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by zhemao
3244 days ago
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> 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. |
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>> 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...