Chinese for your career: growing interest and how to start learning
According to research by SuperJob published by Premierpress, Chinese is firmly establishing itself among the most important foreign languages for careers, a trend increasingly visible across different social groups.
Although English still leads, with 60% of respondents naming it the main tool for career advancement compared with 51% a year earlier, Chinese holds a stable second place: 11% of respondents noted its importance. At first glance the gap seems substantial, but the dynamics of interest in Chinese and its distribution across groups point to a deeper trend.
Among Russians with the highest incomes, above 150,000 rubles, the proportion who consider Chinese useful for their careers reaches 23%, more than twice the average. In this group, Chinese is effectively becoming a real competitor to English, reflecting changing economic priorities and China’s growing role in international business ties.
The age distribution is also interesting: whereas the perceived importance of English declines with age, from 67% among respondents under 35 to 53% among those over 45, Chinese shows the opposite trend, rising to 13% in the oldest group. This may indicate that experienced professionals take a more pragmatic view of the prospects for cooperation with China.
Views on languages for children are particularly revealing. While 11% of respondents choose Chinese for their own careers, 30% of parents choose it for the next generation’s future. Interest in Chinese as a long-term educational investment is thus almost three times higher. Mothers are more likely to recommend Chinese (33%), while fathers prefer English (57%).
Another indicator of changing attitudes toward languages generally is the declining proportion of Russians who consider all foreign languages useless, from 22% to 16%. This suggests a growing awareness of the importance of language skills, with Chinese gradually occupying a more significant place.
The perceived difficulty of Chinese is also somewhat exaggerated. The widespread belief that it cannot be learned independently does not reflect reality. In practice, a systematic approach and well-chosen materials make it possible to learn Chinese effectively even without a teacher.
The «About Chinese in Russian» website offers effective methods for learning Chinese independently. The first step is mastering characters using special workbooks, which contain not only stroke-order instructions for basic characters but also information about their readings, radicals, and components. They also link to online dictionary pages with writing animation and audio. Working with these books allows you to learn 365 characters from HSK Level 1 vocabulary, building a solid foundation for further language study.