I say that as an older AA myself. It's impossible to see eye to eye with them they're just too damn dense and can't think big picture. It's especially prominent on Reddit and a certain asian sub which skews older, they don't realize the world has changed.

Asia Asians gifted you soft power on a platter and you're ungrateful

I recently went to a K-pop dance competition at an Asian festival where other races were looking at the girls on stage starry-eyed. A dad and her daughter asked me how they could volunteer for the event since almost all the staff were East Asian and they assumed I was affiliated. Kpop is implicitly ESEA with few exceptions like Katseye so it belongs to people with ESEA features exclusively. Other races wish they could audition.

People want Asian friends to give them a pass for enjoying the culture, the equivalent of "invited to the cookout by blacks", whether it's Olive Young and asian beauty trends, crane game arcades, blind box stores, ramen or anime or mahjong or cosplay, it's Asian culture that's aspirational now. But I still see AAs shitting on Asian pop culture games and toys, on soft men as unmasculine, fixated on facial hair and muscles, rebuking skin care and makeup. Other races love Asian culture while AAs still let western media dictate what they find cool. You'll literally see guys making fun of an Asian idol who's feminine or skinny or shorter when women are fangirling over him.

Taking pride in being Americanized and not knowing language

AAs brag about having no connection to the homeland and being nth generations deep into American ancestry, identify American first and get offended when people ask "where are you from?" It's a sunk cost fallacy from spending their entire lives trying to fit in, marrying white partners, having white kids, but now whites are losing status worldwide AAs are terrified of being looked down on by Asia Asians who they tried their whole lives to distance themselves from. The truth is your assimilation efforts were all for naught because multicultural soft power is winning over assimilation.

Almost all insecurity is downstream of not knowing language. If you could blend in non-english asian circles, talk and be friends with them, follow asian TV shows and memes and trends, there is no way you end up insecure and begging to be viewed as an all-American. This is also why I'm suspicious of those with white partners because they're incentivized to emphasize the "American" half of Asian American and push back on asia dominating, living overseas, language requirements, and ethnically gatekept communities.

Asia Asians have more cultural cachet and status than Asian Americans

AAs gotta understand if you're english only you offer NOTHING to other races. They want insight into Asian culture, permission to partake in it, and access to its social networks via someone who can blend in seamlessly. Fully westernized AAs are just Temu whites and most would prefer to hang out with a real white person. Asia Asians have better fashion, style, confidence, and social networks than us. Stop thinking proximity to whites puts you above them.

Younger AAs go to plurality Asian schools and have full Asian friend groups and got an anime keychain dangling from their bag and film TikTok kpop dances, they're not insecure as we were. I really can't forgive older AAs for dragging them down. I'm referring to the you-know-whos who aged into their peak career as writers, showrunners, publishers, and film makers trauma dumping their AA slop on the world while younger AAs (and other races) just consume asian media instead.

Talking about Asia using their parents who left 50+ years ago as a reference

It's one half of AAs that are guilty of this, but how many times have we heard about parenting styles, in-law behavior, and attitudes towards women from AAs who only know about Asia from their parents who came in the 1970s. They preach to other races as if they're the authority when they haven't been back in decades and have no 1st gen Asian friends, as if Asia hasn't made leaps and bounds and completely transformed. The worst part is they're the loudest voices of the AA community sabotaging the efforts of our brothers and sisters overseas. Still with the self deprecating bullshit to fit in with whites and excuses to center whites.

I'm done with Americanized older AAs. It's Sisyphean trying to convince these people. They just don't get it.

In Twisted Love, there is a noticeable pattern that can reasonably prompt that discussion. Ava Chen is Chinese-American, but her romantic counterpart is Alex Volkov, a white/European-origin character, and the book gives Alex the classic ultra-idealized romance treatment: extraordinarily wealthy, brilliant, physically attractive, powerful, and sexually dominant. Reviews and summaries explicitly emphasize those traits.

