English language ideologies in the Chinese foreign language education policies: a world-system perspective

Abstract

This paper investigates the Chinese state’s English language ideologies as reflected in official Chinese foreign language education policies (FLEP). It contends that the Chinese FLEP not only indicate a way by which the state gains consent, maintains cultural governance, and exerts hegemony internally, but also shows the traces of the combined force of the dominant actors both from above to below state levels in what Wallerstein defines the modern world-system (1974, 1989, 2004a, 2004b). To this end, the paper analyzes ideologies embedded in the Chinese FLEP and how state authorities use FLEP for the purposes of political and cultural governance. The issues are approached by investigating the role of the state, its interaction with the other actors in the modern world system and the individual struggle between social constraint and personal freedom.