China has launched a platform for Chinese students to learn the basics, including basic Chinese, in the country’s first major effort to help them pass on their language skills.
The country’s education ministry said on Wednesday that it had started a pilot program in 20 universities to provide Mandarin-language learning to students who had been studying abroad.
Students who sign up for the Mandarin learning platform, which is part of China’s National Education Union, can study Mandarin in their home countries, or have the course taken abroad.
The platform will offer basic Mandarin lessons in Mandarin as well as other languages, such as Russian and Portuguese.
“It’s not just for students from China, but also for all China,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Chinese people have long learned Mandarin from the time they were babies and still use the language in daily life.”
The platform is a collaboration between the National Education Association and China Youth Science and Technology Education Union.
It will launch in the first quarter of 2018.
Teaching students in China can be an arduous process.
Students have to register and pay fees for a basic course.
China has struggled to establish standards for the language, and a lack of teachers is a major barrier to widespread adoption of the language.
There are roughly 4 million Chinese learners in the world, according to a 2015 report by the Beijing-based think tank Sinopec, and the average student has to take two classes a year to get a certificate in Mandarin.
China has had no formal foreign language education for some time, but it has been trying to make up for that by launching a network of state-funded English-language schools, which have faced widespread criticism.
One of the biggest obstacles for foreign language learners is language barriers.
Chinese students who choose to study abroad often struggle to speak English.
Many of them have been able to gain access to Chinese-language content on YouTube and other platforms, but they face problems understanding and expressing their language.