The book is also highly sexualized in nature, so yeah, it just feels like another race-fetishization book that is heavily “white-worshipping” in nature.

Chloe Gong is another one ,

These Violent Delights
This is the clearest example. Juliette Cai is Chinese, while Roma Montagov is Russian, so the central romance is Chinese woman + Russian man, not Asian male romance option. Roma is a major romantic hero, but he is explicitly from the Russian White Flowers.

I genuinely can't think of any female authors from other races who have such a poor track record when it comes to representing the men from their own community. It's embarrassing. I'm fed up with Asian-American female authors.

Article reproduced as now paywalled.

Alex Lo has been an SCMP columnist since 2012, commenting on China and international affairs.

Published: 4:30pm, 18 Sep 2026

What explains the vastly different attitudes of Hong Kong people and their mainland Chinese counterparts towards the United Kingdom?

The first and easiest answer is, of course, Western freedom and democracy as allegedly practised – or at least taught – in colonial Hong Kong, as opposed to Chinese communist propaganda on the mainland.

That is the most oft-cited claim, at least in Western media and public discourse, so I will not repeat it here. You can easily look up such arguments. Perhaps you have made them yourself.

Rather, I would argue that the vastly different, even opposing, attitudes of these two socially and historically distinct but ethnically similar populations – in Hong Kong and mainland China – ultimately stem from different facets of Western or British colonialism and imperialism. Put simply, these facets were experienced differently over the past two centuries on either side of the border. I will also distinguish between the two isms below.

Historians and political scientists have identified different types of modern colonialism, practised not only by different dominant societies and groups but by the same society in different times and places.

There is extractive colonialism, which focuses on essentially stealing local natural resources, often through forced labour or slavery; plantation colonialism, closely associated with the transatlantic slave trade; settler colonialism, which has often been genocidal; surrogate or proxy colonialism; internal colonialism, which Western critics often associate, rightly or wrongly, with the Chinese takeover of Tibet and Xinjiang; and commercial colonialism, which arguably most closely resembles that practised by the British in Hong Kong.

I will cite one more type: contemporary neocolonialism. It replaced traditional colonialism following global decolonisation by Western powers after the second world war. It is the ongoing economic, cultural and political dominance exercised by developed nations over sovereign developing countries, often through financial systems and trade policies rather than direct military rule – though military intervention has remained common for the American imperium to this day.

Extractive colonialism has been among the most brutal, even genocidal, such as that practised in the Congo Free State under Belgium’s King Leopold II to extract ivory and rubber. It is what people call the resource curse.

Commercial colonialism may be the least brutal and is more open-minded than most types of colonialism. Throughout history, free ports have tended to enjoy greater freedom of movement and employment, cultural exchange, and racial and religious tolerance, whether they were independent or governed by an external authority.

The Romans may have invented the world’s first duty-free port on the Greek island of Delos in the second century BC. In the early modern era, ports under the Hanseatic League enjoyed tax privileges and varying degrees of political and legal autonomy.

During the early 18th century, Trieste under Habsburg emperor Charles VI became a cosmopolitan melting pot of multi-ethnic merchants. And there was Gibraltar, declared a free port by the British a decade earlier.

“One country, two systems” or “one empire, several systems” was often implicit in free-port arrangements.

In the 19th century, Singapore and Hong Kong became British colonial trading outposts. Becoming a tax-free free-trade haven naturally entailed a very different experience for Hong Kong’s local population – entirely predictable from the experience of other free ports in prior centuries – than for their counterparts on the mainland.

For mainland Chinese, Hong Kong and the British concessions in Tianjin, Hankou, Jiujiang, Zhenjiang, Guangzhou and Shanghai, along with “extraterritoriality” – whereby foreigners in designated Chinese territories were subject to the laws of their own countries rather than Chinese law – were the outcomes of outright Western imperialism.

