Teaching Chinese as a second language in China: The cases of South Asians and ethnic Koreans

Participation in every aspect of mainstream society requires knowledge of local language. Non-Chinese ethnic groups in Mainland China and Hong Kong face a challenge of predominant Chinese medium of instruction in order to reach a level of Chinese language proficiency. The research is a comparison of Chinese language studies among ethnic Koreans in Mainland China and South Asians in Hong Kong. The comparative analysis goes through three aspects: sociocultural context factors, policies and practices of Chinese language education. Since education never exists in a social vacuum, we highlight the importance of the interplay between the educational policy, practice and wider political, socioeconomic, cultural, and ideological contexts. It is argued that the Hong Kong government and Chinese government have gone to great lengths to accommodate Chinese language, but there is still room to further inclusive educational policies about the acquisition of Chinese language if a world-class multilingualism/multiculturalism is sought. Copyright © 2008 Equinox Publishing.