In Britain, a Chinese teaching program that will form part of the national curriculum has been formulated and approved by the Department of Education and Skills. In the U.S., 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 learn 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 nonnative 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.
