When the Chinese Language is for Sale
Introduction to the industry of Chinese learning
The Chinese language is believed to be one of the most difficult languages in the world. French people often describe something that does not make any sense as — “C’est du chinois”, lit. “This is Chinese”.
The market for learning Chinese is booming
Given the global interest for learning Chinese that appeared during the last 10 years, the market for learning Chinese is booming. In 2016, more than 40 million people worldwide are learning Chinese, and with a regular annual increase estimated as +20% learners every year, the number of people learning Chinese in 2020 is expected to go over 100 million.
An amazing business opportunity
From a business point of view, this sounds like a business school case study: a booming market with a strong need to learn Chinese and a well identified fear of the Chinese language as a hard language to learn.
Here is an idea that can occur to anyone willing to make money:
Develop anything that makes learning Chinese look easy, do some marketing with messages like “Learning Chinese is easy !” and start collecting money.
Now here is the thing: This works.
Chineasy — A successful project?
Apparently, one of the most successful projects in the Learning Chinese industry is Chineasy. (Yes, language learning, as well as education in general, is an industry).
ShaoLan and her project Chineasy became very popular on the Internet about two years ago after a TED talk called “Learn to read Chinese with ease”.
The core idea of the Chineasy project is to present the Chinese characters coupled with drawings. This helps people understand and remember the Chinese characters by creating a link between the characters and their meaning.
Many Chinese characters can be understood as symbols that directly represent objects or ideas. They are called pictograms. Linking pictograms to images is not something new, but the Chineasy design is very nice.
The limit with this approach is that pictograms only represents a minority of the Chinese characters. Hence the fact that it is not possible to use these images for most of the characters.
Even more problematic is the fact that the message sent to people is wrong. Chineasy does not teach Chinese.
It is an introduction to Chinese characters. There is no real innovation about how to learn Chinese here. It is more about beautiful designs that make already existing explanations about pictograms more accessible to people.
A Business Success
Chineasy is a success for three reasons.
#1. A powerful and viral product. The very well designed images filling the books have a great natural marketing power. Images rule the Internet. This type of content can easily be shared on social media and make a blog post look nice.
#2. An easy support from mainstream media. As most people are not learning Chinese and think about the Chinese language as difficult to learn, every media is happy to promote this “innovative” way to “learn Chinese”.
#3. A super large market. ShaoLan promotes the beauty of Chinese characters using great design. The potential market is not limited to people actually learning Chinese. Anyone can be interested.
Chineasy is a great project from a business point of view. I guess ShaoLan’s background is Venture Capitalist and Private Equity industry plays a large role in this. The business idea and execution are perfect. It also bring some real value: it makes people interested into the Chinese language.
Where is the value for Chinese learners though?
Chineasy does not make learning Chinese easy. It only makes it look easy for people who have limited knowledge of the Chinese language.
My dream is to create the best online platform for people learning Chinese. To all the people supporting me, thank you.
But please stop asking me if I know Chineasy. We don’t share the same mission. Chinese learners are expecting more than this.
Here is what every responsible and devoted Chinese teacher should tell their students:
Learning Chinese is not easy. Learning Chinese is a daily challenge, a continuous process that requires time, motivation and efforts.
The real market of Chinese learners is much more difficult to approach. There are thousands of online websites and APPs claiming that they can help people learn Chinese. But only a few really bring value to Chinese learners.
In a future article, I will explain what makes an Online Chinese Learning project work and why there are only a few successful ventures in this industry.
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