BEIJING: Every year, the Bali Mandarin Centre welcomes about 300 Indonesian students to learn Mandarin. Most of these students work in the hospitality and tourism sector — the key industry in Bali — and are keen to learn Mandarin as more Chinese tourists visit the Indonesian resort island.
In fact, some of these students work at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, and they are using their language skills to help arriving and departing Chinese visitors, according to Ye Lu, founder of the Bali Mandarin Centre.
Ye, who hails from East China's Zhejiang province, established the language learning centre in 2009. The entrepreneur, in her 30s, saw business potential after she helped a former classmate develop a Mandarin curriculum for an international school in Bali.
Ye decided to relocate to Bali, and in the succeeding years she used her language skills to teach employees in hotels and duty-free shops, tour guides, police officers and university students.
She is confident that the number of Chinese tourists in Bali and other parts of Indonesia will increase significantly in the future, which will drive local demand for Chinese skills.
Bali Mandarin Centre is just one of the growing number of Indonesian schools and centres offering Mandarin courses in response to booming market demand.
All across the archipelago, students, entrepreneurs and professionals are learning Mandarin, encouraged by potential career and business opportunities brought by Chinese tourists and investors.
For example, China is among the biggest sources of tourists for Indonesia. In 2025, out of a total 15.3 million foreign visitors to Indonesia, Chinese tourist arrivals reached 1.34 million, making China the fourth-largest source of international visitors to Indonesia, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency.
China is also Indonesia's largest trading partner and one of its top investors, with Indonesia participating in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.
In 2023, China and Indonesia signed an agreement on Chinese language education along with seven other agreements on economic and trade cooperation, health, technology transfer and research.
The agreement was the culmination of many years of initiatives in Indonesia since President Abdurrahman Wahid introduced sweeping reforms aimed at ending discriminatory policies against the ethnic Chinese community.
Before Wahid took office in 1999, Suharto ruled Indonesia for more than 30 years. Suharto's New Order era restricted the public display of the Chinese language, culture, Confucianism and education. Suharto resigned in 1998 following widespread unrest.
In 2000, Wahid revoked regulations that had restricted the public expression of Chinese culture, including the celebration of Imlek, which refers to Chinese New Year.
In 2003, following the government's plan to expand Chinese language education into the provinces, Indonesia for the first time sent 51 school teachers to China for a one-month Mandarin training programme in cooperation with the Chinese government.
The number increased to 100 in 2004 and continued to rise in the following years, Fasli Jalal, rector of YARSI University in Jakarta and former vice minister of education and culture, wrote in a 2021 column published by the online news site Kompas.
Jalal said that in 2004, China started sending Mandarin language teachers to Indonesian schools.
In 2007, Indonesia began formally integrating Chinese language learning into its school curriculum from kindergarten to university levels.
Education expansion
Outside academia, Chinese language centres also abound in Indonesia. Apart from Bali and the capital city of Jakarta, these centres can also be found in other parts of Indonesia including the far-flung provinces of Aceh and Papua.
Chinese became an official language of the UN World Tourism Organisation in 2021, and this has spurred the Indonesian government to promote Chinese language education through teacher training and cultural exchanges.
In support of this development, China has sent about 300 Mandarin teachers annually to Indonesia in recent years, including volunteer and professional teachers for schools and higher education institutions.
One of these universities is Esa Unggul University in Jakarta, which has collaborated with China's Nanjing Xiaozhuang University to run a four-year double-degree programme in English and Mandarin education.
Ayu Larasati, head of the cooperation bureau at Esa Unggul, said that under the double-degree programme, the university has worked closely with local industrial companies to improve the Mandarin and English proficiency of potential employees.
Larasati said such cooperation aligns with national education policy, which requires higher education institutions to conduct community service programmes for students in addition to research and development.
Two of Indonesia's most prominent universities — the University of Indonesia and Gadjah Mada University — also offer bachelor's and diploma programmes in Chinese language and literature.
In Bali, Udayana University and Ganesha University of Education offer Chinese language education programmes in cooperation with the Confucius Institute.
Udayana University, Bali's leading public higher education institution, has established the Tourism Confucius Institute and partnered with China's Nanchang University and Xiamen University to teach Mandarin and run student exchange programmes in Bali.
In East Java, the Beijing Institute PARE has gained popularity as one of the best Chinese language learning centres in Indonesia. It offers offline and online learning programmes for elementary and secondary school students, university students and professionals.
The eight-year-old institute has placed its graduates with at least eight companies, mostly mining firms based on the island of Sulawesi, many of which are owned by Chinese investors.
"Some of our laoshi (teachers) come from China, but the majority of our instructors are locals with HSK (qualification) certificates," Aditya Ranggadani, head of the Beijing Institute Pare, told China Daily. HSK, or Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, is the standardised international Mandarin proficiency test for nonnative speakers.
Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi, secretary-general of United Cities and Local Governments in Asia-Pacific, or UCLG ASPAC, said the growing interest in Chinese language learning in Indonesia is "a response to a global reality."
"China is playing an increasingly significant role across various fields, from the economy and trade to technology and innovation," Tjandradewi said.
She said the government's support for Chinese language education in Indonesia is a strategic move that aligns with the needs of today's globally connected world.
Tjandradewi, who speaks basic Mandarin, appreciates the contributions and active involvement of China's cities and provinces in UCLG ASPAC programmes.
UCLG ASPAC works with the Xi'an Municipal People's Government and Xi'an Jiaotong University to provide Mandarin training for government workers across the Asia-Pacific region, including Indonesia. Since 2022, 613 people have participated in the programme, according to UCLG ASPAC.
Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, director of the China-Indonesia Desk at the Centr of Economic and Law Studies, acknowledged the government's support for the development of Mandarin language education in the country but suggested it be more evenly distributed.
"The expansion of Mandarin courses to Papua and other remote provinces is a positive sign of the democratisation of foreign language learning in Indonesia," Rakhmat said. - China Daily/ANN
