The Inchoation of Russian Chinese Language Teaching and Sinology

The necessity of studying Chinese has been realized in the period of Peter the Great. The basis of the Russian Chinese language teaching and Sinology was founded at that time. The translation schools in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church diplomatic corps in Beijing played the important roles. But in the 18th century, the level of the Russian Chinese language teaching and Sinology was relatively low. And the scale was relatively small too. There were three factors mainly: the lack of the material support because of the conservatism and lack foresight of the Russian bureaucracy; the lack of the teachers who had the scientific teaching method; the training time was too long and there were not good outlets for the people who studied Chinese.