Against the background of China's global evolution from an agricultural to a market-oriented industrial and post-industrial ‘monolingual market economy’, where Putonghua is considered as the ‘High’ language for upward mobility, this study examines Korean-Chinese parents' language attitudes towards Putonghua and Korean, their ethnic consciousness being paradoxically fostered in the process. The results indicate that an additive bilingualism in education is required in order to take care of referential and affective language functions.