China has the largest number of English users in the Expanding Circle, but little information is available about the exact number of users and their English proficiency. This paper presents a demographic profile of the users of English in China and the distribution of proficiency among the millions of English users. Also presented in the article is a sociolinguistic profile of the different uses of English in Chinese society. The authors contend that the primary function of English in China is not one of international communication, as has been believed in the literature, but one of social and economic mobility.

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