Experts Voice Worries over Chinese Education in Colleges, Once Again

English is one of the major courses in Chinese schools







Chinese language education is being “marginalized” in colleges and students could not use their native language very well, experts warned.

Some universities have canceled Chinese classes, and textbooks in use are of mixed quality. Today’s college students often pick the wrong expressions, confuse with characters and use poor syntax in their Chinese writing, experts say.

Such a situation is largely due to too much emphasis on English learning, says Wen Rumin, chair of the Chinese Department at Peking University. Many netizens would agree with him and expressed aversions toward too much weight given to English, calling it a big mistake of China’s education and mocking, “What’s the use of learning Chinese? Let’s just study English and talk to each other in English in streets.”

Indeed, English seems to be everywhere in Chinese people’s life. “How many companies turned down job applicants because of their Chinese? How many literature on advanced technology are written in Chinese? How many excellent Chinese movies are out there to satisfy our spiritual needs?” One poster asked.

But a couple of comments denied the notion that people’s Chinese skills are deteriorating. “Native language is something that we are using every day…and we never stopped practicing it.”

Chinese government has promoted a National Professional Chinese Test since 2003, to assess Chinese reading and writing abilities of professionals, especially those working for government agencies and schools. The test results are supposed to be used as a benchmark for hiring and promotion.

Meanwhile, the debate about whether too much attention has been given to English education over Chinese education is likely to go on. It’s not just about language learning. A large part of the debate has been related to the survival and development of Chinese culture in an English-dominating world.

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2007-09-13/143613883521.shtml
http://comment4.news.sina.com.cn/comment/skin/default.html?channel=gn&newsid=1-1-13883521&style=0

Chinese Authorities Regulate Sexual Content in Broadcast

commercials with sexual implications are often seen on Chinese television

Prompted by some sex talk programs on several radio stations in Sichuan, China’s broadcast regulator has banned television and radio stations from planning, producing and broadcasting programs relating to sex life, experience or medicines.

Calling such programs “obscene,” the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said programs containing sexual content are not allowed for “any reason or under any name,” and vowed to punish those responsible for the programs on Sichuan provincial and Chengdu municipal radio stations, both run by local governments.

As Chinese broadcasters, all owned and supervised by the government, pursue higher profits, programs containing sexual content are gaining more air time, while the central authorities still take sex as a taboo in mass media like television because it “seriously pollutes the social atmosphere, harms the physical and mental health of the young and undermines the image of broadcasters.”

The SARFT has made several efforts in recent years trying to keep the air clean. Just last month, the administration issued a ban on commercials with “sex implications” in addition to those for sex improvement products.

Despite all the bans and regulations, Chinese public are only seeing more and more sexual content, in one way or another, in the media around them.

New Law to Prohibit Sex Selection Abortion

A series of legislation regarding the one-child policy is on the agenda of the State Council, to deal with the “distance between people’s wish to have children and the stipulations of law” and possible rebound of China’s low birth rate, Legal Daily reported.

One of these planned new laws will prohibit determining fetal sex unless medically necessary as well as abortion based on gender selection.

Experts have warned that the sex ratio of Chinese population is becoming increasingly out of balance, with more boys being born than girls. It is estimated that by 2020, 30 million Chinese men aged 20 to 49, roughly one tenth of this demographic group, will find themselves unable to get married because of shortage of women. Such situation might trigger more crimes such as prostitution and human traffic, some experts said.

New legislation
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-08/23/content_6587590.htm

Unbalanced sex-ratio
http://news.xinhuanet.com/comments/2007-03/10/content_5825712.htm

Chinese Authorities Trying to Update One-Child Policy Slogans

a slogan paint in a village, which reads, "daughters are also family descendants"

Chinese authorities recently launched a campaign to purge old, crude family-planning slogans displayed in cities and villages around the country and replace them with new, friendlier ones, after executing the one-child policy for 30 years.

Netizens posted online some of these old slogans that contain harsh, even threatening languages in urging people to have only one child, such as “better having ten new tombs than having one new person,” or “those who should but did not have an abortion would have their houses demolished and cattle taken away.”

“Some slogans are out of date, not good for the work of family planning and hurting the image of the nation and its one-child policy,” Zhang Jian, an official from the National Population and Family Planning Commission told Southern Weekend.

His agency recommended 190 new slogans that are much softer in tones, such as “control population, taking care of Mother Earth,” “Too many children will make a family less affluent,” and “boys and girls are all hope of the nation.”

Mr. Zhang Jian stressed that such changes only represent the adjustment of the approach and idea of carrying out the one-child policy, instead of loosening the policy itself. Mr. Zhang described such change as more “people-oriented.”

The central government required local governments to clean up and replace old slogans by the end of September, Xinhua reported.

One-child police slogans are everywhere in China, from billboards in big cities to giant characters painted on the outer walls of people’s houses in small villages. Some netizens derided the slogan effort as useless, since nobody cares about slogans anymore. But Mr. Zhang Jian said that in rural villages, “people are still reading them,” although slogans could indeed be abandoned in cities like Beijing.

Southern Weekend interview with Mr. Zhang Jian
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-08/23/content_6588543.htm

Other news stories about the campaign
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-08/09/content_6498421.htm
http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-08/04/content_6475283.htm

Some online comments
http://news.xinhuanet.com/forum/2007-08/09/content_6498978.htm