Abstract：Forty years have passed since the concept of language resources was advanced. In the 1980s, Australia formulated the National Language Policy based on this concept. Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has started to put this concept into practice. National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center was established, and projects such as the Chinese Language Audio Database Resources and the National Project of Chinese Language Resource Preservation carried out. In cooperation with the UNESCO, China successfully held International Conference on Role of Linguistic Diversity in Building a Global Community with Shared Future and Yuelu Proclamation was adopted. China is outstanding for advocating the concept of language resources and implementing language protection. Research on China’s language resources is carried out on the bases of the practices of language planning. The focus of research has moved from the nature of language as resources and their classification to the understanding of the functions of language resources. This article offers a detailed historical survey of the theories and practices of China’s language resources. It classifies language resources into three kinds: oral, written, and derivative resources, and analyzes three functional domains of language resources: language reservation, language information processing and language learning. In addition, this paper proposes the view of language knowledge and regards language as not only a semiotic system, but also a bank for storing human language knowledge system and cultural system.
