Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (left) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing
© AFP/File Liu Jin SYDNEY (AFP) - "There has been a significant increase in students wanting to study Mandarin, probably reflecting that we have a prime minister that speaks Chinese," said Australian National University's Kent Anderson.
"But across the board Asian languages are proving popular with students which fits in nicely with the government's languages programme," the head of the university's Asian Studies faculty said in a statement.
There was a 23 percent increase overall in the number of Asian studies applicants for 2009 at the university, with growing demand for classes in Japanese, Thai, Korean and Vietnamese, he added.
Rudd, who became prime minister little more than a year ago, quickly put in place a 62 million dollar (44 million US) Asian languages programme for high schools.
By 2020 the programme aims to have 12 percent of school-leavers fluent in either Mandarin, Japanese, Indonesian or Korean.
"This is the Asia century, our number one trade partner is China and our number one export partner is Japan," Anderson told AFP. "It's in our economic interests, it's in our security interests to make that kind of investment."
Rudd studied at the ANU in the 1970s, majoring in Chinese language and history, before continuing his studies in Taiwan and going on to become a diplomat appointed to Beijing.
His fluent Mandarin -- a unique skill among Western world leaders -- has charmed Chinese from President Hu Jintao to Beijing university students and impressed his countrymen since he came to power.
"The growing economy (of China) and the profile given to it by having the prime minister speak Chinese has an impact on the kind of people who are seeing the economic opportunities in China and other regional economies," Anderson said.
But he expressed concern about a decline in Indonesian studies, which began after the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
With Indonesia being Australia's closest neighbour it was critical to educate a new generation about the country, but government security warnings against travel there deterred students from in-country study, Anderson said.
©AFP