Exporting Chinese textbooks presents opportunities, challenges

The exportation of Chinese textbooks overseas faces intertwined opportunities and challenges, a consensus experts reached at a symposium on the practices of exporting Chinese textbooks recently held by the National Institute for Higher Education Teaching Materials, Higher Education Press.

Concurrent with China's rapid development and rising soft power, more Chinese textbooks have appeared on the bookshelves abroad, covering specialized areas from aircraft engineering, traditional Chinese medicine, corporate management, to Chinese language learning.

As an example, teaching and learning materials for Chinese as a foreign language have witnessed a surge in publication and overseas readership in recent years.

According to the 2023 International Chinese Language Teaching Resources Development Report, a total of 21,653 types of Chinese language textbooks have been exported to over 180 countries by the end of last year, an increase of 734 types compared with that of 2022.

However, problems still exist that prevent the Chinese textbooks from reaching a wider audience, including the lack of incentives for publishing Chinese textbooks overseas, insufficient digital resources development, uneven regional distribution of exported textbooks, and a gap between what the textbooks provide and learners' actual needs, experts said.

An expert at the symposium said that Chinese textbooks are more readily embraced by countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative than by Western countries, as the education and technology systems in these developed countries are already quite advanced.

The introduction of higher education textbooks to other nation's educational system depends heavily on the author's or the institution's academic prestige.

Han Zhen, a professor and director of Academic Committee at Beijing Normal University, attributed the obstacles in promoting Chinese textbooks overseas to the cultural differences between China and other countries, saying that the differences have been hindering mutual learning in the educational field.

According to Liang Yu, a professor at Beijing Language and Culture University, the traditional approach to developing textbooks takes a long time, leading to a lack of timeliness and novelty, and the content is usually arranged in a fixed structure, making it less interactive and flexible.

Therefore, Liang stressed the urgent need to "accelerate the digital transformation of international Chinese language teaching textbook resources to meet the diversified needs of different user groups".

To that end, efforts should be made to pool high-quality Chinese textbook resources and promote the integration of print and digital textbook formats.

"We should develop AI products for international Chinese language teaching and harness cutting-edge technologies to empower personalized learning, tailored management and intelligent service to promote smart Chinese language education," Liang said.

Experts have also accentuated the importance of constructing independent knowledge systems in developing Chinese textbook bound for the global arena.

"An independent knowledge system is formed by summarizing our own experiences and practices and building future-oriented knowledge that can navigate the changes of the times," Han Zhen explained.

Wang Yiwei, a professor at Renmin University of China's School of International Studies, said that "A self-reliant knowledge system is conducive to independent development, and eventually contributes to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind."