The Development of Bilingual Education in China

Bilingual education has more than 50-years’ history in the world.It has gained the attention from the world since 1960s in some western countries,such as the USA and Canada.With the growth of international business and the appearance of the global village,bilingual education has become a hot issue in China.This article generally outlines the picture of bilingual education in the world.Then,it describes the development of bilingualism under Chinese contexts.Above all,the models of the bilingual education have been explicitly introduced to build up the basis for further investigation.Besides,the two main periods of the bilingual education in China have been described based on the empirical literature.In the end,the influential factors of the development of bilingual education have been discussed from five main perspectives:economic,social,educational,cultural and political framework.However,there is a lack of documentary resources and experimental materials for the scaffolding of bilingual education in China,which requires further investigation.