According to a 2010 China Daily article, the number of English learners in China is now around 400 million, approximately one third of China's population (see also Wei and Su, this issue). The importance of English in the state education system has been supplemented by the rapid growth of privately-run language schools and training institutes across the country in recent years. The same article quoted a comment by Ms Xiao Yan, the public relations manager of the Wall Street English language school chain, who gave her explanation for the current popularity of English in the following terms:

In the mid-1980s, Crystal (1985) lamented that there were no reliable figures available for the number of learners to whom English is taught as a foreign language in many regions of the world, and that ‘China has always been excluded from the statistical reviews, because of the shortage of information from inside the country’ (Crystal, 1985: 9). More recently, Bolton (2008: 6) similarly notes that because of ‘the absence of accurate language surveys’ academics have to make educated guesses regarding the total number of those learning/knowing English. The figure of the total English learners/users in China has been estimated to be somewhere between 200 and 350 million (cf. Bolton, 2003: 48; Kachru, 1997; McArthur, 2003; Zhao & Campbell, 1995; Graddol, 2006: 95). Fortunately, a national language survey in China conducted at the turn of the century does provide some hard statistics on the number of English language learners/users in the world's most populous country, and also sheds some light on the realities of use of English and English proficiency among the Chinese people.

Perhaps there is no better illustration of Bourdieu's view that language can be converted to political or economic power (1991) than the success of the New Oriental School, which started as an English teaching organization, with the motto ‘Language is power’, mainly to prepare Chinese students for the TOFEL and the GRE tests. They have been so successful that they have now expanded into a full-scale educational institution, with English as its key component. Also, many people in China have prospered through English, including the world-famous teacher Li Yang, who achieved phenomenal success with his ‘Crazy English’ method, whose approach pushes a language-as-power message. In addition, the prosperity of the publishing houses selling English materials, the huge number of the teachers, and the enormous English-learning population in China all seem to contribute to the belief that English can enrich anyone who can find a way to capitalize on the language. However, despite the booming success of various English training agencies, it is ironic that English departments at Chinese universities now face an unprecedented crisis for survival. One major reason for this is that the recent craze for English in China has been accompanied by a parallel and steep decline of interest in the study of English as a ‘major’ at university level. In this article, I will address the problems that English departments in universities have in their response to the practical turn in English studies, with reference to the teaching of writing to English majors in particular.

In China, most universities have a school of foreign languages, where students majoring in English, German, French, Japanese, and other languages study the language for the first two years, and take introductory courses in the linguistics and literature of the language concerned, and then progress to higher-level linguistic and literary courses, as well as translation studies. English is the most popular foreign language in China, and, with the improvement of English teaching in high schools, the average student entering university now has a higher level of English proficiency than previous generations of students. However, students with high scores in English often choose to study ‘practical’ subjects other than English, such as business studies, computer science, economics, medicine, etc. Increasingly, a number of programs at universities in China are even being taught through the medium of English. Consequently, English majors have less and less advantage over non-English majors, and departments of English have had to restructure their syllabi to cope with the situation. Courses in translation studies, intercultural communication and applied linguistics have thus gained greater recognition because of their functional importance in the real world (see Qu, this issue).

The English language has gone through cycles of prominence and decline in China since it arrived on Chinese shores in 1637 for the purposes of trade (Adamson, 2002). Since then the language has evolved in China from the stage when it was regarded as a language spoken by ‘barbarians’ (Adamson, 2002) in the 1700s to the present day which sees an unprecedented surge of enthusiasm for the language. This significant change in the attitudes of the Chinese people towards English has accelerated since China's open door policy gathered steam in the early 1990s. Conservative estimates place the number of people learning English in China at about 200 million. A recent estimate by Crystal (2008) suggests that the number of English speakers in China has, in fact, doubled, with the widespread enthusiasm for English generated by driving forces such as China's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the hosting of the Beijing Olympic Games, international tourism, foreign investment, the development of Western China, and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) launched on January 1, 2010.

‘They all speak good English. So how come they are jobless?’ The Spring Festival Gala, broadcast alive on TV across China and among international Chinese communities, is one of the most popular and widely viewed performances for Chinese people on Chinese New Year's Eve. In a situational comedy at the 2012 Gala, one Chinese lady threw out the above remark to her friend with reference to the folk she had met in a foreign country she had just visited. The tone in which she said it was intended to invoke laughter at her sarcastic comment about the presumed almightiness of English. The audience, however, only reacted with a slightly audible mumble, which evidently reflected their ambivalence on this issue. After all, many in the audience – like the general population – are currently convinced that gaining a command of English is a very good thing, if not a national pursuit. To mock their pursuit of English is almost equal to mocking their view of life. This article takes a glimpse into this national craze towards English by presenting a brief ethnography of a new form of English learning in China: ‘English educational tourism’, that is, traveling for the purpose of learning English. By doing this, it explores the relationship between English and political economy, noting how English, the language of imperialism, at its current stage (re)produces new subjectivities among Chinese people as a semiotic form of modern/cosmopolitan imagination. Before outlining this argument and introducing the specific evidence upon which I base my claims, however, it is necessary to position this article with reference to previous theorizations relevant to the English language and the Chinese context.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Chinese English in the contemporary age is the growing practice of code-mixing on China's Internet. This study uses participant observation to explore the ‘mixing’ practices of Chinese netizens in online social networking communities, by focusing on code-mixing in domains of government administration, pop culture and social interaction. The results of the study suggest that a mixed-code variety of Chinese English is gaining popularity in China's homegrown social networks. For the young generation in mainland China, ‘mixing’ has become part of their everyday communication practices as they build multicultural identities, transform the traditional social relationships and practice their social responsibilities, using new communication technologies as well as their linguistic and cultural repertoires.

One's native language is normally a marker of national identity. This is particularly true of China, which many regard as a relatively linguistically homogeneous nation. The huge impact of the spread of English on the local culture of China alongside a buoyant wave of global capitalism raises interesting questions such as the following: (i) Does the spread of English challenge or undermine the sense of China's national identity? (ii) By drawing upon English as a new linguistic and cultural resource, is China now redefining its own culture? (iii) What strategies are observable in the use of English intranationally in contemporary China? To answer these questions, this study examines the use of English in China's real estate advertising. The relatively new discourse of real estate advertisements in mainland China has been attributed to the process of increasing urbanization which has accelerated since 2000. In addition, as one of the most fundamental symbols of a nation, land is closely associated with national identity, which suggests that real estate transformed from land can be taken as a source discourse for an investigation of national identity (Smith, 1991; First and Avraham, 2007). By focusing on the use of English in China's real estate advertising and its possible association with the national identity of mainland China, this study discusses the strategic use of English as a linguistic and cultural resource in identity construction.

In an article published in English Today in 2005, Niu and Woolf contend that:

English language policy in Taiwan has undergone major changes at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The national policy of promoting English and the extension of English-language education at the elementary level has inevitably had a great impact on Taiwan's education system and the status of English in Taiwan (see Chern, 2003; Hung, 2003; Chen, 2006). While the global spread of English has been taking place via national policy and cultural institutions such as schools, a relevant question is how the spread of English is perceived and what responses are made by individuals in Taiwan.