When I was growing up in India, learning French or German was not difficult as long as you lived in a biggish city and cost next to nothing.

Alliance Francaise? Oui. You could learn the language, watch arty (sometimes risque) movies and, in short, become a Francophone.

Goethe Institut? Ja. Same as above.

As for the more-popular British Council or USIS libraries and cultural centres, they were a veritable treasure trove in an era when television channels seemed to cater only to farmers and public libraries seemed to have everything you didn't want to read.

Chinese? Bu.

Admittedly, Chinese was not as hot then. My only interaction with the Middle Kingdom was courtesy Enter the Dragon and The Monks of Shaolin as well as the ubiquitous Indian version of "Chinese" food.

It wasn't much different in the West, too. Bruce Lee, Chinatowns and takeaways were pretty much it.

How things have changed. There are now a staggering 30 million non-native speakers learning Chinese around the world that's more than the population of Australia and New Zealand combined and about 60,000 full-time foreigners learning the language in China.

At many universities abroad, Chinese has become the second or third most sought after foreign language. More than 90,000 took the Chinese Proficiency Test last year, the equivalent of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), compared with a few thousand only a decade ago.

Why, more than half of my foreign colleagues in China Daily seem well on their way to becoming scholars.

The obvious reason for this huge and increasing interest is, of course, that the nation is an economic powerhouse playing a major role on the global stage.

But it is more than simple economics: Chinese art (like record-breaking prices fetched at this year's global auctions for contemporary works), movies, food and literature are driving this engine.

My nephew's interest in things Chinese was piqued (apart from visits to Singapore and Hong Kong) by the wildly popular videogame, The Legend of the Three Kingdoms. He wanted to study Chinese as a second language but his school in Dallas, Texas, did not offer the course so he had to settle for French.

So how can China cater to this thirst?

There has been a good start. The country has opened its universities to an increasing number of foreigners.

Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese learning and culture, have been set up abroad, mostly in collaboration with foreign universities.

At the first World Chinese Conference in July, organized by the China National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, it was announced that up to 100 such centres would be set up around the world with the help of government funding.

That, surely, would be a strain on State coffers at a time when Beijing is focused on providing free and compulsory education to rural and poor children.

So an injection of CSR (or corporate social responsibility, much in vogue now) would help as Chinese firms go global, they could pitch in.

Why not a Haier Institute? Or Lenovo Learning? Or TCL Talk?

That would do no harm to building their brands. Or Brand China.

Email: ravi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/17/2005 page4)