The trend of computer programming or  coding is  increasingly popular in China. Not only adults, children are also addicted to coding in China.

Quoted by AFP , this trend has been fueled by the confidence of parents that skill  coding  will be very important for young people considering a boost Chinese government technology.

An eight year old boy has actually become a teacher in online  coding lessons . This boy named Vita has had a tutorial channel on the Chinese video streaming site Bilibili since last August.

It has 60 thousand followers and one million users. Vita is one of a growing number of children in China who are learning coding even before they enter primary school.

“Coding is not that easy, but also not difficult, at least not as difficult as you might think,” said Vita, who lives in Shanghai.

Vita uses the canals to teach his students who are mostly older children, even adults. 

In the teaching-learning process, Vita sometimes deliberately makes mistakes that can help students see common mistakes that should be avoided.

“When I teach, I learn new things at the same time,” said Vita.

The figure of Vita’s father, Zhou Ziiheng, he considered his main support. Zhou edited Vita’s video and helped run the canal.

Zhou, who works as a freelance translator of science and technology books, started teaching his son how to write code when Vita was five years old.

“I learned coding when I was young, so I believe that Vita learning coding at this age is normal,” said Zhou.

When Vita was four years old, Zhou took Vita to play games related to coding. Seeing Vita’s skill at playing games, Zhou decided to help her work on real code.

Zhou said that the inspiration for creating a coding learning channel came from Vita’s success in rewriting the code in the application.

“I advised him to write down how he rewrote these codes,” Zhou said. 

Most of the comments on Vita’s online videos express amazement that she could write code and even teach others at such a young age. certdatabase cert database

Parents without coding skills can send their children to coding agencies. Along with the coding trend, coding agencies are also booming thanks to requests from middle-class Chinese families to find the best skills for their children.

In November, Vita competed in a coding competition for elementary school students held by the Shanghai Computer Industry Association.

He spent two months studying the C ++ coding language for the competition. With the help of his father, he made it through to the finals despite being one of the youngest participants. 

The Children’s Coding Market in China

The market value of programming education in China for children was 7.5 billion yuan (over $ 1 billion) in 2017. Even Chinese internet analytics firm Analysys predicts the value will jump to 37.7 billion yuan by 2020.

“Education Chinese programming in public schools started very late compared to developed countries, so our agency makes up for this shortcoming, “said Tongcheng Tongmei General Manager Pan Gongbo.

Tongcheng Tongmei is a coding education center based in Beijing. The youngest student at the center is three years old. For children under six years of age, the agency offers specialized programs that include activities such as Lego building that apply coding knowledge and skills.

According to Pan, children at the age of six or seven are fully capable of learning coding in cognitive development.

“Don’t underestimate children’s learning speed. In some of our courses, they learn faster than adults,” he said.

A 10 year old boy, Ji Yingzhe also studied programming language in Python for half a month until now. Previously, he attended a one-semester course on basic building robots which he considered too simple.

“The code has been written for you, and all you have to do is arrange these (code blocks) in order,” he told AFP .

Ji’s father sent him to study programming because he spent so much time playing video games. Ji himself has almost finished writing a simplified version of the popular game “Plants vs Zombies”.