Russian Universities Largely Introduce Chinese Language Studies
- 28.08.2023, 12:43
China is becoming a Big Brother for the Russian Federation.
The Chinese language will be included in the educational programmes of Russian universities, as it becomes "one of the main" world languages in science, said Andrey Fursenko, Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation for Science and Education.
According to him, 30% of scientific literature is published in Chinese. “Do we want to stay in the [scientific] trend? Let's go on. There will be no compulsion, we will convince, but at the same time we are to move in this direction if we want to be competitive,” Fursenko said.
However, he stressed that Chinese is not the only “scientific” language worth learning. At the same time, “it is necessary to strive” and keep the Russian language “among several languages of science,” the presidential adviser noted.
He also recalled that Chinese was previously introduced as a second compulsory foreign language at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and this caused "wild resistance".
In the spring, the MIPT leadership replaced the study of Spanish, French and German with Chinese for the 2023-2024 academic year. After a large-scale protest of students who were ready to organize riots, pickets and boycotts, it was decided to abandon this "timely and promising" initiative.
Russia’s State Duma also called to make the Chinese language compulsory in schools. Biysultan Khamzaev, a member of the Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, proposed it.
Prior to this, employees of the Bank of Russia were also forced to learn Chinese. So the Central Bank hopes to establish professional interaction between its employees and colleagues from Beijing. The financial regulator plans to teach Chinese to four groups of four to eight students each year. Training of up to 32 people per year with more than 45,000 employees does not look large-scale, but it will have an annual regular character.
At the same time, a poll by the Otkritie Bank on the occasion of Chinese Language Day on April 20 showed that the share of those who consider Chinese the most important foreign language has tripled to 16% over the past two years. It turned out that the regions that are geographically close to China need it more.