Xu Lin: Chinese Language Quickly Going Global is a Great Phenomenon -- A Special Interview with Chinese State Council Consultant and Director General of Hanban

[Introduction] Xu Lin, Chinese State Council Consultant, Director-General of the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban) and General Director of the Confucius Institutes Headquarters. Xu Lin has also served as Deputy Director of the Finance Department of the Ministry of Education, Head of the Loans Office for Foreign Capital and Educational Counselor for the Chinese Consulate General in Vancouver, Canada. She has committed herself to international cooperation and educational exchange and has long been engaged in promoting Chinese language all over the world.

Guangming Net: Hello, everybody! In recent years, with global developments as well as changes in China's national conditions, “Chinese Culture Going Global” has become a major means by which China’s soft power has been enhanced. How to go global? What does it mean to go global? Issues such as these have attracted attention from those of all works of life. Hanban has been devoted to providing Chinese teaching resources and services to various countries and has made great contributions in the promotion of Chinese language and culture. What measures has Hanban taken and what results has it achieved? What are the challenges and problems still facing it?

Today, I’m very glad to invite Ms. Xu Lin, Chinese State Council Consultant and Director-General of Hanban, to communicate with our friends online. Welcome, Director Xu!

Xu Lin: Hello, everybody!

Chinese Fever Brings a Great Challenge to Hanban

Guangming Net: Everyone knows that there is a fever for Chinese all over the world. What challenges do you think this phenomenon will bring about for Hanban?

Xu Lin: The greatest challenge is the increased demands from abroad; even if we worked for 24 hours a day we would not meet these demands. We only have about 150 employees and 70% of them belong to the post-80s generation. They are all diligent and hard-working, they never complain about working overtime. Usually people in the East and the West are working at different times as a result of time differences. In our case, we have to work at both day and night since we have Confucius Institutes in both the Eastern and the Western hemispheres. For example, there is 12 hours' time difference between China and Chile, so it has to be arranged that some of our employees are able to do night duty. Even having taken these measures into account, the need for Chinese learning abroad cannot be satisfied fully. A lack of Chinese teachers is the main cause of the problem. Teaching materials are also in short supply because some countries have restrictions on importing textbooks for ideological reasons amongst others. In over 20 countries Chinese language is enjoying increasing popularity but they lack teaching materials. As a result we have to send Chinese teachers there. They can take only a limited number of textbooks and the students have to use copies. Sometimes teachers have to compile textbooks all by themselves. Now, we have more than 7,000 teachers and volunteers all over the world. They encounter various problems (psychological and work related problems) and appeal to us for help. Worse still, some non-English speaking countries are in urgent need of teachers able to teach Chinese and speak local languages. People meeting these requirements are scarce, so we have to organize related training. But sometimes we have difficulty in finding lecturers. Turkish is one such example. Therefore, the biggest problem is that we cannot meet demand for Chinese learning abroad.