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Watching Chinese money flow into his home city of Sihanoukville, Cambodian linguist Um Keangseng opened a language school to meet the growing demand for Mandarin lessons.
Sihanoukville has been the biggest recipient of Chinese investment into Cambodia, where President Xi Jinping arrived on Thursday.
“Every province has Chinese investors,” said Um Keangseng, who founded his school a decade ago to address the market for skilled communicators.
“There are Chinese businesses everywhere,” he said, to the point where “Chinese and English are both equally important”.
Um Keangseng’s Tai Zhong No 2 School has more than 400 part-time students, from elementary to college age, learning Mandarin – the world’s most spoken first language.
The 39-year-old grew up learning Chinese from his grandparents, migrants from Guangdong province.
