Photo: VCG

  

China's Ministry of Education said on Tuesday that it will promote Chinese to become the official or working language in more international organizations and international conventions.

Replying to the proposal to deal with the challenges and risks faced by Chinese international education, the Ministry of Education released what it has done to further promote the spread of Chinese language worldwide.

In total, 27 Chinese universities and enterprises including Peking University voluntarily established the Chinese International Education Foundation in 2020 to professionally improve the operation quality of Confucius Institutions abroad, said the ministry.

Prioritizing setting up Confucius Institutions in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, the foundation has so far dispatched 40,000 teachers and volunteers and has taught 2,200,000 foreign students. Nearly 300 outstanding foreign young scholars have been recruited to study in China, especially on BRI study.

The Ministry of Education set up the Center for Language Education and Cooperation to organize domestic participants including universities, enterprises and social organizations for better cooperation.

The ministry has kept revising and improving standards related to Chinese international education to promote integration with the standards of other languages.

The ministry has also launched "Chinese Plus" online teaching platform, providing online courses covering more than 190 subjects including Chinese language, culture and society. The platform has so far been visited by over 3.8 million people and has over 2 million users.

It is estimated that there are 25 million people in foreign countries around the world learning Chinese. Chinese became the official language in World Tourism Organization in 2021, and there are more than 1,500 Confucius Institutions and Courses in 159 countries. But international teaching of Chinese language faces the challenges including lack of teachers, delay of teaching contents and politicization bias in some Western countries.

Global Times