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Brown announces export push in China -- for English
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-22 16:55
Exporting the English language and methods of learning could soon become one
of Britain's top foreign currency earners, with China viewed as the key market,
British finance minister Gordon Brown said.
Britain's
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown chats with Chinese middle school
students during his visit to China's capital Beijing February 21, 2005.
Brown said on Monday that orderly capital account liberalisation was the
way forward for modern economies, including China.
[Reuters] | In the past five years, British export earnings through education have almost
doubled to more than 10 billion pounds (US$19 billion) a year, Brown announced
during a visit to China.
This was already about one percent of Britain's entire gross domestic product
(GDP), and four percent of its exports, and the figures were still growing fast,
Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown said.
"On current trends, by 2020, education could amount for more export earnings
(to Britain) than financial services," Brown said in a statement in Beijing.
By 2020, education could contribute more than 50 billion pounds a year to the
country's economy, not far short of two percent of total GDP.
Much of this growth would come through selling perhaps the country's most
lucrative birthright -- the English language -- with China a key market thanks
to its combination of a huge thirst for English and massive numbers of potential
pupils.
Currently, more Chinese students learn English than British ones, while an
estimated 300 million Chinese already speak the langauge, said Brown, who left
Beijing for Shanghai Tuesday.
"In 20 years' time, the number of English speakers in China is likely to
exceed the numbers of speakers of English as a first language in all of the rest
of the world," Brown noted.
This was "a huge opportunity for Britain", said the finance minister,
unveiling a series of measures to help the country cash in on the craze for
speaking its language.
Among these is a plan to "twin" every school and college in England with a
parallel education establishment overseas in the next five years, while teaching
schemes such as websites run by cultural organisation the British Council will
be expanded.
For China, in particular, its students attending British universities will
now be able to stay on and work for a year after completing their courses, Brown
announced.
The deal -- reciprocated for British students in China -- is aimed at helping
British universities beat off stiff competition from US and Australian
establishments in attracting valuable, fee-paying Chinese students.
By 2020, the overseas sales of British educational products such as books and
computer packages could be worth 10 billion pounds a year to the country's
economy, Brown predicted.
His idea is backed up by a British Council study released in December, which
said that by 2015 up to two billion people could be studying English worldwide.
However, that report, based on computer models of future demand to learn the
language, said that by 2050 the boom could be over, given that so many people
would speak it by then.
The chancellor flew into Beijing on Monday for talks with Premier Wen Jiabao,
Finance Minister Jin Renqing and others, centred largely on bilateral trade
issues.
Brown, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the Group of
Eight (G8) industrialised nations' club, also raised the issue of China's policy
of fixing its currency, the yuan, at a pegged rate against the dollar.
He heads to the southern economic powerhouse city of Shenzhen on Wednesday
before flying home from adjoining Hong Kong.
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