Navagon: Indeed. Given China's size and population I can understand why it may need a heavier hand than most countries, but their government is plainly overkill and frequently misguided.

Virama: They need to learn to play SFIV and do hadokens. Now that would unify the country.

cpugeek13: The reason they are doing this is because using English in the media creates a rift between educated and uneducated Chinese people. They don't want the media to discriminate against the peasants and lower class citizens. It has nothing to do with English "polluting" Chinese.

Navagon: Nothing unites people like hadokens. Although it does have the opposite effect when it comes to uniting people with their face.

torqual76: They fear for the unity of their people. English is far too easy to learn, and you can communicate with all the world. That would be a bad thing for control and propaganda. How are you supposed to tell your people how bad the world around them is, when they can find out for themselves that english speaking people (the world) is not bad at all. Its a strong move to protectionism. Banning a language is like burning books. The first step in the very wrong direction.

Have a nice xmas

cpugeek13: It simply says that the language of the media should only be pure Chinese.

Catshade: I interpret the news as "a Chinese-language media should strictly adhere to the proper Chinese language rules." I believe they still allowed foreign-language media to use English, particularly since the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China also has its own English edition.

cpugeek13: English is taught in most elementary schools in the country. High school and college students are also required to study it intensively. This policy has nothing to do with banning the language from the country. It simply says that the language of the media should only be pure Chinese. China is not the only country that has policies like this. I'm pretty sure several western european nations do as well.

tejozaszaszas: That´s ridiculous. No country in western Europe have that kind of legislation, what kind of totalitarian regimes do you think we have here? We have some "newspapers" like "the Sun" and "Bild Zeitung" that are allowed to publish with all the grammar faults they like.

DelusionsBeta: I distinctly recall France proposing a similar idea, although it may be just limiting the amount of not-French in the media, rather than banning it outright.

neoscorpio: I'm glad that I live in India where hundreds of different languages are spoken. Thats why we always need English to unify the literate people. There have been campaigns to ban english in various different fields but those have and will never be successful here. There would be difficulty communicating with my own fellow countrymen if english is discouraged here coz every other Indian I find probably speaks a different language.

China must understand that a language can only grow and develop with the use of foreign language words. Thats how languages have developed over the centuries. We would never be able to speak english without latin, greek, french and many other language words which we have adopted into english.

cpugeek13: English is taught in most elementary schools in the country. High school and college students are also required to study it intensively. This policy has nothing to do with banning the language from the country. It simply says that the language of the media should only be pure Chinese. China is not the only country that has policies like this. I'm pretty sure several western european nations do as well.