Gisborne Herald – – Kayla Dalrymple 
LEARNING Chinese is now a necessity not a luxury was the strong message at a symposium at Gisborne District Council chambers yesterday…Victoria University of Wellington Confucius Institute chairman Tony Browne led the symposium on learning Mandarin in schools throughout the region…“Language is the key to cultural understanding, and underpinning our business, government and personal connections has to be linguistic capacity”…From 2010 to 2030 the size of Asia-Pacific region economies was projected to increase by 570 percent…If this happened, Asia-Pacific economies would be “significantly” bigger than Europe’s and North America’s combined. “We have a responsibility as teachers, parents and community leaders to start looking at what we can do to prepare our children for the reality coming at us,” said Mr Browne.(more)