Language planning with respect to English into China

Nowadays a more and more tightly integrated world generally favors the spread of English. Academics all over the world are concerned about the problem of English infiltration and anxious about its consequences, for lexical borrowing is said to be the first sign of language shift and extinction. In China such sentiments and fears are usually demonstrated in language planning programs. The Chinese language has a tradition of purism due to its long history. This paper focuses on the tradition of linguistic purism in lexical borrowing in the Chinese language as well as language planning and language policy towards the infiltration of English words into the Chinese language.