The Backdrop of Language Policy and Planning
From the mid-1980s，Australia started a process of ambitious and explicit language policy making，which was unusual among English-speaking countries for whom the dominant position of English in the world acts as a brake or disincentive against large-scale investments in second language education.More like a global“basic skill”than a foreign language(Graddol，2006)，English has been expanding as a global language.This status represents a constraint on the widespread commitment to language planning involving teaching of several languages.An analysis of the European pattern of bilingual and multilingual proficiency drawn from the regular assessments of multiple language skills conducted by the European Commission as part of the Euro-barometer studies(Lo Bianco，2001)manifests this clearly.
Australia is uniquely located in geography，its population size is small，and economically it has been increasingly dependent on non-English speaking Asian countries.Therefore，Australian public policy came to an appreciation of cultural，linguistic and educational consequences of the burgeoning economic growth of Asia much earlier than European and American countries(ASC，1988).Australia increasingly sourced immigrants from Asia，the bulk of its inbound tourism also came from newly prosperous Asian countries，and it needed to negotiate its geo-political security with its Asian neighbours.During that time Australian public officials started to talk of Asia as“the region”，or“our region”(Garnaut，1989)and there were narratives whether and how Australia could be described as an“Asian nation”(Fitzgerald，1997).
The combined and cumulative effect of these political，economic and demographic forces led to a kind of national cultural makeover.The effects and policies leaning to closer ties with Asia did not necessarily mean cultural or demographic Asianisation，and an important movement in favour of this consequence emerged.Its education version，often referred to as“Asia-literacy”(meaning“development of a knowledge about Asia”)，often featured in a series of strategic policy reports(ALLC，1994;Lo Bianco，2004)，and those leading the charge included key national figures from the areas of diplomacy，trade，security and politics.Different from other language planning movements in Australia’s recent LPP history，the move to strongly favour and provide strong finance support to Asian languages and studies in preference to others was topdown and elite-led(Lo Bianco and Wickert，2001).It should be noted that there was not much opposition to these language education-planning changes during the mid to late 1990s，although the broader policy of integration with Asia met with strong opposition in Australia.
It is obvious that the mainstreaming and prioritization of Asian language studies were seen widely as a useful skill supporting the national interest.However，the collective effect was the adoption of nation-changing principles，from 1994 to 2002，delivered by a rare level of cooperation and shared vision among state and national governments，accompanied by a push to identify strongly with regional institutions.By finding an instrumental rationale for the mass teaching of second languages，the Asian languages experience of Australia，with its successes and failures，is an instructive case study in acquisition language education planning.In a short period of time，key Asian languages，which were marginal in education provision，became the most widely taught second or foreign languages at all levels of education，replacing the European languages which had been historically dominant in education.At one stage，Australia recorded the highest levels of Japanese teaching of any country in the world(ASAA，2002，Japan Foundation，2003;Rudd，1994).
During this period of time，the Asia-literacy movement invoked a wide and deep cultural change，as well as causing a change in the sphere of acquisition LPP，bringing the society into a different kind of consciousness.This trend later waned(ASAA，2002)and it was considered as overblown.However，the predominance of interest and commitment for Asian languages and for studies of Asia cultures in schools remained.This experience，and the preceding LPP priority which favoured multiculturalism as the basis for making choices about what languages to teach(Clyne，2005;Lo Bianco and Wickert，2001)，has produced both intensity and f luctuation to Australian LPP.The continual shifting and changing served to weaken the sustained planning and investment of resources that required in serious long-term educational LPP.
As mentioned before，opting for Asia was a policy movement led by social elites，thus this was a top-down imposition of national interest priorities.Like any top-down imposition of policy，it was removed from the realities of population demographics and tended to favour diplomacy，trade，strategic security and nation-to-nation rationales and emphasised foreign country“otherness”，even，at its extremes，recirculating the orientalist idea of the inscrutable other(Singh，2001).A case in point is the Japanese language，whose social fortunes and esteem was transformed dramatically.Japanese was once regarded as the linguistic code of a threatening“other”，but it became the prestige linguistic code of a“neighbour”(Lo Bianco，2003;Marriot，Neustupny，and Spence-Brown，1994).It shows that discourse planning such as the deliberate naming and framing of a topic or issue in a persuasive rhetoric intended to inf luence policy making interacts with the traditional concepts of LPP(Lo Bianco，2005).The political and policy discourse that produced so called“Asia literacy”as an acceptable policy idea is essential to the realisation of the concrete actions in education that are usually what is analysed as LPP.For Asian languages this rested on persuading the Australian population that of its interdependence with the Asian region，and specifically on a program of economic regionalism，but one premised not on multicultural or local presence of these languages，but of difference discrete though interacting nations.Over time，this tidy assumption has eroded;for the Chinese language，this had always been problematic.
Over a long period dating back to the gold rush days in the 1850s，Chinese has been one of“Australian”languages.It is used locally，and has developed in the sphere of retention and recovery in LPP(Smith，et al.，1993).As such，the presence of Chinese as an education activity since the mid-19th century has essentially been the concern of domestic speaker populations，divorced from formal policy and motivated by internal and local objectives(Jupp，1998).Though retaining and recovering Chinese language skills was international as well，this was very much restricted to the connections between family groupings linking the immigrants’new living environment with their country of origin.In the airstream of the deliberate Asia literacy policies of LPP in recent years，Chinese has been heavily promoted and has now entered the sphere of acquisition planning.It is clear that over two decades or so Chinese has experienced a rapid expansion，which is likely to draw on multiple reasons and justifications combining local and extra-national purposes.