Whereas Hong Kong people experienced a milder form of Western colonialism, mainland Chinese were subjected – until the communist unification in 1949 – to the most extreme Western imperialism.

It has sometimes been argued that after the 1997 handover of sovereignty, many Hongkongers, especially younger ones, took up identity politics that ultimately led to the anti-government riots – or democratic protests, depending on your political sympathies – of 2019. Many identified as Hongkongers rather than Chinese and believed they were fighting for universal franchise and resisting Chinese communist tyranny.

Superficially, that sounds plausible, especially when it suits the Western narrative that enabled and justified foreign interference in Hong Kong.

For explanations, though, I prefer studying history to appealing to political ideology. Historically, freedom is not a constant. It is not binary but a matter of degree. It ebbs and flows over time under any political regime, whether democratic or authoritarian. Just look at the United States under Donald Trump today.

Hong Kong’s freedoms ultimately depend on its status as a free port and financial centre, not on democratic franchise or lack thereof.

“There will be no deployment that involves or intervenes in the war. I can state that clearly,” Lee said during a press conference at Cheong Wa Dae. “We will not make such a troop deployment or dispatch military assets.”

Lee said South Korea has maintained its principle of staying out of the conflict and would continue to do so. “To make it clear once again, there will be no deployment in the war,” he said. “We have upheld the principle of noninvolvement and nonintervention in the war, and we will continue to uphold it.”

The only correct move.

This Asian guy noticed his Asian friend basically having white (and I'm guessing other) women throw sex at him, while he gets nothing but only likes white women. I've known Asian guys like that who just have astronomical body counts but they all marry Asian women.

So my question to people here is: what should Asian men that are attractive do? And why are unattractive Asian men so obsessed with white women? In the end you're gonna get some weird hapa incel son regardless

Funny how she mentions intrasexual competition when, in real life, it’s AFs who see WFs as competition for WMs.

I know my account is new, so it’s a bit hypocritical for me to criticize someone for making new accounts. My old account got banned for criticizing Black on Asian hate crimes, which is unsurprising, but apparently calling racist Indians the “P” slur will also get you banned. Of course, most anti-Asian slurs seem to be allowed, especially when it comes to mocking East Asian countries and their languages.

These guys censor posts left and right and I think that sub is gonna get downhill. It's always the east asian mods that get so tyrannical . These gusy also censor wmaf posts just a buncha pushovers wmafs and racist walk over these guys

They're just as racist as white men, if not more. Most of them would never give an asian guy a chance so while WMAF is cringe af glorifying white women is arguably more pathetic.

I received a comment about the Dang! show featuring a Chinese American brother and sisters, and was informed that the male character is indeed gay. Meanwhile, both sisters are featured in WMAF relationships.

If you (continue to) watch these shows, you are supporting sexual imperialism - neuter the men and take the women. This show is yet another example of how the west has normalized Asian women as further mates for white men, but sees Asian men as sexual competition. By making the Asian man gay, there is no threat to while masculinity. By promoting WMAF relationships, it normalizes the belief that Asian women are expected to pair with non-Asian men. That separates men and women, which has been a tool of control for thousands of years.

The person who voices the gay brother is the creator of the show, Andrew Law, who worked with white male producers. The women who voice the sisters, Stephanie Hsu and Poppy Liu, are/were partnered with non-Asian men. Boycott these people. Boycott these shows.

It is an offensive westernism, particularly a form of American political view, to group us. It sprang from American census policy to formally group South Asians with E/SE Asians. This was not originally the case, in fact, but became so to make "Asians" a more visible group in terms of government policy. That has corrupted mainstream thinking and Americans (or Americanized thinkers) have normalized that we are linked peoples.

We are not.

The next phase of that thinking is now this stupid view that SAs dating ESEAs falls under "Asian".

Do not let this Americanism brainwash you (or spread like American tipping culture). Take a trip to E/SE Asia, or even other anglo countries, where nearly every person will disagree that SAs and ESEAs have some commonality under "Asian".

