Since the launch of Reform and Opening-up forty years ago, foreign language education in China has made tremendous progress through successive education reform and thus promoted the overall development of the nation and the society. With the shifting role of China from a “localized nation” to an “internationalized power”, foreign language education planning has gone through four developmental stages, namely the restoration stage (1978 to early 1980s), reconstruction and reform stage (mid 1980s to late 1990s), formation and systematization stage (2000-2010), and the stage of strategic transition (2010 to present). Based on the analytical framework of foreign language education planning (FLEP) process, this paper reviews the achievements and weakness of China’s FLEP in the past four decades. Analysis shows that much substantial work has been done in all key areas of FLEP, such as strategic planning, surveys, survey reports, policy decisions, policy implementation and policy evaluation. However, the top macro-planning agency as well as some details of policy implementation and evaluations needs to be more clearly defined. In view of the existing deficiencies in China’s foreign language education policy and planning,this paper proposes some specific suggestions for advancing foreign language education in order to cater to the language needs in China’s New Era.