Well, technically I should say “learning Mandarin”, as this is how the language spoken by millions of Chinese people should be known, but I guess it is easier to understand what I’m getting at if I say “Chinese”.

There’s been some hype about this in recent days and there is a risk that history will repeat itself, because there is nothing wrong at all in learning Chinese; it is the reason, perceived or otherwise, behind learning it that will push students away from the language.

Let’s go back 35 years or so. It was a time when, under a Labour government, Malta was closer to Gaddafi than any other European country in the world, and not only in geographical terms. To please the guy, and to be seen as sucking up to him, Mintoff decided that Arabic should be taught in all schools. What was worse is that he had deemed it so necessary that it was one of the five subjects that were compulsory at the time for students to progress from secondary school to sixth form and beyond.

Now, Arabic is a language that is far easier for us Maltese to learn than Chinese, given that our own language, for its greater part, is derived from it. Of course, the way that Arabic is written makes it somewhat complicated – and this was the most difficult part of it all for those who were made to learn it – but phonetically and grammatically it was a language that could be grasped, certainly more than Chinese would be.

But, given the circumstances of the time and the imposition of the subject in all schools, Arabic was a language that we all hated. I say “we” because I was among the thousands of students who were forced to learn it. We never endorsed it and were reluctant to learn it, often making it difficult for our own teachers (the level of misbehaviour in class rose a notch or two during Arabic lessons), but we had to get a pass mark at ‘O’ level standard if we wanted to continue with our studies.

Many of us did because of our determination to continue our education beyond obligatory school age, and not because we really wanted to. I, for one, remember learning three essays by heart and I was lucky that one of the titles we were given in the ‘O’ level exam paper was close enough for me to make some headway, thanks to those three essays I had memorised. But, once the results were out, I wiped Arabic from my mind completely. The sense of relief that I felt when I realised I no longer needed to touch the subject was enormous.

I have never picked up a book in Arabic since and I would bet my last euro that not one of my former school colleagues can remember how to write his name in Arabic characters.

The same will happen to Chinese if it is not “sold” properly. If students come to hate it, and believe that it is being imposed for political reasons, then it will not gain ground. It will be seen in the same way that the students of my generation saw Arabic.

When, in recent times, the teaching of German and Spanish was introduced and added to English, Italian and French as languages offered in our schools, nobody batted an eyelid because there was no imposition and no political connection. It was understood, without any fuss, that German and Spanish were growing languages and it was good that students had the opportunity to learn them.

But I am afraid that this will not happen with Chinese. The current talk about China and its political connections with Malta will lead to the perception that the introduction of Chinese language teaching in Malta is a direct follow-up of the political relations this government is building with China, very much in the same way that Arabic was seen as a Mintoff imposition because he wanted to please Gaddafi.

In seven months of a Labour government, we’ve had the Prime Minister making China one of his first destinations for an official visit, a Chinese company contracted to carry out a feasibility study on a permanent link between Malta and Gozo and, more recently, the government announcing that Enemalta Corporation is being partly sold to China, which will entail having a Chinese vice-chairman.

From this government, we have heard as many good things about China as we have heard bad things about the European Union.

All this is resulting in a perception that anything to do with China is a repetition of what Mintoff did with Libya in the 1970s and 1980s. He had wanted closer relations with Libya than with Europe, so much so that the teaching of Arabic was made compulsory. For this reason, the teaching of Chinese in our schools is viewed in the same way.

Of course, learning Chinese has not (yet) been introduced and is not (yet) compulsory, but the government must play its cards carefully if it decides to go down this road. China is a growing nation – politically, economically and in every other way – and therefore it would certainly not be a wrong move to have some Maltese students learning at least the basics.

However, with the two matters moving simultaneously – the government’s dealings with China and the push for Chinese to be introduced – it is hard to believe that there is no connection. This is why there is a risk that Chinese will suffer the same fate as did Arabic, 35 years ago.

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo insisted last Friday that there are no links, saying that any decision taken will be purely “strategic and educational”.

He will have to do much better than that to convince one and all that this is the case.

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