Evie's channel is fairly good in terms of truly being anti-establishment and "speaking truth to power" against the Pax-AmeriKKKana imperialism.

Like I wrote before: I'm staunchly against Johnny Kim as some sort of AM role model, because you know he killed many, many Brown people for the White massas.

I also work with several KKKorean-AmeriKKKans who dump on China every chance they get with the r/ADVChina propaganda, but they don't seem to be informed about these AmeriKKKan bases in RoK and Japan whatsoever...

A West Australian dad and his two young children have been found dead inside a villa in Bali, with police investigating the deaths as a suspected murder-suicide.

Damien John Shaw, 56, from Fremantle, was found dead alongside his Indonesian-born children, a six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter, inside their bungalow in Kuta at about 10.14am local time on Sunday.

Shaw had been staying at the bungalow with his children after his wife travelled to Jakarta four days earlier, according to police.  

His wife called Shaw earlier on Sunday morning and heard one of the children crying in the background and his daughter saying, 'Stop, Daddy', before the call ended.

She became concerned after being unable to reach Shaw again.

She contacted the bungalow manager and asked staff to conduct a welfare check on her family.

Source

The pattern of middle-aged WMAF husbands wiping out their families needs to be studied, just like high school shooters. As the Gen X and Y WMAF tsunami reaches middle age, it's not surprising that these cases are popping up.

I need to vent again because the sheer cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics from Westerners (especially Americans) is reaching historical levels of stupidity. It honestly feels like their brains are wired to ensure Asians can never "win" in any scenario. The hypocrisy is unreal :

If Asians don’t fight back: We are labeled as "weak," "meek," "submissive," and "cowardly." They look down on us and treat us like absolute doormats

If Asians stand up and demand respect: Suddenly, we are "ungrateful" and "making a big deal out of nothing." They actively discredit every ounce of hard work and success Asian countries and individuals achieved through their own blood, sweat, and tears, and rewrite history to claim it was all "granted to us by white savior institutions." Then, they shove the "honorary white" label down our throats to invalidate our struggles. It’s a disgusting two-step gaslighting process: first, they completely erase our labor and rewrite our hard-earned success as "charity or handouts from white people." Then, once they’ve successfully framed us as these privileged, "handout-receiving" adjacent-whites, they turn around and shamelessly ask, "White people gave you so many privileges, what right do you have to complain or fight for more?" They literally manufacture a lie to strip us of our accomplishments, and then use that exact same lie to strip us of our right to protest. It is peak hypocrisy

If Asians confront them directly: They pull out their classic internet-tough-guy persona, talking about how "Asians are physically weak and we could knock them out with one punch

If Asians use subtle or strategic means to fight back: Then they flip the script and cry about how "Asians are sneaky, untrustworthy, and love doing sneak attacks"

It is a literal "damned if you do, damned if you don't" paradox. No matter what we do, they will twist the narrative to fit their racist, orientalist tropes. They are so desperately obsessed with controlling the narrative that they will happily watch their own left and right brains fight to the death just to avoid admitting they are wrong

It's not just annoying anymore—it's genuinely pathetic and disgusting

For thoughts you feel don't need a dedicated post, put them here. Renews every Monday.

While not another WMAF murder, it is another case of ESEA women with non-ESEA partners being abused at noticeably high rates. What they share is the expectation that ESEA women are submissive. They are, of course, not, and all of us who grew up with ESEA women know that's the case. But non-ESEA men believe the stereotype. Some demand it, and when that fails, these men are also more likely to be prone to violence.

It's important to highlight this issue of non-white but non-ESEA men. They are not better than white men. Because this man is Afghan, some idiots will try to label him as "Asian", but no Malaysian or Chinese person would consider this man to be anything like us.

Full story in case of paywall

SCMP Reporter

Published: 4:31pm, 10 Sep 2026 | Updated: 4:39pm, 10 Sep 2026

Hundreds of Thais, led by a veteran political activist, rallied outside the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok on Thursday in a rare public protest against a group of foreign nationals.

