The hype surrounding Kevin Rudd’s address in Mandarin at a lunch in honour of President Hu Jintao during APEC shows us up as a largely monolingual, somewhat ethnocentric society. Where many of us and our politicians travel the world expecting everyone to speak English and getting frustrated when they don’t, the reality is that while many world leaders speak more than one language, we have never before had a political leader who could. And when he did – he got a heap of criticism: “show off”, “embarrassed our leader”, “inappropriate”, “sucked up” … – all wrong! It was polite and good etiquette to speak to President Hu in Chinese. For such an important relationship the benefits were self-evident as the President’s face lit up and the other Chinese present at the lunch were clearly delighted. The airwaves and newspaper columns focused on this above all else discussed on that APEC day: “absolutely showed his knowledge … his understanding of China … he is really turned towards Asia” (Melbourne’s Herald Sun).
China is now a massive influence on Australia’s economy and society. This year it has surpassed Japan and the United States as our largest trading partner and a huge source of investment in our resources sector. Chinese students are the largest group of fee paying overseas students and Chinese tourists are arriving in ever faster numbers. And a quick glance at immigration statistics reveals that China is also a growing supplier of desperately needed skilled migrants.
Australia’s future engagement with China needs deep language and cultural skills to complement our expanding economic, political and social ties. With China – and Asia generally – more important than ever to Australia, Kevin Rudd aside, it is worth looking at the state of Australia’s stock of Chinese language skills.
A language snapshot – recent Census
According to the latest national Census figures, the number of Chinese- speaking (Mandarin and Cantonese) Australians is growing. Along with Italian, Arabic and Greek they are among the five leading languages spoken at home by Australians – after English. If we designate ‘Chinese’ only without stipulating which Chinese Language, then Chinese becomes the second most spoken language in Australia, as it was in the last Census, and the gap is widening. We would expect at the next Census that people reporting Mandarin as their language spoken at home will exceed Cantonese. Mandarin has grown at the fastest rate of any language in the last 10 years (138%).
In 2006 the number of Australians speaking Mandarin at home was 220,601 (1.1%) – up from 139,286 (0.7%) in 2001. In 2006 the number of Australians speaking Cantonese at home was 244,553 (1.2%) – a slight increase from 225,301 in 2001.
According to the Census the extra Mandarin language speakers are concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, where the majority of migrant arrivals find jobs or set up businesses. As these new arrivals and their children join the Australian workforce, the national pool of Chinese language skills should increase. But how evenly these new language and cultural skills will diffuse throughout education, government, the arts, media and the wider business community remains to be seen.
How many Australian born students, professionals and business people are learning Mandarin or other Chinese languages? Here it appears that Australia’s Chinese language capacity is not looking quite so positive.
In the Asian Studies Association of Australia submission to the Federal Government Budget 2006-7, it argues Australia’s capacity to learn and teach about China is “somewhat weaker” than ten years ago. The submission also said while overall enrolments in Chinese language courses are “satisfactory”, a significant number of these enrolments are overseas students (mainly from China and Japan), who often leave Australia at the end of their courses.
At a macro level, the numbers of Australians studying Asian languages or Asian Studies is shrinking.
According to a 2007 report by the Group of Eight (a group of Australia’s leading universities), less than 3% of Australian university students study an Asian language – and no Australian university offers Cantonese. Overall the report found a major decline in foreign language study. In the 1960s 40% of Australian secondary students studied a foreign language; by 2007 the number has dropped to under 6%. In the last decade the number of languages offered at Australian universities has fallen from 66 to 29.
As is reported in the article The War for Talent, language skills are a critical factor for many employers in China; our inability in Australia to produce graduates with skills in other languages will likely impact on our competitiveness in the region as time goes on. Kevin Rudd ably demonstrated what a positive impact speaking the other’s language makes.
To do business in China or other non-English speaking regions, the chances of success are augmented when you make the effort to communicate (spoken and written) in the other’s language, for example by providing capable interpreters for meetings and conferences, and having written communications professionally translated. This will not only ensure that understanding is gained and misunderstandings avoided, but also demonstrate concern for and care about your counterparts and will assist in winning friends and deals too.
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