By Zou Hanru
"By 2025, the number of English-speaking Chinese is likely to
exceed the number of native English speakers in the rest of the
world." This is what visiting UK finance minister Gordon Brown said
last year.
Well, as Brown said, the Chinese are doing the heavy lifting and
learning English. And rightly so, because language, it seems, is
going to play a vital role in the future world.
?
But, unlike what Brown feared, the rest of the world is not content
with lightweight lifting, even though gen tianshu yiyang is no
longer considered that ethereal by the Chinese. The French saying,
"C'est du chinois" literally "it's Chinese," but meaning "it's
unintelligible" is a thing of the past for the rest of the
world.
And of late, joining the increasing ranks of this "intelligible"
brigade are the Indians. Indian students and professionals, even
though late, have awakened to the needs of the "language."
The reason for that is there for the world to see: China could
surpass the United States as India's largest trading partner.
Bilateral trade between the two Asian giants has been growing at a
healthy 35-40 percent much ahead of the targets. It is projected to
reach US$20 billion by next year, one year before the target of
2008.
China Bhavan (Palace) in Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's
university at Santiniketan in eastern India used to be the
best-known place to learn putonghua (standard Chinese) in India. No
more!
Now, one can just walk into an institute in any major Indian
city and enrol as putonghua student. In the Indian capital of New
Delhi alone, 60 percent of such "students" are working
professionals from the software and tourism industries.
Earlier, only Indian universities, more than 95 percent of which
are run by the central and provincial governments, could afford to
have link-ups with their counterparts in China to get native
teachers. But today even private institutes are doing so,
indicating the huge demand for putonghua in that country.
India's premier seat of learning, Jawaharlal Nehru University in
New Delhi, has been offering graduate and masters programs in
Chinese language for more than 30 years. In fact, it is in talks
with the Chinese Ministry of Education to set up a "Confucius
Institute."
As if that was not surprising enough, a management institute in
South India has made Chinese compulsory for students in its
one-year postgraduate program.
All this makes perfect sense.
More and more jobs are being created for teachers and
translators in the IT, pharmaceutical and chemical industries and
in scientific research projects in China. And Indians, with their
advanced knowledge in software and relatively strong experience in
many other fields, are ready to take whatever China has to offer.
All this should naturally make us feel proud!
?
But it should set us thinking too. India's economic growth is
second only to China's. India enjoys advantages in areas that we
are still trying to catch up with and vice versa. This seems to be
the right time to have more exchanges between the two neighbors to
learn from each other.
To be fair, we do enjoy a lot of advantages over other
developing countries. But that shouldn't stop us from a reciprocal
exchange of ideas and know-how.
If the elephant wants to shake hands with the dragon, let's
extend our right hand. If the Indians are eager to learn Chinese,
let us help them do so.
But also let's start learning more about India in return, for
that's the only way to form a bond for the future.
(China Daily September 15, 2006)
