As China's economy and global influence grows, increasing numbers of people around the world are choosing to learn Mandarin. On Sunday the UK final of a Chinese language proficiency competition aimed at business students took place. It is called the Chinese Competition for Social Welfare and Business Innovation.

After months of participating in preliminary rounds, six contestants from three universities made it through to the grand final held at the Bank of China training center in London. Each had to make a 10-minute speech in Mandarin on a business innovation topic of their choice and then answer questions from the judges.

"The winner I'm looking for is passionate, confident and full of creative ideas," said Cai Hongbing, one of the competition judges, who teaches Mandarin to business students at the London Business School.

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To get to the final demands not just a depth of business knowledge but also a love of language – even if it comes relatively late in life. For instance, Glasgow University student Morgan Livingstone had never previously mastered a foreign language.

"I'd done French at school but didn't really like it or the grammar tables," Livingstone explained. "Chinese doesn't have that – it was actually a lot easier to get into than I thought. When I started everyone was feeding me horror stories – 'It's the hardest language in the world to learn.' But actually it turned out to be really fun."

However, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) student Samuel Hardy found the lack of grammar more challenging.

"My background is seven or eight years in German and Latin, so growing up with very strict grammar. With Chinese, not the absence of grammar but a very different grammar is a nightmare really," smiled Hardy.

There were other challenges for fellow SOAS student Josephina Georgopoulou – a Greek national. 

"Obviously Greek has a different alphabet, so learning a third way of writing was quite interesting but also very challenging – like strokes and tones, things we don't encounter in Greek or English," she explained.

Business and culture

The event is organized by the Confucius Institute as an offshoot of its longstanding China Bridge competition, which focuses more on culture than business. But many of the students are taking combined courses involving Chinese culture and history as well as business studies.

Some claim that Mandarin's expressive nature makes it better suited to writing poetry and literature than business deals. But Barbara Lecis from the London School of Economics disagrees.

"I actually find it quite fascinating the way you can express a business idea in Chinese," she says. "You can use a lot of poetic language, so you can get sharper with beauty in a way that you can't express in English."

The overall winner was Samuel Hardy. His presentation was about a start-up he is launching this summer, importing classical Chinese instruments to Europe linked to a directory of instrumental teachers and musicians. 

"At the very beginning, one of the judges said that one of the key factors they were going to be looking for is passion," said Hardy. "I'm very passionate about Chinese music and do want to start this company, so I think possibly that was it – I'm honestly not sure. It was a big surprise for me."

He hopes that winning the competition will help raise awareness of his business and attract feedback from experts in the field. In the meantime, he can say he has market-leading Chinese skills – and has the award to prove it.

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