Confucius Sought by Bankers Seeking Gold in China
By Ying Diao - Oct 24, 2011
(Corrects title in 10th paragraph of story originally published July 28.)
Sebastian Powell, a new graduate of Britain’s Nottingham University, spends three evenings a week learning Chinese at the London School of Economics.
He studies business Chinese on Monday and China’s legal system on Wednesday. On Friday night, instead of hanging out at a pub, he sees a Chinese film to “learn more about the culture.”
“China is the future,” says the 25-year-old Powell, who wears a pink shirt and yellow suspenders and starts his training as an accountant with Deloitte LLP in September.
Interest in learning Chinese has surged among U.K. companies and professionals as firms cut costs at home and expand in China. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s largest bank, said in June it will cut 700 employees in the U.K., a month after saying it plans to add 2,000 employees in China and Singapore over the next five years. Burberry Group Plc (BRBY), Britain’s largest luxury retailer, saw store sales in China increase 30 percent in the second quarter, twice as much as elsewhere. The U.K. is China’s second-biggest trading partner in Europe behind Germany, and Prime Minister David Cameron said on June 27 he expects bilateral trade to double to $100 billion by 2015.
Almost 100,000 Britons are learning Chinese, 54 U.K. universities have Chinese courses and seven of them have Chinese majors, according to the Chinese embassy in London. Sixteen percent of British state schools taught Chinese in 2010, up from 4 percent in 2006, according to CILT, the National Centre for Languages in the U.K. The number of independent schools in England teaching Chinese rose to 37 percent in 2010 from 18 percent four years earlier, the center said. The Chinese government had 322 Confucius Institutes, the nation’s language and culture promotion agency, in 96 countries by the end of 2010, including 13 in the U.K.
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