(LI SHIGONG)

From August this year, civil servants under the age of 50 in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, have been told to attend training in five foreign languages, as well as common spoken Chinese and computer skills. The foreign language courses were the most noticeable part of the training program. The aim is that by the end of 2010, all civil servants in the city will have to grasp at least 300 daily expressions in English and 100 daily expressions respectively in Lao, Burmese, Thai and Vietnamese, which are used in countries bordering Yunnan. The civil servants' proficiency in these five foreign languages will influence their future promotion prospects.

Kunming is a famous tourism destination, which borders several Southeast Asian countries. Recent years have seen a sharp increase in foreign trade there, resulting in a huge lack of professionals with foreign language skills. Kunming trains at most 200 professionals in uncommon foreign languages. This does not match Kunming's status as China's "bridge" connecting countries in Southeast and South Asia. Therefore, the Kunming Municipal Government decided that local civil servants should take foreign language training.

What the public is most interested in is whether it's necessary for so many civil servants to take foreign language training almost at the same time. Besides, is it possible for the civil servants to improve their foreign language proficiency within this limited time? They are worried that this will become just another vanity project.

Some supporters of this training program also point out that to learn 100 daily expressions of a certain language does not necessarily mean that someone has mastered the language, but that the expressions will be helpful in daily communication with foreigners. Civil servants capable of these expressions could be able to avoid many misunderstandings in communication with foreigners.

Unnecessary

Bi Hanfeng (www.voc.com.cn): What is the major duty of civil servants? It is to serve the people. But now, civil servants in Kunming are forced to learn as many as five foreign languages. In this case, what most local civil servants are concerned with are the foreign languages, rather than serving the people, because the former will qualify a person to assume higher government posts. They are very likely to spend much more time on foreign language learning than on their daily duties, and as a result, the public administration will be negatively influenced. What China lacks nowadays is not civil servants with good command of foreign languages, but efficient troubleshooters.

Foreign language skills are only a communication tool, not a fundamental duty of civil servants. Even if the local government wants civil servants to speak foreign languages, it should only be a proposal, not a must. As we all know, even if a person doesn't speak foreign languages, he (she) can still conduct foreign trade.

Yuan Guangkuo (www.xinhuanet.com): To learn foreign languages well demands certain talent and personal interest. Even for a college student majoring in foreign languages, it's not easy to learn five foreign languages at the same time. Imagine how much more difficult it will be for middle-aged civil servants, who are not so good at learning and understanding languages as young students are.

In my opinion, it's better to let civil servants to choose one or two foreign languages as their major, according to their personal interest. It will help them to learn one or two foreign languages well, instead of giving them too much burden. It will also prevent the embarrassing result of these officials speaking foreign languages poorly, which may well happen if the target is five foreign languages.

Actually, for government officials with departments that seldom get in touch with foreigners and for those who are not interested in or are not good at learning foreign languages, it's unnecessary to require them all to learn.