A region's identity is closely related to its semiotic landscape as well as history, economy and culture. This article explores the linguistic landscape of Jianghan Road, a historical business centre in Wuhan, P. R. China, by photographing and analysing 1308 official and unofficial signs in order to provide a snapshot of language choice and…

Normative notions that classical Chinese texts support authoritarian practices eclipse the possibility that the texts can become contemporary educational resources. Oriented by a conception of relationality, the research engages a Foucauldian approach to writing history as genealogy to argue that the political use of the so-called Confucian texts…

In light of the increasing prominence of China's Belt and Road (B&R) Initiatives and China's soft power projection to its neighboring countries, China's relations with Southeast Asian countries are getting closer. In recent years, a large number of Cambodian students have come to China for higher education. Informed by the theories of…

Since the 1990s, Chinese ethnic cultures have balanced precariously between a passion for authentically-defined ecology in ethnic territories and a nationwide obsession with economic development, and this affects how ethnicity is represented in Chinese children's literature. Within a context of growing homogeneity and vanishing minority cultures,…

This paper examines the development of Chinese education in Malaysia from 1952 to 1975, focusing on the political collaboration between the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Chinese educationists to advance the cause of Chinese education instead of the usual macro policy analysis. This collaboration was compounded by the different stand…

In this article, we apply Ruiz's language-as-resource orientation to three international settings: Taiwan, Pakistan, and mainland China. Our guiding question was how different languages (indigenous languages, Chinese, and English) were positioned differently as resources in these contexts. For our analysis, we used Lo Bianco's (2001) elaboration…

As Chinese characters ("hanzi") have three aspects--as a technical writing system, an aesthetic visual art (Chinese calligraphy), and a highly-charged cultural symbolic system--changing them is a complex process. In the 1950s when language planning campaigns were launched to modernise Chinese through "hanzi" standardisation,…

The Han sphere, including Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China, adopted Han characters and classical Han writing as the official written language before the 20th century. However, great changes came with the advent of the 20th century. After World War II, Han characters in Vietnam and Korea were officially replaced by the romanised "Chu…

Evaluates the extent to which political self-interest motivates Chinese scholars who oppose the work of the Chinese Communist Party's Committee for Writing Reform. Concludes that those opposed to writing reform are wrongfully using the issue to incite intellectuals to oppose the Communist Party and the Chinese government. (Author/DB)

This article characterizes the extent and nature of the vocabulary changes in the People's Republic of China by identifying general areas of change and by observing particular features of the changes. (CLK)

Recommends that linguists follow Communist Party leadership as they investigate and criticize Chinese language reform. Linguistics based upon bourgeois thought does not take into consideration the viewpoint of the masses. (Author/DB)

Discusses the linguistic, political and social forces central to the development of Chinese characters. (CLK)

The materials selected for translation in this issue deal with the teaching profession in postrevolutionary China, focusing mainly on the primary and secondary levels. Emphases include the political role of teachers, influences of the communist party on education, social role of teachers, and changes in the teaching profession since 1949.…

The study of minority languages in the People's Republic of China, in the form of organized governmental research since the 1950s, has resulted in the recent publication of more than 50 descriptive grammars. Although some practical purposes of the study were achieved, such as the identification of ethnicity and orthographic design and reform,…

Discusses the policies governing the teaching of Chinese to foreign students in Peking and the methods used. (KM)