His major is becoming increasingly popular as the Lancang-Mekong cooperation continues to gain momentum.

Ren still remembers that his undergraduate classmates had already been fully “reserved” by employers even before they graduated. Ren himself was offered the job of Cambodian language teacher by Yunnan Normal University,

Since the 1990s, Lancang-Mekong regional cooperation has started in diverse forms. Currently, pertaining cooperation mechanisms include the Lancang-Mekong Subregional Economic Cooperation, the ASEAN-Mekong Development Cooperation, the Mekong Commission and more. On March 23, the first LMC Leaders’ Meeting was held in Sanya, Hainan, during which leaders of the six countries had an in-depth exchange of views on the promotion of LMC mechanism, all-round cooperation in GMS countries and regional integration.

Professor Liu Xiaorong, who has been teaching at Yunnan Minzu University for 37 years, believes that as the GMS regional cooperation mechanism deepens, the demand for talents in Southeast Asian languages will grow drastically. As early as 2013, Yunnan Province had set up a language education board to strengthen the training of Southeast Asian and South Asian languages.

As of the end of 2014, Yunnan has established 11 international training bases in its colleges and universities, with a total of 55,000 students enrolled in related majors. At present, these majors includes Thai, Burmese, Lao, Hindi and more, and are training a large number of talents of Southeast Asian and South Asian languages every year with promising employment prospect.