Rising "Chinese heat" Overseas sinologists hope it's "long-term" phenomenon

As an international cultural phenomenon, “Chinese heat” has been rising for the last few years. Overseas sinologists expressed their hope that this “Chinese heat” will be long-term phenomenon and not a short-term act on March 27th in Beijing.

“‘Chinese heat’ is a simple phrase. Foreigners learning Chinese should become a long-term trend, a continuous process.” said Professor Fredrik Fallman from the Department of Chinese of Stockholm University, Sweden at the 2007 World Conference on Sinology.

Professor Claudia Pozzana from the Department of Linguistics and Oriental Studies of University of Bologna, Italian hoped that her students are not studying Chinese just for business but invest their energy in understanding Chinese literature, art and philosophy.

This Sinology conference is the first high standard, world class sinology conference organized by mainland China in more than 50 years. The theme was “dialogue of civilizations and a harmonious world”. “International promotion of Chinese language and cross-cultural communication” is one of the main topics discussed at the conference.

“Chinese economy has achieved incredible development in recent years and China is growing in importance in the world economy.” said Torbjorn Loden, Dean of the Department of Chinese of Stockholm University, Sweden, “With more and more Chinese business people investing in Europe, Europe will deepen its affection towards Chinese culture and language.”

Torbjorn Loden said that when Chinese business people came to Sweden and brought them local working opportunities, local people’s interest in China began to grow steadily. With the establishment of the Confucius Institute, Stockholm has already planned to gradually implement Chinese language classes in all high schools within the city.

Vice Dean of the International Chinese teaching and learning information centre of Beijing Foreign Studies University Huang Hong felt that the media also added fuel to the “Chinese heat. “In recent years, foreign media, especially American media, has made more and more reports on the learning of Chinese language.”

Foreigners are more and more interested in Chinese, but Chinese is a difficult language to learn. Hu Baixi, Dean of the Language Research Institute of Asia International Open University (MACAU) called for the simplification of the learning process and seek new methods to promote the Chinese language.

Currently, Hanban, with other foreign educational institutions, has set up 140 Confucius Institutes (school or class) in 52 countries and regions. According to rough estimates, the demand for Chinese language teachers all over the world is 10,000 annually, but China can only dispatch 2, 000 .