CHIANG RAI PROVINCE PUSHES CHINESE LANGUAGE PROMOTION

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 CHIANG MAI 000074

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: SCUL PGOV PREL TH CH
SUBJECT: CHIANG RAI PROVINCE PUSHES CHINESE LANGUAGE PROMOTION

REF: CHIANG MAI 18

CHIANG MAI 00000074 001.2 OF 002



1. Summary. As the Thai province closest to China and a
historical center for former Kuomintang forces, Chiang Rai has
long had schools - often unofficial ones - teaching Chinese
language. Building on this heritage, the province is striving
to position itself as a center of Chinese language learning,
with support both from the People's Republic of China (PRC) and
Taiwan. More and more schools and universities in the region
are adding Chinese programs to meet parent and student demand,
although English remains the most popular foreign language.
End summary.


2. With business and family ties to nearby China, Chiang Rai is
actively encouraging Chinese learning and use as part of its
"Provincial Economic Strategic Plan." Business people trading
with China are the biggest promoters behind this development.
According to prominent Chiang Rai businessman Anan Laothammatas,
Chinese traders want to communicate with Thai traders directly,
making Chinese language skills a crucial part of doing business
in the Mekong region.


3. Official promotion, parental aspirations and actual practice
are not in complete accord, however, as Anan admitted that his
own children attend a prestigious Thai school in Bangkok. His
brother, former Mahachon party leader Anek Laothammatas, sends
his children to a tri-lingual Thai, English and Chinese school
in Bangkok but intends them to pursue higher education in the
U.S. Nevertheless, a growing number of schools in northern
Thailand are opening Chinese language classes and scrambling to
recruit scarce Chinese-qualified teachers to meet parental
demand.

KMT villages turn to tourism
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4. Chiang Rai municipality, a sister city of Yunnan's Jinghong,
erected street signs in Chinese as well as Thai and English in
2002; the leaders of the Chamber of Commerce, many from southern
Chinese roots, have learned Mandarin for business purposes.
Areas such as Mae Salong, where Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang
(KMT) communities settled in 1961, are now "tourism villages";
bus loads of tourists from Taiwan come to buy tea and visit the
KMT Martyrs Memorial while Thai tourists enjoy Yunnanese food
and mountain temperatures.


5. The provincial education office is completing a year-long
effort to develop Chinese language text books for schools in
Chiang Rai. The local office receives no support from the Thai
Ministry of Education (MOE),which, despite official
pronouncements promoting Chinese language learning, is just
starting to develop curricular materials. Until the end of the
communist insurgency in the early 1980s, the MOE monitored
schools teaching Chinese because of national security concerns.
Today the same ministry is promoting Chinese as the second most
important foreign language for Thai students.


6. Both Taiwan and the PRC assist schools and curriculum in the
province. Schools in the Mae Sai, Mae Fah Luang, Mae Chan, and
Chiang Saen areas with traditional KMT connections receive
support from Taiwan while higher educational institutes such as
Mae Fah Luang University (MFLU) and Chiang Rai Rajabhat
University look to the PRC for assistance and partnership. MFLU
received US $1.5 million from the PRC several years ago to build
the Sirindhorn Chinese Language and Cultural Center on campus.

Using Confucius to market Chinese language and culture
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7. Chinese Consul Jin Yilin told the Consul General that MFLU
recently signed an agreement with Xiamen University to establish
a Confucius Institute, one of approximately 50 worldwide and an
expected three in Thailand promoting Chinese language and
culture. She predicted that the MFLU institute will open
before another Confucius Institute planned at Chiang Mai
University with Yunnan Normal University because "we gave MFLU a
lot of money when I was Thai desk officer."


8. The growing popularity of Chinese language has led to MOE
efforts to increase funding and exert greater control, although
the shortage of qualified teachers remains an obstacle. The
Thai government is particularly interested in remote schools
located in former KMT villages that were long neglected by Thai
authorities and still use textbooks and teachers from Taiwan.
In an effort to standardize the curriculum, the Ministry is now

CHIANG MAI 00000074 002.2 OF 002


developing 12 Chinese language texts in cooperation with Yunnan
Normal University.


9. Although support from the PRC usually takes the form of
university-to-university agreements, the two governments are
also co-funding a program to send Thai teachers for refresher
training in China. However, a Chinese offer to increase the
number of training slots to1,000 per year has highlighted the
human resource shortage, as the MOE worries where it will find
this many Thai teachers of Chinese.


10. Comment. Chiang Rai has proclaimed itself a gateway to
the Greater Mekong Subregion and made Chinese language teaching
a priority for local schools. Unregistered schools once
considered illegal are now being asked to prepare textbooks for
teaching Chinese, giving the program in Thailand's northernmost
province a reason to flaunt the Chinese connections that once
made the province suspect on national security grounds. Despite
this local boosterism, however, a lack of qualified teachers and
the still-greater appeal of English suggest Chinese will remain
the second most popular foreign language in the foreseeable
future.
CAMP