[Hasknewbie]

There is an odd tendency to ascribe some sort of scheming long-term vision to the Chinese government, probably based on memories of dynasties that managed to reign over an empire for centuries. The CCP is nothing like that. As soon as they got into power, they triggered the "great leap forward" (miscalculated "modernization", and famine that killed dozens of millions), followed by the Cultural Revolution that bordered on civil war and spawned a generation of illiterate, starving zombies ("lost generation ").

The CCP has a pretty terrible record at avoiding shooting themselves (or China) in the foot. They probably killed more Chinese people than Imperial Japan did.

[zhemao]

The current norms of CCP leadership were established in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution for the express purpose of avoiding such a catastrophe in the future. Since 1989, the guiding philosophy of China's central leadership has been economic growth in exchange for limits on political freedom. The CCP is currently shooting itself in the foot in numerous ways (the VPN ban being one of them), but crippling the country's economic competitiveness by limiting English language instruction is not something they would ever consider.

[Hasknewbie]

You are right that the party became notably less insane when Deng Xiaoping took over. However the various administrations since then have spent significant resources and time going in different (and sometime opposite) directions, and not always in a blunder-safe way. The example I have in mind is the declaration last month by the foreign affairs ministry that the Hong Kong "Joint Declaration" is not binding any more for China. They rolled that back a week later (probably after they realized where that was going), but essentially for a few days their official stance was "we don't respect treaties we have signed, even the ones we pretty much wrote and that gave us what we wanted. Our word as a government has no value". Kind of a risky move, and could have set a precedent.

As for your specific point regarding teaching English, I think you're right they wouldn't do that now, however it's a bet I could see them make if their domestic economy becomes slightly larger. After all there are other countries (Japan, Russia, France...) where English has a low penetration rate, and they get away with it.

[zhemao]

> However the various administrations since then have spent significant resources and time going in different (and sometime opposite) directions, and not always in a blunder-safe way.

Yeah, because there are different factions within the party that sometimes have conflicting goals or ideas. It's not as unified as outsiders think it is. I agree that they aren't always scary competent. The whole Bo Xilai scandal was a huge black eye that they didn't see coming, for instance.

> The example I have in mind is the declaration last month by the foreign affairs ministry that the Hong Kong "Joint Declaration" is not binding any more for China.

What? I didn't hear about this at all. That does seem pretty crazy. Do you have a link to a news article?

> After all there are other countries (Japan, Russia, France...) where English has a low penetration rate

Don't know about Russia or France, but Japan still teaches English in schools. Japan and China probably have a similar "penetration rate" for English. They do lots of business done with English speaking countries but the average man on the street is by no means fluent. I suspect the same is true of France. If domestic consumer demand increases, China might be able to get away with it, but the export economy is so big, I can't see them making that choice.

[Hasknewbie]

"Joint declaration" declaration:

>> On Friday, the eve of the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover, on 1 July 1997, Beijing controversially announced that the Sino-British joint declaration was “now history” and no longer had “any practical significance nor any binding force”[1]

Re: language. I am not saying that English is not taught at school in these countries (it is), only that it has minimum impact in these societies in practice. Right now China is trying to move away from its export economy (where indeed English is needed), and if it does I think it would make sense for a paranoid government to think "well these other countries are functioning without the common citizen knowing much English, so let's stop teaching it except to some professions" -- and pronto, the next generation is cut off from 99% of foreign news sources.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/01/china-humiliat...