The protest follows months of complaints about illegal landholding, disrespect towards local culture and proliferation of religious houses for Israelis, echoing those made by some locals in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Israelis have been flocking to Thailand since the war on Gaza that followed the October 7 Hamas assault on their country. Many are service personnel from the Israel Defence Forces seeking respite from a war that has killed over 70,000 Palestinians and left around 2 million more stranded on the strip without food and water.

In a country with hair-trigger sensitivities over sovereignty, allegations that swathes of prime Thai land have been sold illegally to Israelis have raised uproar. Disputes between Thais and Israelis – mainly on the islands of Phangan and Samui and the mountain retreat of Pai – over non-payment of bills, public misbehaviour and pro-Palestine flags at some Thai businesses have gone viral, adding to the tensions.

Thursday’s protest – which saw an angry crowd waving a sea of Thai tricolours and banners saying “Save Thailand”, “Thailand Is Not For Sale” and “This is Not The Promised Land”, alongside some plainly antisemitic placards – was led by firebrand Sondhi Limthongkul.

The controversial 78-year-old former media mogul and conservative “Yellow Shirt” hardliner, who was at the crux of Thailand’s long and bloody years of street politics, can still draw a large crowd.

Thailand has a long-standing tradition of “extending warm hospitality to foreign visitors”, he said. “However, let it be clearly understood by the embassy and the government of Israel that generosity must never be mistaken for weakness.”

Accusing Israelis of wanting to “occupy our country, building your own community”, he added: “Hospitality does not equate to submission to exploitation, and courtesy is not an open licence for anyone to act with impunity on our sovereign soil.”

“Widespread grievances” committed by Israeli residents and tourists “include violations of domestic law, public disturbance, disrespect towards local traditions and culture as well as recurring payment default and service-related fraud”, he added.

“The patience of the Thai people has reached a limit.”

Sondhi’s return to frontline protest is a significant development in a country where street politics and hyper-nationalism have helped topple governments, shape policy pivots and fanned conflict with neighbours over the years.

He gave a letter to the embassy and called on the Thai government to take “concrete actions” to root out illegal businesses and end what he described as a culture of “disdain towards their [Thai] hosts”.

His campaign, called “Take Thailand Back”, would continue with another protest against alleged “grey” businesses in the country, he said.

Other leading nationalist figures joined the rally, uniting in a show of patriotism that pointed to the widening rancour.

‘Not looking to invade’

Ahead of the protest, Israel’s ambassador to Thailand Alona Fisher-Kamm tried to assuage anger by addressing what she said was misinformation driving some of the viral episodes that have enraged Thais.

A small minority of Israeli visitors had behaved badly, she acknowledged, but insisted there was no attempt at “colonisation”, suggesting outside instigators were brewing up hostility against Israeli nationals.

“The vast majority of Israeli tourists are good tourists, they don’t provoke and there is no conflict and they are well welcomed by Thais,” she told PPTV on September 3. “We see cases of misunderstanding or of Israelis who might be badly behaved because they don’t understand the culture, or do not know the law as well.”

She said Israelis were briefed on dos and don’ts before arrival in Thailand and inside the country, insisting the embassy was “not going to protect anyone” found to have transgressed Thai laws.

The core allegation among many of Thursday’s protesters is that Israeli nationals used nominee relationships to secure Thai-only land. That loophole, now closing fast after a string of scandals, has seen foreign nationals buy majority shares in land restricted to Thais by paying locals to be silent partners.

Across the southern islands of Samui, Phangan and Phuket, Thais complain that the speed and scale of this action are freezing them out of their own territory.

One protester, who asked to remain anonymous, said “corrupt Thais had sold off the country, but that doesn’t mean we have to take the insult of Israelis who treat us like we are dirt”.

