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"Multilingual China comprises frontline empirical research into a range of important issues that arise from the presence of 55 official ethnic minority groups, plus China's search to modernize and strengthen the nation's place in the world order. Topics focus on the dynamics of national, ethnic minority and foreign languages in use, policy making and education, inside China and beyond. Micro-studies of language contact and variation are included, as are chapters dealing with multilingual media and linguistic landscapes. The book highlights tensions such as threats to the sustainability of weak languages and dialects, the role and status of foreign languages (especially English) and how Chinese can be presented as a viable regional or international language"--

This paper focuses on the construction of the linguistic contents of the current junior secondary school syllabus and national textbooks in the People's Republic of China, from which the official English promoted by the state can be identified. Using quantitative and qualitative data, the paper analyses the nature of this official English in five distinct historical phases. It finds that the English curriculum in the different phases was linked to shifting national economic and political priorities, as evidenced by the attention to structured pedagogical approaches that focus on communication during times of economic modernisation and openness to the outside world, and by the stress on political and moral messages during times of hyper-politicisation and relative international isolation. English is constructed for its economic and political utility, based on an exogenous model, British English. It is not officially constructed to reflect an endogenous variety of Chinese English.