Earlier this month, math teacher Tang Jiafeng set off the latest round of an old argument by urging schools to make English optional. He said children were being pushed to learn it before mastering Chinese, and argued that China should stop its “blind worship of foreign imports.”¹

His proposal landed at a moment of mounting pressure on students and graduates. English has been one of China’s three core subjects, alongside math and Chinese, since the late 1970s, and carries substantial weight in the gaokao college entrance exam. But parents and teachers sympathetic to Tang say the national curriculum prizes grammar drills and test scores without reliably producing speakers who can use the language—and that overloaded pupils could spend the time better elsewhere.¹

AI has sharpened that case. Shanghai barred elementary-school English final exams in 2021 to ease pressure; a government adviser floated removing English from the gaokao; and in July a Shenzhen research university said it would phase out language courses, citing real-time AI translation. Xiong Bingqi of the 21st Century Education Research Institute calls the result of the test-focused system “mute English,” arguing that people who need foreign languages for research or multinational work “are actually a minority.”²

Yet the backlash is not simply about a school subject. Wang Zichen of Beijing’s Center for China and Globalization said Tang’s language was inflammatory because “blind worship” can suggest surrendering dignity to a stronger foreign power. Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin warned that nationalists were politicizing the issue: “The public should not be fooled by them.”¹

Critics of downgrading English also see a practical danger. China ranked 86th of 123 countries in EF Education First’s 2025 proficiency index, down from 38th in 2020. Guangdong teacher Cinderella Huang warned that affluent families would retain tutors and international schools, while for poorer children, school English remains “their only window.”²

Historian Gina Tam frames the dispute as a choice between a globally engaged China and a more inward-looking power. AI may translate words, but the fight is over who gets to cross the border those words once bridged.²