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The Mandarin Offensive
Mandarin Chinese is already the most popular first language on the planet, beating out English by 500 million speakers. And it's the second-most-common language on the Internet. Now, just as China requires students to learn English, Beijing wants to make Chinese the must-take language for English speakers - and everyone else. Ma figures there are currently 30 million people around the world learning Chinese as a second language. Hanban aims to increase that to 100 million over the next four years.It's an audacious goal, and the government is backing it by funding - to the tune of nearly $25 million a year - the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. Last year, Hanban sent 1,042 volunteer teachers to France, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Mauritius, Nigeria, Colombia, and 16 other countries. This year, it will top that number. Hanban provides schools, centers, and Confucius Institutes with seed money, textbooks, and game-based learning software. College kids and adults play Great Wall Chinese, while middle school students get a game called Chengo Chinese, which Hanban developed through a partnership with the US Department of Education. Nearly 15,000 American kids in 20 states helped beta-test the game, and it's now used in Mandarin classes offered through the accredited Michigan Virtual High School. Beijing isn't doing anything different from what the British or the Americans or the French have done - sending emissaries abroad to spread its language and culture. It's not the first time the Chinese have pushed their native tongue, either: In the 17th and 18th centuries, imperial China brought several Chinese languages to much of Southeast Asia. But this 21st-century push is more global in scope, as befits an emerging world power. "This is the linguistic equivalent of sending a person to the moon," says Oded Shenkar, a professor at the Ohio State University and author of The Chinese Century. Chinese bureaucrats take their evangelism seriously. The country is "merging into the world," Zhang Xinsheng, China's deputy minister of education, explained to reporters before the first World Chinese Conference last June. The event attracted diplomats and teachers from 65 countries - all there to partake in China's efforts to export Mandarin. "China, as the mother country of the language, shoulders the responsibility of promoting [the language] and helping other nations to learn it better and faster." Chinese authorities also see spreading Chinese as an important part of the country's "peaceful rise," says Elizabeth Economy, the director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York foreign-policy think tank. This was the philosophy articulated in 2003 by China's president, Hu Jintao. China wants to emerge as a global power without threatening global security. "I think the Chinese have been very careful and thoughtful about assuaging the fears of the rest of the world," says Economy. "There's a benign element of the language work: to help educate." Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-04-22 |
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