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The Blue Book on Oversea’s Chinese Language Education

Huaqiao University and Social Sciences Academic Press recently published the first “Blue Book on Overseas Chinese.” According to People’s Daily Oversea’s Edition, the Blue Book highlighted the development in recent decades of Chinese language and cultural education outside of China, along with the challenges it faces. According to the statistics in the Blue Book, there are currently over 5,000 Chinese language schools and 20,000 Chinese language teachers overseas, including 3,000 Chinese schools in Asian countries alone, and 500 Chinese schools and 68,000 students in the U.S.

The Blue Book highlighted the challenges oversea’s Chinese educational development faces. "There is an imbalance in the allocation of resources; the quality of teaching is inconsistent in different regions; effective coordination can be improved; and communication between foreign Chinese language promotional agencies and education entities is lacking. … The challenges have affected the branding of ‘China’s image’ … and diminished China’s ‘Cultural soft power’" The Blue Book suggested there is a need to increase the efforts and resources devoted to the development of Chinese language education and to the development of a global Chinese language education system.

Zhao Yang, the Deputy Director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council disclosed that China will increase its investment in training oversea’s Chinese language teachers and will support the development of a Chinese language education system. According to the article, currently there is a training class held in Kunming University for Chinese language teachers from Burma. Another will be held in Wuhu City of Anhui Province in December to train teachers from Indonesia.

Source: Xinhua, August 19, 2011
http://news.xinhuanet.com/overseas/2011-08/19/c_121882177.htm