Chinese Language Learning and the Arab World: Is There a ‘Mandarin Silk Road’?
Calligraphy in Sini script. Reproduced by the permission of Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang.
Language is a wide-ranging subject. I would like to use this short blog to share my thoughts about why it is important to consider the Chinese language when we talk about 21st century Sino-Arab relations.
For many of us, a project exploring local social and economic development against the backdrop of bilateral/multilateral relations is less likely to be immediately associated with language. But language, in William G. Boltz’s words, “constitutes one of the most durable fibres in the tapestry of human history.”
A foreign language’s place outside of its original country is often beholden to the shifting fortunes of inter-state relations.
For instance, the Sino-Soviet alliance since 1949 brought about a boom in Russian language teaching and learning across China – by 1951, thirty six Chinese universities had established a Chair of Russian language, in addition to seven colleges, and some primary and middle schools also had Russian language in their curriculum.
However, this ‘fever’ for the Russian language cooled in tandem with the ten-year Sino-Soviet split (1956-1966). Russian no longer enjoyed the status of being the most needed foreign language in the PRC’s foreign language education policy. Instead, English increasingly gained prominence. Alongside the PRC’s economic reforms that were implemented from 1978, English supplanted Russian, becoming the most popular foreign language among the Chinese people due to its perceived economic clout.
Chinese in the Arab Middle East
As to the Chinese language, the past fifteen years has witnessed an unprecedented level of interest across the Arab Middle East. More than thirty universities in fifteen Arab countries have now established a chair of Chinese language and culture (most of which are with the support of the Confucius Institute).
Short-term Chinese language courses for people of different ages and professions are available in, for example, Egypt (e.g., China Cultural Centre, the Center for Languages and Translation of Fayoum University), and Qatar (the Translation and Interpreting Institute of Hamad bin Khalifa University). In 2020, Saudi Arabia and UAE both announced that they would incorporate Chinese language courses in some public schools. In addition, according to Wang Shenggang, the minister-counselor of education of the Chinese embassy in Egypt, a MOU was signed in 2020 that will make Chinese an optional second foreign language in Egyptian pre-university schools, with twelve pilot schools offering this by Fall 2022.
What about Arab students in China? The graphs show educational migration from the Arab Middle East to mainland China from 2006 to 2018 for degree and non-degree studies. For each of the 22 countries, the annual number of people heading to China for a BA, MA, or PhD degree has increased consistently. The cases of Yemen and Syria stand out, since the flow from these two countries did not drop, in terms of both size and financial support from China, despite the wars in each country – indeed, in what way can we consider this as a conflict-related form of mobility?
At the regional level, the year 2010 is a threshold—for since then, those at their own expense outnumbered the holders of scholarship money (offered by the Chinese government), and this ratio has continued to grow in the years that followed. Mauritanian students were an exception, as the only country in which scholarship holders constituted the majority all the while to 2018.
There are interesting particularities here that await further investigation. For example, let us have a closer look at the Arabian Peninsula in the year 2012. Bahrain, although the smallest Gulf country by population, had 225 students in China (including 12 with scholarships). This was the third largest group of students in China from the Arabian Peninsula after Saudi Arabia (1,905) and Yemen (1,376). Notably, Bahrain is the only GCC country that has not established a Strategic Partnership with China. In stark contrast, Qatari and Kuwaiti students are much fewer in number (9 and 22 respectively).
As to non-degree training, this consists of three categories: regular training, advanced training, and short-term courses. The total number of Arab students in China annually for non-degree studies sits at around two thirds of those for degree studies. No statistics are available with regards to how many of them were studying the Chinese language. However, an average percentage gives us a sense of the importance of language training – between 2006 to 2018, around 85% of the total number of foreign students chose the Chinese language as the subject of their regular training.
In contrast, of those international students pursuing a degree, the majority were in programmes other than the Chinese language and literature, such as medicine, civil engineering, agriculture, computer science, law, world history, media, and art and design. Of course, the wide choice of the programmes is one of the main pull factors of this migration, as is the fact that the medium of instruction of many programmes is English. The Chinese language preparatory year is now mainly in the service of cultural learning: to equip newly enrolled foreign students with basic linguistic skills for communicative purpose, in addition to introducing to them Chinese culture and history.
Why Chinese?
In assessing the importance of Chinese to the Arab Middle East, we need to move beyond the traditional view that sees language learning simply as an acquisition of linguistic skills related to future career as a translator/interpreter or in some other sectors for Sino-Arab concerns. This focus on ‘skill’ approaches language in the linguistically functionalist sense. But language, as with any other commodity, carries different values. In what way is the valuing of the Chinese language conditioned and defined in the marketplace?
