Abstract: Being rich in language resources, the Yunnan ethnic border areas of China deserve special attention when foreign language (FL) planning is carried out. Though the targets are obvious with such FL as English and neighboring languages to be planned, a proper and scientific planning of these FL is no easy job. This is because such factors as frontier, cross-border and ethnic minorities need to be included in the planning. Most importantly, the planning of these FL must be carried out within the framework of the national language policy. Thus, we suggest taking both macro and micro perspectives in FL planning in these areas. On the macro level, there is a need of constructing national language competency and promoting trans-language communication required by the Belt and Road Initiative; on the micro level, there exist special sociolinguistic factors such as geographical closeness, cultural relationship and language family ties. With all of these in mind, we present three models for FL planning in these particular areas and analyze their legitimacy and applicability.