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Abstract There has been a long history of Chinese learning and teaching (CLT) in the UK, but until recently CLT was predominantly confined to community schools for Chinese children at weekends and a small number of other schools and universities. Therefore, it had remained peripheral for a long time in terms of student numbers and its position in the education system. This situation has changed dramatically over the last 10 years, as CLT has experienced an unprecedented and rapid development during the period. Today almost all British universities offer some kind of Chinese courses. More and more secondary schools have started, or plan to start, Chinese courses as part of their curriculum ever since Chinese was officially recognised by the government as belonging to modern foreign languages (MFLs). Chinese language and culture activities are getting into more primary schools than ever before. In addition, Chinese language courses have also become commonly available in both public and private institutions for adult and professional learners. This situation presents opportunities as well as challenges. This article aims first to describe briefly the current provision of CLT in the UK, its background and characteristics, and then to give some preliminary analyses of the issues and a prediction of possible trends concerning the development of CLT in the UK in the next few years. Keywords:
Zhang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.