Figures released in the conference showed almost all the UK universities offer Chinese language courses with about 60,000 university students, but making the Chinese teaching system mainstream still faces big challenges.

Zhang Xinsheng, vice president of European Association of Chinese Teaching, said there are already efforts to improve the quality of teaching Chinese in the UK, but there are challenges in resources and sustainability, teacher supply and training, standards and assessment.

"UK will face even more challenges in its language teaching after the Brexit," he suggested, "I think Chinese teaching professionals in the UK also need to have an umbrella organization and a single voice to work together with other languages..."