Chinese language getting popular in world

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 ◆ Chinese language getting popular in world

A total of 2,027 universities from 85 countries around the world offer Chinese language courses nowadays, according to sources from the international forum on Chinese language teaching held in Shanghai.

Chinese was considered an increasingly important international language because of China's successful Olympic bidding and last year's entry to the World Trade Organization (WT0), experts said.

About 25 million people all over the world are learning Chinese, statistics from the forum show. Some 60,000 of them have come to China to learn the language better.

Yan Meihua, director of the study group for the Chinese language teaching overseas, which organized the forum, said the group had taken various steps to help improve standards of teaching Chinese in a number of countries.

In the next few years, the study group will be responsible for compiling a series of textbooks on Chinese in other languages such as English, French, German, Russian and Korean.

"We also plan to set up Chinese language teaching centers in some foreign countries to offer more Chinese teaching resources," Yan said. Meanwhile, teaching via the Internet was also on the cards.