I interviewed a Chinese language teacher last week as research on bilingualism. The Melbourne-based private school she teaches in piloted a new language program to teach their students Chinese. The program is surprisingly intense, with students having a Chinese lesson every school day. More radically, part of the curriculum that is traditionally taught in English, is now taught in Chinese.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald prescribing that the ‘Chinese language should be compulsory in schools’ lists the ‘greenshoots’ of Chinese language teaching going on in the country.

Why are Aussie schools scrambling to teach Chinese? Or more fundamentally, why would Aussie parents want their kid to be bilingual in English and Chinese?

Perhaps it was only a matter of time that the Chinese language fever would spread to Australia. China is now Australia’s largest trading partner, on both the exports and imports front. An increase in trade and financial ties would inevitably result in more communication with Chinese businessmen, investors and consumers.

The Chinese language fever is not new to me.

As a Singaporean-born ethnic Chinese growing up in 1980s Singapore, I had Chinese lessons every school day. Neither of my parents spoke Chinese because when they were at school, Singapore was part of Malaysia (then Malaya) and Malay was the compulsory second language. Learning Chinese had little meaning to me, and I learnt it with much disinterest. It was only after I got a job working as a corporate strategist for an international bank that I regretted my disinterest in learning Chinese. The high-profile projects were the ones in China. When I went on business trips to Shanghai and Beijing, the local Chinese would frown at me in meetings when my boss requested they speak in English for my benefit. I do not blame them. It probably isn’t too much to ask that if you look Chinese, you should speak Chinese.

I hear anecdotes of my peers in the corporate world desperately trying to improve their spoken and written Chinese. Some were even passed over for a front office role and sent back office for a lack of proficiency in Chinese.

Similar to Australia, Singapore’s top trading partner on both the exports and imports front happens to be China. Who would have thought that trade has the power to alter culture? It was once almost fashionable in Singapore to be poor at speaking Chinese and good at English. China’s rise in pre-eminence over the past decades, particularly in trade and investment flows, has made learning Chinese fashionable, even imperative to some. Today, Singapore feverishly pushes its young to learn Chinese. You hear of kids having three separate Chinese tutors just to keep up with the curriculum.

There are many good reasons – other than commerce – to learn a second language. The University of Edinburg conducts extensive research on the benefits of bilingualism in children. Its studies have found that learning a second language helps its learner to be better at multi-tasking and focusing her attention on tasks. Learning another language also introduces the learner to a different culture, adding to her broad-mindedness and tolerance for that which is different.

However, the decision to make learning Chinese compulsory needs to be carefully weighed, beyond the balance of trade flows. Not every child (or parent) would be interested in learning Chinese. Spending time learning a second language as complex as Chinese inevitably takes time away from the deeper learning of subjects like Math and Science, and other interest-driven activities like sport, art and music. Education policy makers need to acknowledge that such trade-offs exists. Trade-offs which may have ramifications on the kind of workforce this new generation will become: its innovativeness, productivity and agility.