According to a Rest of World report, a survey tracking 70 Chinese universities from May 2026 showed that foreign language and translation majors are undergoing the largest systematic cuts in recent years: Japanese and German majors each lost 8 and 5 programs respectively, translation majors lost 5, and marketing majors saw a reduction of up to 16 programs in 2025. At the same time, in April of this year, the Ministry of Education approved 9 universities to offer an “embodied intelligence” major (i.e., physical AI fields such as humanoid robots and autonomous machines), and among the total 38 newly approved majors for the year, most focus on technology or digital fields, also covering directions like low-altitude economy management, semiconductor equipment engineering, and rare earth science and engineering. The education consulting firm MyCOS pointed out in a report that foreign language majors were once among the fastest-growing university majors in China, but changes in the global landscape and the rise of AI translation tools are forcing this discipline to reposition itself.
Unlike U.S. universities, which can set their own curricula autonomously, Chinese universities must obtain government approval, making adjustments more centralized and top-down in nature. Syracuse University sociology professor Yingyi Ma summarized the difference between the two systems: the advantage of the Chinese system is speed and scale, while the risk is overcorrection — some fields may be undervalued before their long-term value is fully recognized; the advantage of the U.S. system is flexibility, but its weakness is fragmentation and inequality. Even so, Chinese universities have not completely abandoned the humanities, but are instead pushing for their integration with AI: while the Communication University of China cut 5 majors such as photography and comics, it added new AI-infused courses like “Intelligent Imaging Art”; Swahili translation instructor Ao Manyun said the course goal has shifted from “teaching students to translate” to “cultivating students’ ability to command and manage AI translators to complete complex tasks.”