TRANSFORMATION OF THE PARADIGM OF HIGHER FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN THE MIRROR OF PROGRAM DOCUMENTS AND EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS OF CHINA

Abstract

The article reveals how, in the PRC over the period from 1999 to 2023, the foundations of higher foreign language education are redefined under the influence of geopolitical and economic shifts, when foreign language is conceptualized as a resource for security, technological development, and cultural positioning. Drawing on a large array of directive and methodological texts, national quality standards, editions of guiding principles, and institutional curricula of universities of various statuses, the trajectory of transition from grammar-translation normativity to hybrid models of intercultural and professional interaction is reconstructed. The integration of critical discourse analysis, corpus-statistical processing, and multidimensional modeling makes it possible to demonstrate that changes are recorded not only in declarations but also in measurable parameters of educational design: the share of the basic structural-grammatical block in elite universities constitutes 14.37% versus 41.15% in the regional sector, while the module of English for specific purposes demonstrates almost complete inter-institutional convergence (about 23–25%). Diachronic lexicometry reveals the conceptual replacement of “linguistic correctness” (from 87.45 to 21.63 per 10,000 words) with markers of “intercultural competence,” “critical thinking,” and especially “national identity” (growth to 86.27), which is interpreted as strengthening the glocalization paradigm. In parallel, the restructuring of assessment regimes is traced: the weight of multiple-choice tests decreases from 0.885 to 0.428 amid the growth of project-portfolio forms and reflective practices, signaling a transition to monitoring individual progress. Comparison of the cognitive complexity of tasks with normative thresholds reveals nonlinearity of requirements between basic and advanced levels and highlights analytical operations as an invariant core. The article’s material is relevant to researchers in language policy, comparative pedagogy, and quality management, as it shows how state strategies are “translated” into the microstructures of curricula and assessment, forming a new type of professional and cultural subjectivity of graduates.