confronting challenges especially when the world is in face of large divides. Solutions cannot be found without new thoughts, new feelings and new ideas. What remains deeply meaningful to China, and the world far beyond the Chinese language at the critical time is learning from the difference, but not division. To this, examining the present in light of the past is for the purposes of the future—in this sense, understanding the change and continuity of China’s language policy provides a relevant reference.
Liu Chen is a professor of Public Administration and Cultural Studies. Harvard Kennedy School Mason Fellow, Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard. Her research focuses on policy, practice, leadership, culture, and international cooperation.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.