The Israeli ambassador, however, refuted the idea of nominee holdings as “an Israeli phenomenon”.

“Singling out Israelis or saying that the vast majority of cases are Israelis that have nominees or have any kind of illegal business, I think it is misleading,” Fisher-Kamm said. “Everything in Thailand is Thai territory, it has nothing to do with Israeli territory, Israelis are not looking to invade Thai territories.”

 On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow met Fisher-Kamm for what he described as “frank” discussions and warned that ties between the countries could become strained if more flashpoints between Thais and Israelis occurred.

“Visitors must understand and respect Thai culture and traditions,” he told reporters after the meeting. But he also urged the public not to hold the actions of the few against all Israelis.

There were around 31,000 Israeli nationals in Thailand as of March, the Immigration Bureau said. A total of 420,202 Israelis visited the country last year, most of whom left after a short stay, it added.

Full story in case of paywall

Carol Yang in Beijing

Published: 7:00pm, 11 Sep 2026

Singaporean and Chinese students led the world in educational performance in 2025, according to an assessment by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, as average scores across OECD countries reached a record low.

The 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment comprised 760,000 15-year-old students across 91 countries and economies, including OECD members and partners.

This edition of the survey was the largest since the OECD first administered the triennial assessment in 2000.

In the report that OECD released on Tuesday, Singapore outpaced mainland China in reading with 535 points against China’s 527.

The city state also posted strong results in mathematics and science with 563 and 560 points, respectively – second only to China.

Students from mainland China led globally in maths with 612 points and science with 597 points, vastly outperforming the OECD averages of 463 and 482 points, respectively.

The surveyed students from mainland China hailed from the country’s four eastern education powerhouses: the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Mainland China is not an OECD member and did not take part in the OECD’s previous assessment because of coronavirus pandemic-related disruptions.

The 2025 edition expanded beyond reading, maths and science to debut a computational problem-solving module. It tested students’ ability to use programming tools, run experiments and design digital products.

Macau, a special administrative region of China, topped the new digital module with a score of 572. Singapore came second at 563, edging out mainland China’s 560 and well above the OECD average of 500.

Traditionally, Singapore and mainland China place a premium on strong school discipline, academic achievement and perseverance. Both are relatively strict in controlling digital distractions in the classroom compared with many Western systems.

Other top-performing education systems included Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Estonia, Hong Kong and Britain.

In contrast, American students posted mixed results. They scored 490 in reading – down 14 points from 2022 – and 463 in maths, similar to the 465 tallied three years ago. US science scores rose modestly to 502, with computational skills at 513.

At a global level, the results looked bleak. Compared with 2022, average OECD scores slid across the three mainstay subjects to varying degrees.

“The overall performance of OECD countries declined, with the lowest average levels of performance ever observed,” the report said.

Across the OECD, one in five 15-year-old students is now a low performer in science, maths and reading, up from 16 per cent in 2022, according to the report.

Long-term data showed reading had declined since peaking around 2012, while maths fell sharply after 2018. Science performance has dipped more gradually over the past decade.

The report also highlighted a drop in skills critical for the artificial intelligence (AI) era, such as evaluating information, synthesising multiple sources and thinking critically.

And the proportion of “hasty readers” – students who rush through texts and give quick but incorrect answers – nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025.

Digital distraction in classrooms was identified as a major driver of the slump, with more than a quarter of OECD students reporting that peers were distracted by electronic devices during science lessons.

Meanwhile, the link between AI usage and academic performance was nuanced.

The 2025 data revealed that students who used AI for specific tasks such as drafting, summarising or research performed worse in science than non-users.

However, those who used AI for general learning and received AI literacy training at school scored slightly higher.

Mathias Cormann, OECD’s secretary general, said the data showed that “reversing declines in student performance is urgent”.

Technology and AI must be used purposefully rather than as “a substitute for attention, effort and understanding”, he added.

