The CPD Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
The cover story in Time's Asian edition highlights an important part of China's public diplomacy that is not yet well understood in the West -- promoting Chinese language studies.
After an initial rocky start trying to promote Chinese language studies in the late 1990s, the Chinese government, including its ministry of education, seems to have realized the need to divorce language studies from explicit government support. Hence the name of the Chinese language programs -- Confucius Institutes -- betrays no links to China's own political system or modern history; in actuality, Mao tried to disown Confucius' legacy. Hence, also, although the Chinese government has paid for at least the first year of a number of these language programs overseas, it does not highlight the government support, and generally allows local universities to take the lead.
The language studies promotion has been working well -- particularly in the less developed nations on China's borders, where Chinese language schools tend to be better-equipped than the local public schools. In Cambodia, for example, I found on a recent trip that one Chinese-language school has over 10,000 students, and the capital is proliferating with Chinese-language schools, some of which get at least initial funding from the Chinese government.
bonnie on November 22, 2006 @ 7:28 pm Date: 23 Nov. 2006
Dear Sir or Madam:
Re: Seek Cooperation with Your Training Centre for Teaching Chinese Language
With an apology for intruding you, we would like to take this opportunity to explore a possibility to cooperate with your training centre and work closely with you to promote our Online Chinese Courses if this is of your any interest.
We are in the process of expanding our business, and planning to establish a world leading Chinese learning platform to assist foreign language schools in conducting Chinese language course.
Our Advantage
Veteran Chinese lecturers from our local famous university
Exquisite designed syllabus
Personalized learning style
Our supporter
Jin Nan University
University of international business and economics
Why We Proposed To Establish An Online Chinese Learning Platform?
By China’s tremendous economic growth, interest in learning Chinese is steadily growing among the world; a lot of countries are struggling to increase the capacity to meet this increasing demand of teaching Chinese Language.
To provide Chinese language Program is not an easy task, there are two main issues that must be well accomplished.
1) A sufficient supply of qualified Chinese language teachers
2) Develop appropriate syllabus, curriculum, materials, and assessments
Based on our recent survey, the shortage of qualified Chinese language teachers is the major roadblock to building efficient pipelines for Chinese language programs in the overseas, and materials development is also a time and cost consuming job.
To solve the above problem and expand our business, we would like to take this opportunity to explore a possibility to cooperate with your training centre and jointly offer Chinese Language through our technology and joint efforts.
Please contact me at the address below with a time that is suitable for you if this is of any interest.
Bonnie
International Education Coordinator
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Website: http://www.publicchinese.com
Tel: 86-20-87509960-808
Fax: 86-20-38492881
Gina W on November 19, 2008 @ 3:29 am Definitely Chinese language should be promoted...It is a nice post.
http://www.chinesesphere.com on November 19, 2008 @ 3:30 am Definitely Chinese language should be promoted...It is a nice post. http://www.chinesesphere.com
