Education in China
Education in China is a state-run system of public education run by the Ministry of Education. All citizens must attend school for at least nine years, known as the nine-year compulsory education, which is funded by the government. Compulsory education includes six years of primary education, starting at age six or seven, and three years of junior secondary education (junior middle school) for ages 12 to 15. Some provinces may have five years of primary school but four years for junior middle school. After junior middle school, there are three years of senior middle school, which then completes the secondary education.
English education in China
China's first contact with the English language occurred between Chinese and English traders, and the first missionary schools to teach English were established in Macau in the 1630s. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Russian was originally the primary foreign language. English began to transition into the education system during the 1960s as a result of the Sino-Soviet split. Because of the condemnation of the English language during the Cultural Revolution, English education did not return until Richard Nixon visited China in 1971. The only textbooks for English instructions were translations of Mao Zedong's works until the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, and the Gaokao was restored in 1978. Like mentioned in the above section, once China established the open door policy under Deng Xiaoping, the popularity of English and other languages began to thrive. English became extremely popular between the late 1970s to 1990s in areas that dealt with trading and tourism