This is not a peripheral concern. The marketplace means much more than a physical locale. It could be transnational, amorphous, networked, and increasingly formed around Sino-Arab relations; or be part of the broader trans-Asian “commercial geographies and economic networks.”[1]
It is noteworthy that the vast majority of the Chinese language programmes and courses offered in the region are the product of, and reaction to, various visions and projects from both the Chinese and Arab sides (e.g., Saudi Vision 2030, the Belt and Road Initiative). The state-level initiatives constitute not only the effective grounds but also the seemingly solid pedagogical and ideological infrastructures for promoting Chinese among locals in the region. In this sense, the Chinese language that we are discussing could be perceived as what I would call “the Silk Road Mandarin,” i.e., the Silk Road has helped form and given rise to the particular ecology of Mandarin in the region.
But here arises a mental challenge: is there a “Mandarin Silk Road”? Behind this question is the recognition of a complex reality. The intense geopolitical, economic, and cultural linkages between China and the region (recognised in various ‘Strategic Partnerships’)[2] seem to bring opportunities to those who want to be involved; but not everyone is provided with equal access to resources, for reasons such as class, gender, ethnicity, and religious belief (Chinese language training is a case in point here). Therefore, there is a Silk Road which takes its shape from below, and Chinese language learning can be seen as the manifestation and expression of the subjectivities that arise from involvement in the Silk Road. The “world of learning,” to borrow Zachary Lockman’s term, is never separated from the world of using.
The emerging marketplace constitutes the backdrop against which Arab educational migration to China takes place. But many questions remain: where and how do the networks/structures of this marketplace and the networks/structures that channel and facilitate the educational migration mingle and even coalesce? What are the conditions and processes through which the Chinese language comes to be seen as a language with value (in the economic sense)? What is that value and for whom? How is ‘linguistic capital’ converted into other types of capitals? And equally important, in what sense might Chinese be in conflictual relation with the economic goals of the marketplace?
‘Migration Diplomacy’
Although educational migration appears to result from processes of globalisation, South-South cultural exchange, economic interdependence, and internationalisation of Chinese higher education, it should not be isolated from broader South-South politics and migration diplomacy.
Historically, migration has featured noticeably in the PRC’s diplomatic agenda. For instance, to help develop new diplomatic relations with African countries during the 1950s Mao era, the PRC dispatched as many as 150,000 personnel, mainly in medicine, agriculture, construction, and education sector, to the continent through aid packages and programmes.[3] And in the Arab Middle East, as the political scientist Gerasimos Tsourapas notes, migration and foreign policy have been intricately intertwined for much of the twentieth century.[4]
By placing 21st Century educational migration under the rubrics of South-South politics and migration diplomacy, I am not suggesting that it is a kind of demographic mobility that is fully dictated by states and political powers. Rather, these two terms invite us to think about the opportunity of studying in China with scholarship money offered by the Chinese government as a resource that the PRC uses to establish, develop, and maintain ‘alqa (relationship) with various Arab actors (e.g., institutions, governmental organs, companies, and elites).
On the other hand, some Arab local actors participate in their own distinct ways as intermediaries of these opportunities. It is in the playing out of the ‘alqa of various kinds that the meanings of the repertoire of the Chinese language-related issues as values are produced, framed, circulated, exchanged, and positioned.
Acknowledgement: Jie would like to thank Asma Ibrahim for her comments on the draft of this blog. She would also like to express gratitude of Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang for his permission to use the picture of his calligraphic work for this blog
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[1] Paul Anderson. 2020. “Not a Silk Road: trading networks between China and the Middle East as a dynamic interaction of competing Eurasian geographies.” Global Networks 20 (4): 708-724. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/glob.12271
[2] China established Strategic Partnerships with Qatar (2014), Sudan (2015), Jordan (2015), Iraq (2015), Morocco (2016), Kuwait (2018), and Oman (2018). Moreover, the Strategic Partnerships with Egypt (1999), Algeria (2006), Saudi (2008), and UAE (2012) were “upgraded” to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships in 2014, 2014, 2016, and 2018 respectively.
[3] Jung Park Yoon. 2009. “Chinese Migration in Africa.” SAIIA Occasional Paper, No 24. http://www.riccimac.org/doc/ccc/9.4/eng/2B.pdf
[4] Gerasimos Tsourapas. 2021. Migration diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa: power, mobility, and the state. Manchester University Press.