The southeastern Asia area includes mainly the ten countries such as Singapore, Philippine, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos. Those who attend to school to study Mandarin in China might be told that this area has the most overseas Chinese. You may know that one of the official languages in Singapore is Chinese. Before the 1950s, the Chinese education was implemented by Chinese government which is similar with that in domestic education.

However, after that, many countries took some measures to limit, reject and even forbid the Chinese language teaching policy so that the Chinese teaching disappeared for a period of time. Nevertheless, after the 1980s, with the rapid development of Chinese economy and the change of the international situation, the countries in southeastern Asia area adjusted the policies on Chinese language education one by one. As a result, the Chinese education in this area began to revive and develop. Some countries even appeared the “Chinese fever” phenomenon.

But the Chinese language education as the first language education in the past gradually became the second language education. When you come to study in China, you may be told that the Chinese languageteaching in Southeast Asia is the coexistence of the first language teaching and the second language teaching but with major of the second language education. Of course, the development of Chinese languageteaching in those countries is also not balanced. The Chinese education in Malaysia has the most complete education system, making it in the status of the first language teaching.

The education of Chinese language in Southeast Asia, generally speaking, is better than that in European countries and Oceanic. But it still has great distance to reach the level of the mother tongue. What’s worse, the condition of Chinese characters in this area is still far from being satisfactory. Some elder generation overseas Chinese are able to communicate by writing letters and even do literary creation as well as the fantastic calligraphy. But the younger generation has weak ability in Chinese characters due to the change of language environment.

There are many reasons cause this problem such as the lack of high quality Chinese language teachers, the insufficiency in teaching materials and teaching methods. But those who study Mandarin online should know that they have better cognitive conditions in Chinese learning because their elder generation is still able to speak Chinese.