Vietnam will begin to teach Chinese language in primary school from 2017, according to the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) on Monday.

The MoET is building a general education program for Chinese, Japanese and Russian languages and the three languages will be taught as the first foreign language to local students from grade three to grade 12.

Nguyen Minh Chau, deputy head of education and training department of Vietnam's northern Lang Son province, said on local Dan Tri (People's Knowledge) online newspaper on Monday that as his province borders China, it will be favorable to develop Chinese language teaching.

Lang Son will continue to teach English as the first foreign language in schools and teach Chinese as the first foreign language in some classes to meet with pupils' demand.

In the 2016-2017 academic year, Korean, French and German will be taught as the second foreign language.