Education: Importance of Chinese mastery in Singapore amidst China's growing influence within Asia

China's burgeoning economic growth and widening geopolitical influence around the world, in particular the region of Asia has led observers to buy into the idea that business opportunities with Sino, would come with a hefty pricetag - mastery and understanding of the Chinese language and cultural norms. Even Saudi Arabia, a culturally dissimilar nation in the Middle East region, relative to China in Asia, has immediate plans to introduce Chinese language curriculum at all stages of education in schools and universities across the Kingdom (Arab News, 2019). It is largely based on the fundamental belief that Chinese mastery could play a pivotal role in strengthening bilateralism and deepen partnerships between the two nations.

Without a doubt, it is gradually taking over the more dominant and primary role of the English language which is touted as the universal language for research, and commerce. As the bulk of purchasing power shifts towards the Big Brother of Asia, it is only unequivocal that they withhold a significant ratio of influence within the region itself.

Drawing back the context to Asia, the blatant disparity in attitudes towards mastering Chinese can be observed between Singapore and Saudi Arabia. With respect to Singaporean Chinese, it is anomalous to have an observation that the Arabs demonstrated stronger inclination towards learning Chinese as compared to their Singaporean counterparts, who are mostly ethnically Chinese. In some sense, there exists a postulate assumption that Singaporeans can more easily understand and learn Chinese language and its arsenal of social-cultural traditions and heritage. That should translate into a smoother learning curve and hence manifest a greater interest to learn the language well.

Ethnically Chinese Singaporeans in general, have a greater proficiency in English relative to Chinese. Naturally, they will find themselves struggling to strike a balance in being effectively bilingual. More often than not, they are unable to be linguistically adept at Chinese and this has been feared to be an economic loss of opportunity, albeit a peripheral one in the larger scale of things. Firstly, we must understand that it is not simply the mastery of Chinese itself, but rather the reciprocity of cultural exchanges that can be more effectively enabled by the aforementioned language. It is crucial to be adept at conversing in Chinese but it does not definitely rule out the possibility that opportunities can still enabled in other languages apart from Chinese.

This brings me back to my main point that is Chinese mastery is not the single determining factor of economic exchanges, hence there is a less than perceived need for (insert non-chinese) speaking merchant to be Chinese-proficient in order to communicate with their Chinese counterparts.

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(Arab News, 2019) Saudi Arabia plans to introduce Chinese into the curriculum at all education levels

http://www.arabnews.com/node/1456466/saudi-arabia