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Middle East’s Mandarin push sets the tone for ‘convergence’ with China on trade
- Language learning is a ‘reciprocal gesture’ to China’s soft power as the region eyes closer ties via the Belt and Road Initiative, one analyst says
- But Arab students are unlikely to find Mandarin as attractive as European languages, given ‘historical perceptions’ and a shortage of native teachers
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Some 17 years after Beijing began to promote the teaching of Mandarin in the Middle East, the language is now making major inroads into the educational systems of the region’s leading powers, in a nod to China’s political and economic standing.
For both the Saudi and Emirati governments, “there is not only a recognition that China is an important global player, but also an implicit understanding that the Chinese market is one to watch closely”, said Clemens Chay, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.
Mandarin language classes “are a reciprocal gesture to China’s deployment of soft power”, he said.
Saudi Arabia, China’s largest trading partner in the Middle East, last month made it compulsory for public and private secondary schools to hold twice-weekly Mandarin classes for one semester each year.
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While Saudi Arabia is the first in the region to make learning the language mandatory, the United Arab Emirates began incorporating Mandarin into its kindergarten-to-secondary school curriculum as an elective subject in 2017.
Since then, more than 150 of the UAE’s state-run secondary schools – with over 50,000 students – have introduced Mandarin classes and the aim is to reach 200 schools by 2030.
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The UAE is home to more than 300,000 Chinese nationals, the biggest diaspora in the region, and it is Beijing’s second-biggest trading partner in the Middle East.
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