The Development of Chinese in Other Countries

Recently tests for Chinese have been set up in the selected examination for foreign students. William Gaston Caperton III, the president of the College Board, which administers the nationally-recognized SAT and AP tests. He said proudly that since 2004 College Board has developed the project of "courses and tests for college Chinese and Chinese culture (AP Chinese project)." This course causes great interests of U.S. high school students in learning Chinese and more than 2500 schools want to join in this project. College Boar devotes to promote this project in the whole United States. With numbers of ardent emissaries for Sino-American culture communication like Gaston Caperton, Chinese has become the most popular language that has the increasing number of learners. According to the data provided by the United States Institute of Modern Languages, there are nearly 800 out of 3000 colleges and nearly 200 primary and secondary schools in America which have set up Chinese courses. In 2002, the ministers of Sino-America have signed an agreement for cooperative developing the network of Chinese teaching known as "wind" and Chinese is gradually entering American schools by Internet. Similarly, in South Korea, test for Chinese also is a necessary foreign language item in selected examination. Among the Korea middle schools, there are nearly 130,000 students selected Chinese course. In 2003, Chinese gained even more popularity than English and native language in Humanities College of Seoul National University. The enterprises in Korea pay much attention to the Chinese training for the employees and this kind of trend has come to the government institutions. Chinese has become a trump card for employ or promotion.
"Come to learn Chinese, which means that you will have plenty of opportunities and wealth in tens of years," an advertisement in a street of Paris show the French people’s passion for Chinese learning." In a very short period of time, more and more headmasters, parents and students have realized how important role the Chinese plays in the workplace. In Paris, there are more than 30,000 Chinese learners, including 8000 students from 38 colleges and 149 primary and middle schools, the number of which ranks first in the Europe. Up to 2003, people who took the Chinese test have reached more than 53000, ranking third in the world, after the South Korea and Japan," said Joël Bellassen, the Chinese governor of Ministry of Education in Paris.
According to Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, "In Thailand, it is much easier to find a job for those who can speak Chinese, which also cultivates and inspires the passion of the Thai to learn Chinese. At present, Thailand has set up the master degree and doctor degree for Chinese and most of the Thai schools also have Chinese courses. However, there is great demand of Chinese teachers in Thailand. Parts of people also learn Chinese through TV, Internet, magazine and other channels. Proficiency Test of Chinese, held in Thailand also promotes the development of Chinese teaching there." Investigations launched by some authorities also show that Chinese-speakers are really valuable in Russia and the Employers always employ Chinese major students with high salary before they graduate from school, competing with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Therefore, those students majoring in Chinese can easily find a job with favorable income after they graduate from school.

Anndy