Enthusiasm for Chinese learning has surged overseas in recent years, especially for the purpose of job-seeking and promotion, veteran Chinese teaching expert Lu Jianji said in Beijing Friday.
At the concluding World Chinese Conference, Prof. Lu from Beijing Language and Culture University, said more than 30 million people are learning Chinese worldwide and more than 2,500 university in 100 countries are teaching Chinese.
To speak Chinese well overseas is a key qualification for job-seeking and promotion, and more and more foreign companies press on with Chinese language training for their employees, said Ma Jianfei, deputy director of the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOTCFL), "Before I came to China, I didn't realize the far-reaching influence that Chinese could bring to me," exchange student Michael from the Republic of Korea (ROK) said. He has just attained an admiring post in a well-known ROK trade firm, after getting the Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) certificate approved by the Chinese government.
In Michael's country, nearly 200 universities offer courses on Chinese and about 130,000 middle school students choose Chinese as a minor subject. Chinese is officially set up as part of the college entrance exams in ROK. Besides, there are more than 100 Chinese training courses offered by educational institutions, with over 200,000 persons signing up every year.
Mizumi Fujita from Japan said many Japanese big companies like Panasonic often organize lectures on Chinese learning for employees.
Sources with the Chinese Embassy in Russia said that there are more than 50 Chinese teaching centers in Russia and more than 30 universities giving Chinese courses. The figure was only 12 in the late 1980s.
"Russian college graduates excelling in Chinese are like 'hot cakes' during their job hunting. Many companies even book for such students ahead of the graduation, offering them higher salaries," Russian businessman Kilinov, who has taken Chinese courses in northeast China's Harbin said.
"In the United States, the number of Chinese learners now enjoys the highest growth rate among all foreign languages." said well-known Sinologist Theodore D. Huters, also a noted professor at the Asian languages and Culture.
Statistics from the US Modern Language Association (MLA) showed among 3,000 universities in the United States, 800 offer Chinese courses.
Huters said many American students chose to learn Chinese for business purpose, as they believed that China has become an important power with fast economic growth.
Enthusiasm for Chinese learning has also swept across Africa, Ma Jianfei said. With the growing China-Africa cooperation on trade and tourism, the demand for Chinese teaching is soaring in Africa. South Africa's biggest TV company broadcasts Chinese teaching programs nationwide.
(Xinhua News Agency July 23, 2005)
