With a map of China on the wall behind him, 14-year-old Yasser al-Shaalan studied the names of professions in a Chinese textbook, one of thousands of Saudi Arabian children now learning the language at school.
Mandarin’s entry into public schools is the latest sign of growing ties between Saudi Arabia and China, as the oil-rich Gulf kingdom pushes to diversify its economy and strategic alliances.
“The pupils at the other schools are proficient in English. I know Arabic, English and Chinese, which is a great asset for my future,” al-Shaalan said.
Photo: AFP
Saudi Arabia in August last year introduced China’s official language as a compulsory second foreign language after English in six of its 13 administrative regions’ schools.
Al-Shaalan and his classmates have three Mandarin lessons a week, taught by their teacher Ma Shuaib, a Chinese national and Muslim who is fluent in Arabic.
In their classroom in northern Riyadh, close to the Saudi Arabian headquarters of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, al-Shaalan and his classmates learn Chinese characters shown on an electronic whiteboard.
“At first it was difficult, but now it has become easy and fun,” the teenager said.
Mandarin is one of the world’s most widely spoken languages, and the overwhelming majority of its speakers live in China.
After a visit to China in 2019, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman announced a plan to introduce Chinese throughout the education system.
Since then, several Saudi Arabian universities have opened programs in Chinese. In 2023, Prince Sultan University in Riyadh inaugurated the kingdom’s first branch of the Confucius Institute.
Following China’s emergence as a major economic power, Mandarin teaching has become increasingly popular worldwide, including in Europe.
However, in 2022 Germany warned the Confucius Institute language centers were being “used by the [Chinese] Communist Party for political ends.”
Dozens have closed in the US, Sweden, France, Australia and Canada over the past few years, following similar accusations.
In Saudi Arabia, no such fears have been expressed.
In Riyadh, Ma said that while “Chinese is one of the most difficult languages,” he uses “modern methods” to make it easier.
“I use a digital board, gestures and interactive games to motivate the students,” he said.
While learning Chinese is compulsory, marks for the course do not count toward the students’ overall grades.
“At the beginning, we focus on listening, speaking and reading, then we move on to writing,” added Ma, who teaches five classes a week at the Yazeed bin Abi Othman School.
“Chinese is the language of the future for economic communication. The world depends on China for many industries,” school director Sattam al-Otaibi said.
Thousands of Chinese people work in Saudi Arabia, particularly in Riyadh, where the airport now displays trilingual signs in Arabic, English and Chinese.
Saudi Arabia is a long-standing partner of the US, but has also strengthened its relations with China and Russia.
The Middle East’s largest economy is the world’s leading exporter of crude oil, with China taking about one-quarter of its shipments.
That has helped China become Saudi Arabia’s leading trade partner, with two-way trade exceeding US$100 billion in 2023, official figures showed.
Ties with Beijing have flourished during Prince Mohammad’s “Vision 2030” project to diversify his country’s oil-dominated economy and improve its image abroad.
At the same time, US-Saudi Arabia relations have fluctuated over the past few years. Former US president Joe Biden once pledged to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” over the 2018 murder of dissident Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, before later changing course.
A geopolitical rival to the US, China has worked to strengthen its influence in the Middle East. In 2023, it brokered a stunning rapprochement between heavyweight rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran after years of no ties between them.
“For Saudi Arabia, the relationship with China has become one of the most important,” said Umer Karim, an expert on Saudi Arabian foreign policy at the University of Birmingham.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has twice visited Riyadh, participating in Gulf-China and Arab-China summits attended by regional leaders.
Riyadh also hosted a Sino-Arab Investment Forum in 2023, where more than US$10 billion of investment agreements were signed with Chinese companies.
As economic exchanges step up, hundreds of Chinese teachers have already arrived in Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh plans to send Saudi Arabian teachers to learn Mandarin in China.
“The move to teach kids Chinese is again in line with the changing global order dynamics where China has emerged as the global economic powerhouse,” Karim said.
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