More than 70 countries have officially incorporated Chinese language teaching into their national education systems, including the UK, Russia, South Africa, Japan, South Korea and Australia, Tian Xuejun, China's vice minister of education, said on Monday.
So far, over 4,000 colleges across the globe have set up Chinese language courses in their curriculum. It's estimated that 25 million people are learning Chinese now and over 200 million have learned Chinese globally, Tian said at the opening ceremony of the International Chinese Language Education Week 2020.
As one of the six official languages of the UN, the demand for learning Chinese language continues to increase in recent years. And the majority of overseas Chinese-language learners are from Southeast Asia, according to Wu Yinghui, a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University.
Wu said more than 30 million Chinese live in Southeast Asia, accounting for about six percent of the region's population, which lays a solid foundation for Chinese-language education in the region. As the cultural and economic ties between China and Southeast Asia deepen further, local people's interest in learning Chinese has also increased.
In the U.S., though the total number of Chinese learners is still far behind those Romance languages, Chinese is gradually gaining more popularity.
Read More at https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-12-16/Over-70-countries-incorporate-Chinese-into-national-education-systems-WgFixEeAMw/index.html
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