Demand to learn Chinese has increased in Russia after the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the country. This was reported to socialbites.ca by the press service of the Chinese Laoshi labor service.
According to the survey, the number of users of the service increased by 75% last month, and a record number of app downloads were recorded during Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow – 4.5 times more than usual.
The service’s founders point to several reasons why Russians are becoming more interested in learning Chinese.
“First, the previously popular European languages have become less relevant for Russia. Due to the events of 2022, economic ties with Europe and student exchanges have become much less. Secondly, Russia is getting closer and closer to China, the flow of trade, various cultural and commercial exchanges are increasing. And the demand for specialists with knowledge of the Chinese language has increased significantly. “It will likely grow rapidly over the next few years,” said Sergey Kondrashov, the founder of Laoshi.
According to the expert, there is also business interest in Chinese-speaking specialists.
“We anticipate a further increase in Chinese interest in Russia, and we expect a 10-fold increase in the number of users in Laoshi by the end of 2023. At the same time, demand will increase for other online Chinese learning services, tutoring services, language schools, and Chinese education and training programs at universities.”
Telegram channel “Attention, Moscow”, which previously referred to MIPT students reportedthat at university, Chinese has become a compulsory subject on a par with English. In turn, in the press service of the university “socialbites.ca” saidUp to 27% of MIPT-related materials are now written in Chinese