Hatching Dragons, Britain’s first bilingual English-Mandarin nursery, has opened in London.
Learning Chinese at an early age can give the youngsters an advantage later in life as trade with China becomes ever more important.
And the UK’s links with the Far East were strengthened further with the visit of China’s President Xi, who also paid a visit to Manchester.
But one school in Stockport, Greater Manchester is already making sure it’s students are ‘China-ready’.
One of the first schools teaching Chinese is Greenbank Preparatory School who have introduced a Mandarin Chinese club for its high-flying young linguists.
Pupils in year six get a taster of a language with completely different character and phonetic systems and are able to go through various the competency levels up to the elite level 20, much like playing a modern computer game.
Three senior teachers at the top independent primary school in Cheadle Hulme have taken training to supervise the children, but say the bright sparks are learning just as fast as they are.
The club which uses the Dragons of Europe online system, which allows the children to become familiar and see whether they want to pursue the language further when they go up to secondary school.
Greenbank offers French from the age of four, Spanish from the age of seven with an additional German club.
Headmistress Janet Lowe said: “Children are like sponges at this age and the earlier you can introduce them to a language the better.
“Our pupils love the interactivity of the Mandarin Chinese club and learn while they are playing.”