Indians to learn to speak Chinese

China and India will work together to promote the teaching of the Chinese language to Indian students.

Authorities from China and India signed an agreement in Beijing on Friday to strengthen cooperation in teaching and training of Mandarin Chinese.

The agreement is between Hanban, the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, and the Central Board of Secondary Education under the Union Government of India.

The agreement will bring 300 Indian secondary school teachers to China to take a half-a-year intensive Mandarin-teaching training course in Chinese universities, including Peking University and Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Xu Lin, head of Hanban, said the office will cover training expenses for the teachers, including flights, tuition and living expenses in China.

She said five Chinese experts will go to India and cooperate with the CBSE to develop a Mandarin curriculum.

There is a growing desire to learn the Chinese language among Indians, as the two nations' increase cooperation in political, economical, cultural and educational fields.

The CBSE has decided to include Chinese in foreign language courses in secondary schools in 2011.

"CBSE already offers 10 foreign languages to students, and Chinese will be the 11th," said S. Jaishankar, the Indian ambassador to China.

"Although there are no formal Chinese courses in Indian secondary schools, the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding will be the foundation to start our cooperation," he said, adding he has great confidence it will be implemented in the near future.

Jaishankar said he believes that learning Chinese will help India's next generation develop an in-depth understanding of all aspects of China.

A plan to work together to develop the teaching of the Chinese language in India, has been discussed many times by the two countries in recent years.

Yuan Guiren, the Chinese Minister of Education, and Kapil Sibal, the Minister of Human Resource Development in India, came to an agreement in 2010 to cooperate on Chinese teaching and learning, with the authorities providing support for teacher exchange, training and textbook development.

In 2011, Indian education delegates visited Hanban to discuss the details of further cooperation. Hanban has offered to help teacher development, including training 300 Chinese teachers for India, and providing 100 scholarships to Indian teachers studying Chinese teaching in China.

Hanban has also promised to help establish teaching plans and evaluation standards, aiming to provide teaching materials and establish a cooperation system between schools from China and India.

Xu from Hanban said India has a comparatively poor base of Chinese learning. There are two Confucius Institutes in India but both suffer from teacher shortages.

Contact the writer at luowangshu@chinadaily.com.cn