The Chinese government plans to set up a five-year scholarship
program for EU students from 2007, with 100 recipients per year,
providing more opportunities for overseas students to learn
Chinese.
Premier Wen Jiabao made this point during the 9th
EU-China Summit meeting with Matti Vanhanen, prime minister of
Finland, and Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, president of the EU
Commission, in Helsinki on September 9. They agreed that
educational cooperation forms the social and literary basis in
promoting further development of EU-China relations.
China is to sign a set of agreements with the EU on educational
communication and cooperation in the near future, including this
scholarship for EU students. Also in the pipeline are plans for a
China-EU Law School, and the agreement is expected to be signed
soon.
It is estimated that over 30 million people around the world are
now learning Chinese as a second language, and Chinese language
courses are available in more than 2,500 universities in over 100
countries and regions. Several countries, including the UK,
Thailand and Indonesia, have included Chinese courses in their
curricula. In South Korea and Japan, some 1 million people are
learning Chinese, and the numbers in Latin America, the Middle East
and Africa are also growing. It is predicted that the total number
of people around the world learning Chinese will reach 100 million
by 2010, and at least 4 million Chinese language teachers will be
needed then.
(China.org.cn by Xu Lin, September 14, 2006)