University in Guangxi touts ASEAN links

Guangxi University for Nationalities is tapping its geographical advantages to develop language majors related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, according to Zhong Haiqing, the university's Party secretary.

The school, located in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, is close to ASEAN nations. It started setting up language majors in the 1960s. The first three were Vietnamese, Lao and Thai.

Four other Southeast Asian languages followed in the 1990s: Cambodian, Myanmar, Indonesian and Malaysian.