International Chinese language education also a business: report

The International Chinese Education Research Report (2024) is released in Beijing on Friday.

The first of its kind, in the form of the "No 1 blue book of international Chinese education" published by Social Sciences Academic Press (China), the report is compiled by the China Language Industry Research Institute of Capital Normal University, in partnership with iFLYTEK, an intelligent speech and artificial intelligence company headquartered in Hefei, capital of Anhui province.

Based on their research on global Chinese learning platforms and relevant literature of 168 countries and regions over the past three years, the researchers focus on the changes in supply and demand, business models, technology, services and products in the international Chinese learning market in the report.

The report suggests that operators of the Chinese learning platforms and agencies, be they of private or public ownership, should continuously explore the economic and cultural values of the Chinese language in the fast-changing market environment, promote the localization of their business, provide the target customers with tailor-made services in effective channels, and pay more attention to pooling different resources to increase the profit-making capacity of the industry to realize its sustainable development.

Li Yan, chief editor of the report and executive head of the CLIRI, stressed the importance of a paradigm shift of the sector from a primarily cultural cause funded by the state to an industry operating according to the market law.

"The report itself is a result of market-oriented interdisciplinary collaboration between institute and corporation, which incorporates angles of technology, industry, communication, linguistics, cultural studies and teaching methodology," said Li, "That, to some extent, reflects the opportunities and challenges faced by the international Chinese languages teaching and learning realm."

The report mainly consists of three parts the "digital products" in the international Chinese learning market, the "pattern innovation" of the industry, and some in-depth case studies on the Chinese language learning market in Egypt, Russia, Australia and Brazil.