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Canadian
children at a Chinese school during the summer vacation.
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Helen
from Washington at a Chinese class.
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Chinese
corner at the Hainan Tropical Wildlife Park and Botanical
Garden.
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More than 2,300 universities in over 100 countries have introduced
Chinese courses to their curricula, and young overseas nationals
flock to China each year to learn Chinese. In 2004, the number
of international students in China was 400,000, with an annual
increase of 20 percent in the past five years, according to the
Chinese Ministry of Education.
The Rise of China’s Economy
Monsieur Label and his wife, both respected architects living
in Paris’ Sixth Quarter, have enrolled their daughter in
the nearby Ecole Alsacienne where Chinese classes start at kindergarten.
Monsieur Label says of China: “I and my colleagues witnessed
the country’s amazing development when we attended a recent
seminar in Shenzhen. I believe that China is the economic superpower
of the future. My wife and I speak French, English and Spanish,
but my daughter should also learn Chinese because it will be useful
to her when she grows up.” The Ecole Alsacienne has established
friendly ties with Beijing’s Jingshan School, and they operate
an annual student exchange program.
Since Chinese courses were added to the curricula of 132 French
junior and senior high schools their enrollment has doubled. That
at the Oriental Language and Culture College, one of France’s
largest Chinese-teaching colleges, has skyrocketed in recent years,
according to Xu Dan, dean of the Chinese Department. She confirms
that Chinese and Japanese are now the two most studied Asian languages.
French junior student Beida of OLCC, is totally fluent in Chinese.
“I graduated from Université Panthéon-Assas
(Paris 2) Droit-Economie-Science Sociales with a BA in law. I’m
learning Chinese because I want to be an international lawyer
in China,” he explains.
Young French entrepreneur Patric Penia established his Beiyan
Consultancy Company in Paris, and it now works together with China
Central Television in introducing French traditions and culture
to Chinese audiences. Patric also cooperated with Beijing’s
University of Finance and Economics and Central University of
Finance and Economics in launching a three-week crash course in
Chinese in Beijing. In 2005, he initiated the “Chinese people
and business management” training course in Paris, which
consists of seminars to help French businessmen understand how
Chinese business operates.
Germany has also caught on to the benefits of Chinese language
learning, and has added Chinese to its high school graduation
exams. Many international corporations also hold introductory
Chinese courses for employees assigned work in China. “English
isn’t enough,” says Herr Gerck, president of Siemens
China, “We need to equip our staff with the ability to deal
with Chinese merchants in their own language.”
In Britain, a Chinese teaching program that will form part of
the national curriculum has been formulated and approved by the
Department for Education and skills. In the US, Chinese is part
of the Advance Placement Program for American high school students.
This means that students can take college-level Chinese in the
same way as they can French, Spanish and German and gain credits
if they get good test results. More than 2,500 primary and high
schools now offer AP courses in the Chinese language.
Cultural Echoes
Chinese characters, along with the Confucian philosophy, have
always had profound influence on Han cultural circles in Asia,
and after a brief hiatus, Chinese language teaching is in demand
once more in the ROK, Singapore, Japan and Vietnam.
“Singaporeans rushed to learn English in the 1970s, when
it was believed to be the most useful language for the future.
Now, in the 21st century, a lack of Chinese-speaking skills is
seen as a disadvantage,” says one Singaporean student, who
recently graduated from Beijing University with a BA in international
relations.
The German ambassador to the ROK once told vice minister of Education
Zhang Xinsheng: “Nowadays, high school teachers of German
and French must also learn Chinese if they want to keep their
jobs.”
In the ROK, a high HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi – the Chinese
Language Proficiency Test taken by non-native speakers) acts as
a springboard for jobs and promotions in large corporations. The
number of colleges offering Chinese language courses in the ROK
at present stands at 347, compared to 20 in the 1980s. By the
year 2007, Chinese courses will be taught in primary and high
schools, according to the ROK minister of Education. In the course
of China’s economic boom over the past two decades, a large
number of Koreans have immigrated to China. Many now have their
own businesses, which would have been impossible without a formal
grounding in Chinese.
In Thailand, Chinese has eclipsed Japanese to become the second
most common second language. “Public interest has moved from
Japanese to Chinese,” the Japanese Sankei Shimbun recently
reported, “The number of people learning Chinese in Thailand
now is tenfold that of ten years ago.”
Indonesian President Suharto’s resignation in 1998 provided
the opportunity for a closer relationship between the two nations
and for the Indonesian Chinese population to learn Chinese language
as well as Chinese traditions. In the belief that “Chinese
children should learn Chinese” Indonesian Chinese residents
sent their children to schools offering Chinese courses so that
they might understand Chinese cultural traditions as well as speak
the language. Enrollment at such schools soon skyrocketed, and
parents often queued up all night in order to be secure admission
for their children.
Why Chinese?
“People around the world are rushing to learn Chinese. This
interest can be attributed to China’s economic opportunities
and its telling effect on the future” so stated the article
China—Embracing the World published in the May issue of The
Hindu.
In view of the international demand for Chinese language learning,
the Chinese government plans to set up 100 Confucius Institutes
around the world. The Confucius Institute is a nonprofit organization
whose aim is to promote the Chinese language and culture overseas
through Internet or on-campus non-degree courses. The first institute
was established in Seoul, ROK in November 2004. Since then branches
have been set up in many other countries, including the US, Sweden,
France and Uzbekistan.
Great hopes have been laid on Chengo (Chinese and English on
the Go), an E-language learning system based on pinyin rather
than Chinese characters developed by 12 experts from China and
the US, as a means to help children learn Chinese. This software
captures children’s attention with stories, games and animations
based on the 2008 Olympics.
In order to ensure that there are sufficient teachers to meet
the current demand, the Chinese government has set up training
centers where overseas teachers of Chinese can attend lectures.
It has also launched overseas training courses.
In addition to dispatching Chinese teachers abroad to teach Chinese,
the government has also sent over 1,000 professionally qualified
volunteers to countries in Asia, Europe, America and Africa.
Since Chinese became so popular in the international community,
the number of foreign students applying to take the Chinese Language
Proficiency Test (HSK) has surged from 21,000 in 1996 to 100,000
in 2004. It is now possible to take the HSK exam, known to candidates
as the “Chinese TOEFL”, at 151 local universities or
colleges in 34 countries.
The Paris-based Chinese newspaper European Times, which has the
highest circulation among Chinese-language newspapers in Europe,
released a comment early this year entitled “Develop as rapidly
as the Chinese Economy Booms” that analyzed why so many people
are rushing to learn Chinese and study in China. Its conclusions
were that China’s increasing economic competitiveness and
the brilliant future career it offers is a powerful lure to mastering
Chinese. But it also pointed out that learning Chinese is the
key to Chinese cultural traditions. After all, what point is there
in learning a foreign language if you can’t use it to express
knowledge of the culture from which it sprang!
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