The Ministry of Education said that since China launched its reform and 'opening up' some 25 years ago, China has received a total of 870,000 international students.
One-eigth of them came in 2004 alone...from some 178 countries.
China has agreements on mutual recognition of school records with 26 countries.
According to Sina China has assigned language teachers to 62 countries and more than 30 million people were studying Chinese.
Some 87 cities in 35 countries off the Chinese Proficiency Test. Already 330,000 foreigners have taken a stab at it.
The Chinese language is becoming more and more popular, largely due to China's booming economy and the desire for the world to do business with China.
No doubt, at the bottom of the list of countries with the fewest students is the US. I hope I am wrong.
There is an old joke - people who speak two languages are called bilingual, three languages - trilingual, four or more - multilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language?....American.
Americans will catch on sooner or too later...more likely too later.
What do you think?
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