Issue 02 opens with a question of scale. Saudi Arabia set out to put Chinese in its public schools; two years in, Dr Ayman Alzahrani returns to the evidence. Also inside: the winner of our first writing competition, a course worth clearing your November for, and what our community has been up to.

Two years ago, in Desiring Chinese as a Foreign Language Policy in Saudi Arabia, my co-authors and I argued that the Kingdom’s decision to teach Chinese in public schools was driven by political ambition, economic expectation and diplomacy rather than by anything happening in classrooms. The policy had been announced. The capacity to deliver it had not been built. There were too few teachers, no regulated materials, no practice beyond the lesson, no clear route from school to university, and no local Chinese-speaking community for learners to use the language with. Two years on, three of those five look very different.

Spearheading with teachers and reach. A first cohort of 175 Chinese teachers arrived in 2024, and Chinese now sits on the timetable in more than a hundred intermediate schools. Official figures put about 56,000 students in public schools studying the language as of mid-2025, with the Ministry of Finance projecting more than 85,000 by the end of 2026. Behind that expansion sits a pipeline: 325 Saudi teachers hold scholarships to study Chinese and take master’s degrees in teaching it at Chinese universities. The Ministry of Education’s stated objective is to establish Chinese as a third language alongside English, and the staffing plan now matches the ambition.

Materials and destinations have moved too. In April 2025 the Ministry signed a memorandum with China’s Center for Language Education and Cooperation to have Saudi and Chinese experts jointly write and review a school curriculum, which should displace the unregulated “learn Chinese fast” material that filled the vacuum while nothing official existed. Universities have firmed up the other end. King Abdulaziz University requires its Chinese-language undergraduates to reach HSK Level 4 before graduation, offers HSK preparation and testing, and runs streams in translation, professional communication, media and tourism. A school leaver can finally see where the subject leads.

What has not changed is the part we flagged as decisive. There is still no Chinese-speaking community in the Kingdom to practice with once the lesson ends, and no measurable labor-market demand pulling students through. In the first year of the rollout, grades in Chinese did not count toward a student’s cumulative GPA, a reasonable way to lower the stakes at launch that also told students exactly how much the subject weighed. English remains the working language of Saudi higher education and business, so Chinese competes for a slot students already associate with a payoff. Delivery is the second open question. A curriculum drafted between Riyadh and Beijing still has to reach thirteen education regions with very different staffing and very different readiness, and national policy tends to thin out on the way to the classroom.

Closing that gap and the return is substantial. Chinese can serve the Kingdom as a second diplomatic language, as a language of professional translation, and as a working language for trade and supply-chain management with China and across the region. It has obvious uses in the sectors Saudi Arabia is betting on, from advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence to renewable energy and tourism, and in academic exchange. It also allows students to study China through Chinese rather than through English, which is a different intellectual relationship altogether.

Whether that return arrives is a question of measurement, so the next phase has to be evidence-led rather than announcement-led. That calls for longitudinal tracking of learners and teachers covering proficiency, motivation and attrition; a labor-market analysis by sector, so that supply can be matched to real openings; HSK exit targets tied to grade levels; licensing standards for teachers of Chinese; and exchange programs and virtual speaking communities to stand in for the speech community the country does not have. It also means protecting the standing of Arabic as the language of identity and of knowledge, a condition no third language should be allowed to erode.

Teaching Chinese and teaching it to the point of use are two different projects. In 2024 the first was in doubt. It no longer is. The second turns on whether the destinations beyond the classroom door exist by the time this cohort reaches them.