As China is increasingly occupying the world's attention, its explosively expanding economical and political clout has also been felt in the applied linguistics domain, with the discussion on China's/Chinese language issues growing by leaps and bounds (e.g. China's English education policies, Chinese language classes in the West). Amid the world's hopeful or ambivalent attitudes towards China, the present brief discussion, favourably disposed towards a new era in East-West relations, revisits applied linguistics research on Asian language learners, whose problematized image conventionally lends support to Western supremacy and the westernized Asian learner. Future research directions are explored in the light of new global power relations that are expected to act as a conduit to re-balancing dominant language-learner ideologies, applied linguistics research discussion and its pedagogical implications.