In brief
In Jakarta, 3,000 students and parents attended a China‑Indonesia expo to learn about the HSK exam and university programmes. High‑schoolers like 16‑year‑old Calysta Wijaya plan to study pharmacy abroad, while 15‑year‑old Richard Dharma Hungnata aims for engineering. An Indonesian Mandarin teacher said enrolment in Chinese classes has surged from 50 to 500 students a decade ago.
The Jakarta event for the 2026 Indonesia HSK study in China and career expo drew around 3,000 Indonesian students, parents and Chinese language learners on Sunday, showing 21 Chinese universities, including Peking University and Tsinghua University.
Among the crowd was 16‑year‑old Calysta Jacqueline Wijaya, who has been learning Chinese for 11 years and says,
I want to study pharmacy in China.
Calysta told Xinhua that she hopes to bring professional knowledge back to Indonesia to help more people.
Calysta is now improving her score on the Chinese Proficiency Test, or HSK, to strengthen her university applications.
Her classmate, 15‑year‑old Richard Dharma Hungnata, is also fluent in Chinese and wants to study engineering in China. He plans to take the HSK after his second year of high school.
Zheng Wenting, a Mandarin teacher who heads a language centre in Indonesia, said more parents want their children to learn Chinese in recent years. "Enrollment at her institution has grown from about 50 students per intake a decade ago to nearly 500 today," Zheng told Xinhua.
The expo also featured success stories like Dexter Godwin, an Indonesian graduate who earned a petroleum engineering degree in China and now works in Indonesia. Godwin’s experience shows that Chinese language skills can open doors to study and careers abroad.
