Abstract：With the further development of China’s policy of reform and opening up, and the implementation of the strategy of going out in the new era, China is accelerating its integration into the world. As a result, China has seen increasing growth of the foreign resident community in recent years; in addition to that, the scope of activities of Chinese citizens abroad has also witnessed rapid expanding. In this context, in the event of a public emergency, overcoming language barriers and maintaining effective communication are essential. Therefore, emergency language services are put on the agenda and become an indispensable part of the emergency management system. In the efforts of dealing with the COVID-19 in 2020, while the emergency language service played a unique and irreplaceable role, it also encountered some problems that led to deficiencies, providing us with an opportunity to review the achievements of the emergency language service endeavours at the national level. This article first discusses the connotation and necessity of emergency language service planning, and then advocates a systemic mechanism planning including language (dialect) planning, talent planning, technical planning, profession planning, and public (community) education planning. This advocation aims to do a better job in pre-disaster prevention, intra-disaster response, and post-disaster recovery. The paper intends to show the importance of fully utilizing the characteristics and advantages of China’s emergency management system, thus to comprehensively improve China’s emergency language service capabilities and actively promote the modernization of China’s emergency management.
