THE CHINESE LANGUAGE has been the mother tongue of tens of millions of people around the world, but never in Hong Kong's history has the language been as important as it is now.
Since Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony in 1997, the city has been warming up to the more frequent use of the language. The government has applied a policy of bilingualism in its education, administrative and legal systems, while communication in Chinese has become the trend in the private sector, where China trade has grown in significance in the global business arena.
But local academics say Hong Kong people, who went through schools where English was the medium of instruction, need to improve their ability to speak and write Chinese, know more about different Chinese cultures and be able to apply the language at a professional level.
At the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), for instance, a new programme, titled Master of Arts in Chinese for Professional Purposes, will take in its first batch of students this September.
The course aims to enable graduates of all disciplines in the public and private sectors to communicate effectively in Chinese.
Believing that there is much room for development in Chinese studies, Ng Sheung-chee, associate professor at the CityU's department of Chinese, translation and linguistics, said: 'For a long time, government departments and the private sector used very little Chinese. It was hard to imagine in those days that the Legislative Council would use Chinese in its proceedings.