Quote from LeeD:
In the far east in Russia Chinese is now the foreign language of choice in schools.
I'm glad someone called bullshit. When I called Chinese "the foreign language of choice" I was somewhat mislead by sensationalist wording in news articles I linked above.Quote from SnakeEYE:
What kind of bullshit is that???
From the data I have it appears that somewhere between 15% and 20% of choolchildren in Vladivostok (Russian city about 100 kilometers from Chinese border) study Chinese (this includes children of Chinese immigrants).
,been to Vladic,Khabarovsk etc.. nowhere near the figures you mentioned.It maybe somewhat true for the cities, but only for so caled "biased" schools,schools that specialize in a particular subject e.g. tech biased,math biased etc
The only case you`ll need it if you intend to live there.