How many people in the world are learning Chinese?

I saw a lot of online reports saying

“There has been an explosive increase in the number of American primary and secondary school students studying Chinese in schools in recent years.”

“British parents consider that Chinese is the most important language besides Indo-European language.”

“In two years Chinese will be included in the national unified examination for the first time in Russia”.……

It seems that learning Chinese is becoming more and more important in the world.

According to a rough estimation by Hanban, the number of people learning and using Chinese in the world has exceeded 100 million, except for China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan).

In September 2016, the British government announced the formal launch of the Chinese Language Teaching Program (MEP) to support Chinese language teaching in English secondary schools. It plans to invest 10 million pounds in training at least 5,000 young people who can communicate in Chinese by the end of 2020.

More than 5,200 primary and secondary schools offer Chinese classes. The number of Chinese learners in the UK will reach 400,000 by 2020.

According to a survey of more than 1,000 parents of minors, among languages other than Indo-European, British parents most want their children to learn Chinese; more than half believe that learning Chinese will help their children's future career, broaden their children's horizons and reach out to China's diverse cultures.

Let’s look at other countries;

The number of Spanish learners of Chinese has exceeded 40,000, and the number of people taking the Chinese proficiency test has remained the first in Europe for many years.

There are more than 150 universities and 700 primary and secondary schools in France offering Chinese courses, and more and more primary and secondary students have the opportunity to come into contact with Chinese from an early age.

There are more than 30,000 registered Chinese language students in Italy, and more than 40 universities offer Chinese courses and majors.  Among the 50 million people in South Korea, more than 10.6 million people are learning Chinese and Chinese characters, ranking first in the world;

More than 60 countries around the world have incorporated Chinese language teaching into the national education system by issuing decrees. There are more than 170 countries offer Chinese language courses or majors. Chinese language teaching in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia, Australia, New Zealand and other countries has risen from a third foreign language to a second foreign language.

More and more people in the world have realized that mastering Chinese means keeping up with the times and it is a skill that is very beneficial for the future.