It is desirable but not necessary. You can find chinese people in your country, buy selfteachers, other textbooks, attend courses, study by films and so on. More and more people are learning chinese and you can get help even in your country

thanks romulus ,he knows what i meant! if you have some question of learning Chiese,i am glad to answer on my best. and you 'd better have learning-parterner,practice speaking often,and writing as well.

if u really want to learn chinese, u r most welcome to add me as friend...学习华语，不需要到中国

maybe u should find a chinese partner to chat with regularly. If you come China even to stay for 2 months, u will learn skin-deep Chinese. But u will go back your country, and then can't practice Chinese, u will forget it very soon.

Sunny has a point and If you can afford to go to china, why not! But if there's a little 'china-town' in your country, that would be very ideal! There's no better way to learn chinese than being within a place surrounded by chinese speaking person... I learned speaking ilocano (one of our major dialect here) when I went to college in a province of Ilocano... I'm learning chinese too but my chinese seems not good at all.... i'm looking a chinese here in our country to be a friend and probably, a tutor..