Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

"See you next week!" Xia zhou jian!" This tandem conversation happens weekly between my language partner Ginny and me. Ginny is an English native speaker and has been learning Chinese since last year. We meet every Wednesday to practice in half Chinese and half English. This kind of Chinese-English tandem learning is quite common and popular at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

According to data from LSE Language Center, in 2015-16 term, nearly 12 percent of LSE students who are taking certificate courses for Foreign Language in Language Center are learning Putonghua, ranking third after French (28 percent) and Spanish (19 percent).

Their enthusiasm for Chinese is not just personal interest but also a practical view of the future. "I study Chinese because it will become one of the most important languages for careers in the future and I like studying Chinese history and culture," said Jonny, a postgraduate student at the LSE who has studied Chinese for half a year.

More broadly, the demand for Chinese learning is growing in the UK though it is still not so huge in sum. The latest General Certificate of Secondary Education results showed steep declines in the numbers taking French, German and Spanish but some increases in the uptake of Chinese, Portuguese and Arabic. While Mandarin and Cantonese entries rose by 18 percent, that was only an increase of 580 to 3,710 in total. German alone had more than 54,000 entries this year.

Traditionally French, Spanish and German have been the second languages for British pupils. Apart from language entries, the accessibility of Chinese courses is relatively low in most British schools. Last year, only about 2 percent of state-funded primary schools in Britain and 5 percent of state-funded secondary schools offered pupils the opportunity to learn Putonghua as a curriculum subject. But there has been a growing trend in offering Putonghua in classrooms, especially under the strong support of the British government.

As part of efforts to forge closer commercial ties with China, the British government announced in September a 10-million-pound ($15.47 million) funding to train 1,000 new Chinese language teachers in the UK over the next five years, giving additional 5,000 young people the chance to study this important language.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said: "The relationship between UK and China is vital to our growing economy, which is why we want even more young people, from all backgrounds, to have the opportunity to learn Mandarin."

Besides great importance attached by UK senior officials and government, the Chinese government has contributed a lot through the Confucius Institutes. In the UK, there are 25 Confucius Institutes at universities in Manchester, Cardiff, Lampeter, Nottingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh and London, providing a variety of learning materials, training programs, cultural activities and scholarships as Chinese learning access.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has said, "President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK will usher in a 'golden decade' and a new dimension for cooperation." It is obvious that Xi's UK visit will lead to the signing of agreements worth "a huge amount" and initiate "a golden time" in Beijing's relations with London, as the Chinese foreign ministry said last Tuesday.

In terms of Chinese popularization, Xi's UK visit provides a golden opportunity to draw greater attention to Chinese languages and culture in the UK. British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne showed his ambition of making the UK "China's best partner in the West." An increasing number of British people have started to realize that China is now a major economy and going to be a force for a long time, so if you want to understand China and its people, it is necessary to learn Putonghua.

We do not expect an immediate surge in the number of Chinese learners in the UK after Xi's state visit, after all the popularity of one foreign language is usually based on both the practical force of hard power and the long-term attraction of soft power.

What we could ensure is that in "a golden time for China-UK ties" the popularity of Chinese studies will embrace a golden opportunity for advancement and play an important role in deepening the China-UK partnership and the friendship between two peoples.

The author is a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn