Currently, teaching in more than 10,000 elementary and high schools in the residential areas of ethnic groups in China is conducted in two languages at a time, both mandarin Chinese and the language of the given ethnic group, involving 29 different languages of 21 ethnic groups. There are some 3,500 kinds of textbooks in the languages of ethnic groups available in the market. It is said that more than 100 million copies of such books have been sold.
More than 6 million ethnic students in China now enjoy the conveniences of bilingual education, not including 1 million adults in literacy schools in such areas, which are bilingual, too.
Even some colleges offer Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Korean and Kazak courses, for these languages have become a vital part of China's culture and education system.
Bilingual education is one of the best ways to preserve the languages and characters of ethic groups, especially when the culture of Han people is in an overwhelmingly strong position.
Nowadays, Zhuang, Yi and Dai peoples have the courses of their languages in both elementary and high schools. The people of some other ethnic groups, like Miao and Dong, only have elementary courses of their own languages available at present. However, some ethnic groups don't have their own scripts, thus their language can only serve as a supplement to the mandarin Chinese in education.
(Chinanews.cn May 11, 2007)
