It's cool to speak Mandarin in Sudan

It's cool to speak Mandarin in Sudan

Students taking up the language because it is a ticket to good jobs

SAY IT IN CHINESE: A student from the Nairobi Confucius Institute displaying her calligraphy during a language competition in the Kenyan capital on Wednesday. -- XINHUA KHARTOUM (SUDAN) - PRODUCTS, companies and restaurants from China have flooded into Sudan in recent years, and now the Chinese language has become the latest import. During a recent language competition, Khartoum University sounded like a province in China. First, the students had to compete to see who was the most proficient in Chinese. Then, they had to prove they could sing in Mandarin, with many of them ending up sounding atrocious. More than one billion people around the world speak the Chinese language as their native tongue. With China's economy rising fast, the country's government believes that 100 million foreigners will soon be speaking their language. Among them will be Miss Ayat, a student in Khartoum. 'China is now a big country economically. There are lots of Chinese companies in Sudan, so there is a big choice for us to work for the Chinese as translators,' she said, describing Chinese as a 'beautiful language'. Khartoum University professor Tong Xiaofeng said that most of the Sudanese students in his class were motivated by money. 'Chinese is mostly welcome because nearly 100 per cent of the students who graduate from the department get jobs with Chinese companies,' he said, specifically in the oil industry, telecommunications and as travel agents. China's oil interests in Sudan, already substantial, continue to grow. Sudan sells about 60 per cent of its oil to China, while Sudanese imports currently make up 5 per cent of China's oil. The China National Petroleum Corp owns 40 per cent of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co, the main player in Sudan. In addition, another Chinese company is constructing a 1,500km pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the Chinese are also building a tanker terminal. Elsewhere in Africa, the Chinese language is also getting increasingly popular as China's economic presence and clout grows. According to the Office of the Chinese Language Council International, there are currently six Confucius Institutes and 20 Chinese teaching posts in 11 African countries. Mr Gao Lianshan, a teacher who worked at Kenya's Egerton University, told China's People's Daily paper that the craze has also hit Kenya. He said more and more Kenyans believe that by learning Chinese, they will have a more promising future. The Chinese government is all for using language as a way of spreading its influence around the world. By next year, an estimated 120,000 students will travel from abroad to go to universities in China, up from 8,000 less than a decade ago. China will also provide scholarships for good students to study at its universities. Mr Halid Sulema is one of the students eyeing a scholarship. 'When I graduate, I want to go to China and do my master's there,' he said. 'I hope to get a good job with a Chinese company in the end.' BBC News Post your comments online at www.straitstimes.com LANGUAGE OF MONEY 'China is now a big country economically. There are lots of Chinese companies in Sudan, so there is a big choice for us to work for the Chinese as translators.' MISS AYAT, a student in Khartoum