Thirty million foreigners eager to learn Chinese language

Chinese has become the language whose number of learners grows the fastest in the world.

The following is information from a seminar entitled “Teaching of Chinese Language to Non-native speakers in the 21st Century—communication both at home and abroad” that Dong Hongliang attended. With the rise of China’s international status, more and more countries are becoming eager to learn the Chinese language, understand Chinese culture, and  with the increasing need to communicate with Chinese people, an increasing number of people are joining the “Chinese Learning Rush”. The number of foreign learners has reached 30 million. Furthermore, over 23, 00 universities from 100 different countries have started offering Chinese language courses. Chinese language has also become one of the most popular subjects for primary and secondary school students in the US, Britain, Japan and Korea. More than 370,000 people have taken the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi(HSK) at nearly 200 locations throughout China and the world.

Chinese is currently the fastest growing foreign language in the world and it is also considered the second most popular language in the world. The State Department has approved the five-year plan of “Chinese Bridge” put forward by The Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), which aims at popularizing the Chinese language throughout the world. There are more than 330 high education institutes in China set up to teach Chinese as a foreign language and more than 500 high schools in the US have started offering Chinese courses. In addition, China and the US have begun cooperating on projects such as the “US-China E-language Learning System” and “Great Wall Chinese”. An international Chinese Conference entitled “The Chinese Language and Teaching Set in the Background of Globalization” will be held in Beijing next year.

The conference was organized by Hanban, with the joint effort of Harvard University, Columbia University, Beijing Language University and Nankai University.