“President” of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has said that his grandchildren speak Chinese fluently.
“The little members of my family speak Chinese, they speak it fluently. But that doesn’t mean we should forget our interest in English. English is a great language,” the “head of state” said during an open lesson “Talking about Important” at a school in Kyzyl.
In 2019, the Chinese language was included for the first time in the list of subjects taken in the form of the USE. As reported by Rosobrnadzor, at that time it was studied by more than 17 thousand schoolchildren in 168 schools in 24 regions of Russia. By 2021, their number had increased to 91 thousand.
According to the latest census, 17.6 thousand Russian residents consider Chinese as their native language. 59.2 thousand people speak Chinese, about the same number as Belarusian.
Last summer, Andrei Fursenko, the assistant to Russia’s “president” for science and education, reported that Russian universities will gradually include the study of Chinese in their programs, as this language is becoming one of the main ones in the scientific sphere.
“The volume of technical documentation in Chinese is constantly growing in the world. According to some estimates, in just a couple of years it will exceed the volume of technical documentation in English, which means that a person who works in the technological world needs to understand the relevant documents,” he said.