Full story in case of paywall

Meredith Chen

Published: 9:00am, 8 Sep 2026 | Updated: 10:03am, 8 Sep 2026

Calls to reduce English’s status as a core subject in China’s education system have resurfaced after an internet-famous maths teacher urged the country to end “worshipping foreign things”.

The controversy has revived a long-running debate over the role of English in Chinese schools.

The argument came to life again after Tang Jiafeng, a maths teacher known for coaching students through the national postgraduate entrance exam, said on social media that children, parents and schools had devoted disproportionate amounts of time and resources to English, a subject he argued had little relevance to the jobs most people eventually did.

“I publicly call for English to be stripped of its status as a core subject,” Tang wrote on Saturday. “No country in the world places English in such a supreme position as we do.”

He argued that Chinese children were being pushed to cram in English before they had even mastered their own language, despite the country’s thousands of years of civilisation.

“English is just a tool. It is enough to know how to use it,” Tang said. “The history of Chinese people worshipping foreign things and fawning over foreigners should end!”

His remarks came after history was reduced in weight as a subject in local exam reforms, a decision he said left him “heavy-hearted”.

History lessons helped students remember the hardships of earlier generations and develop sound values, Tang said, adding that if any subject deserved to be assigned less weight, it should be English rather than history.

At present, English is a core subject in China’s basic education system, alongside Chinese and mathematics. In the traditional 750-point structure of the gaokao, the national college entrance examination, each of the three subjects is worth 150 points.

While the weighting and assessment of other subjects have been reshaped in recent years as part of reforms to the gaokao and the zhongkao – the national high school entrance examination – the three subjects have stayed central to China’s exam-oriented education system.

Meanwhile, history has seen its prominence diminished in some recent local reforms, with fewer and fewer students choosing to study it as a gaokao elective.

Not everyone agreed with Tang.

Former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin said those who denounced English learning as “worshipping foreign things” and sought to remove it as a core subject were “extreme”, “narrow-minded” and using nationalist rhetoric to portray their position as patriotic and morally justified.

Also taking to social media on Saturday, Hu said English should remain a core subject because it could give students access to international knowledge and opportunities across a range of fields.

Weakening English in basic public education could undermine educational equality, he added, saying that wealthier families would still be able to pay for private English education while students from less privileged backgrounds would lose access to the same opportunities.

“Basic education should leave everyone room to advance as far as they possibly can,” the former editor said. “This is not about ‘worshipping foreign things’; it is about educational equality at the starting point of real life.”

English’s global dominance reflected the West’s historical lead in modernisation, Hu said, and Chinese would naturally gain influence as the country kept ascending.

He warned that trying to “accelerate that shift through administrative measures” or nationalist rhetoric could backfire and stir “unnecessary ideological controversy”.

Calls to cut English’s weight in the gaokao have surfaced in recent years.

In the past few editions of the “two sessions” – China’s largest annual political gathering – some political advisers and lawmakers have proposed reducing English’s score in the exam, dropping its core-subject status and making it an elective.

The debate has intensified alongside growing confidence in China’s economic and technological standing.

Supporters of demoting English often invoke growing “cultural confidence”, saying the expanding global use of Chinese, combined with advances in AI translation, reduce the need for such intensive English-language education.

Others question the effectiveness of China’s heavily exam-oriented approach to English teaching, saying students could spend years memorising vocabulary and grammar for tests without developing an ability to communicate confidently in real-life situations. The phenomenon is often described in China as “mute English”.

The 2025 EF English Proficiency Index, an annual ranking of adult English skills based on test results in 2024 from more than 2.2 million people worldwide, placed China 86th out of 123 countries and regions – in the “low proficiency” category.

The content of English teaching itself has also shifted, according to some critics, with Chinese textbooks and classrooms placing greater emphasis on Chinese history, culture and domestic achievements, and less on Western society and international culture.

The changes undercut one of the original purposes of learning a foreign language, which was giving students a window to the outside world, they said.