Pacific island language teaching is part of China's latest initiative

Beijing, CHINA — China’s push for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Pacific is receiving growing attention. All eight Pacific island countries (PICs) that recognize Beijing, including Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, have signed up to the BRI, an ambitious but controversial program designed to link China with countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and even the Pacific.

Much of the spotlight has been on the impact of the BRI overseas. We take a unique approach by discussing the start of an ambitious PIC language-teaching program in China, and the program’s role in facilitating the rollout of the BRI in those PICs with which China has diplomatic relations. While the teaching has the potential to promote China’s understanding of the region, the sustainability of teaching languages with relatively few speakers is in question.

Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) has been entrusted with the teaching of Pacific languages in China. Approved by China’s Ministry of Education in 2017, BFSU started to advertise new four-year bachelor courses on seven Pacific languages, including Bislama, Cook Islands Māori, Fijian, Niuean, Samoan, Tok Pisin and Tongan. These languages cover all of China’s eight diplomatic partner states in the Pacific. The formal teaching is expected to start soon. Students will enrol at BFSU’s School of English and International Studies with English as the first compulsory foreign language and another major foreign language and one of the aforementioned PIC languages as the second and third elective foreign languages. It will be part of the bachelor course for the English language program.

To attract talent to teach these foreign languages, the university is offering lucrative pay and benefits (such as accommodation and research funding), by China’s standards.

In addition to BFSU, Liaocheng University in China’s Shandong province has started a Samoan course thanks to the interest from its Research Center for Pacific Island Countries in enriching Chinese students’ knowledge of Pacific languages and cultures. It is offered as an elective course. The formal teaching was started in May 2019 by Setope So‘oa‘emalelagi, a lecturer in Samoan language with an extensive background in political science and English as a second language. The opening of the Confucius Institute at the National University of Samoa in December 2018 triggered growing interest in Samoa from the BRI and created an opportunity for Liaocheng University to invite Samoan academics to teach Samoan culture and language from a Samoan perspective.

So far, the course at Liaocheng has had a good start. Chinese students are highly curious of such a ‘novel’ language and far-flung culture, which to them is exotic. The program is in its seventh week and the response has been very positive, despite the students not knowing what to expect at the outset. All students have been tested on their Samoan language speaking and writing levels and the results are remarkably encouraging.

China sees the Pacific region as the southern extension of the BRI. It is expected that the Chinese government will continue to use the BRI to frame China-PIC cooperation in the near future. The teaching of Pacific languages, if it proceeds well, could promote China’s understanding of these island countries’ languages, cultures and other aspects such as politics and economies. It could facilitate the implementation of the BRI in the region, as Beijing expects.

However, the teaching of Pacific languages at Chinese universities is not without challenges. Firstly, it is extremely difficult to find Chinese teachers who are proficient in these languages. In general, China’s academic engagement with the Pacific has remained limited. To remedy the situation, BFSU has started to send staff and students to learn some of these languages overseas such as at the University of Auckland and the University of Hawai‘i, but it will take time for China to have a pool of talent in Pacific languages.