Chinese rising in importance

Damian in Edinburgh   Sun Jan 22, 2006 8:59 pm GMT
UK's Sunday Telegraph
22 January 2006

With China set to become the world's prime economic trading superpower by the mid 21st century people are already recognising the need to learn Chinese (Mandarin in the case of the link below).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/22/nchinese22.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/22/ixhome.html
never   Sun Jan 22, 2006 9:33 pm GMT
China is still poor as hell, being still considered a third word country, besides being communist, what economic superpower are you talking about ?

China’s gdp per capita =$6,200 and Mexico has $10,000 !!!

Mexico is richer than China ! LOL

China will never be a superpower just a market for the western exploiters
Stan   Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:54 am GMT
<< China will never be a superpower just a market for the western exploiters >>

Sorry to burst your bubble!, but if the current trend is continued, China's economy will overtake that of the U.S in one generation (maybe before 2044).

China is already a superpower in terms of nuclear capabilities, and we all know that these days, that's all it takes to be a superpower: the ability to pulverize many nations with a single nuclear strike.

Its good we all face the truth and accept it for what it is, I know there are people scared of the fact that; in the near future; they might have to learn the Chinese Mandarin language to thrive in certain organizations.

Live with that fact!!!.
nonEconomist   Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:30 pm GMT
The US per-capita GDP is about $40000, so the economy of China (with about 5x the population of the US, and $6200 per-capita GDP), has already pretty much caught up.
Mxsmanic   Tue Jan 24, 2006 11:25 pm GMT
I've considered learning Mandarin, but since the Chinese themselves prefer to speak English in international relations, I'm not sure how useful it is. And not all Chinese speak Mandarin, either.

Oriental cultures often see their languages as part of their identity, and may be taken aback when they see people from other cultures speaking their languages fluently. This is one reason why the Japanese have always resorted to English in international relations instead of expecting others to learn Japanese, even at the height of their international influence.
YONGJIE from mainland chi   Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:32 am GMT
Learning a language means to expand your horizon. China is a country with the longest uninterrupted history in the world, thus full of ideas and good things. Take literature for example. If you are curious about what ancient Chinese wrote about philosophy, peotry, and language learning in general, you have to be able to read Chinese. Unfortuantely, in this world, Chinese is the most difficult language to learn in terms of reading and writing, though speaking chinese is relatively easy.
Forget about communism which might collapse one day. Forget about it's still a poor country which wil become rich after the fall of communism.
If you want to find an excuse to learn Chinese, challenge should be the best one.
There already are dozens of millions of successful English learners, so with another you,no more. But a successful Chinese learner is a rarity.
Frank   Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:43 am GMT
"China is already a superpower in terms of nuclear capabilities, and we all know that these days, that's all it takes to be a superpower: the ability to pulverize many nations with a single nuclear strike".

The same can be said about Russia but Russia is not a superpower:)
JJM   Wed Jan 25, 2006 11:57 am GMT
I don't think there's any doubt that China is on a roll. But extrapolating its development out to 2044 or so is pretty specious.

To see just how specious this approach is, look back 38 years to the world of 1968. No one at that time would have thought there'd be a day when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were no more. And what about Bill Gates, Microsoft and the rise of the PC?

I remain somewhat skeptical about the increased use of Chinese (Mandarin) by non-Chinese (not that I think people shouldn't learn Chinese).

There would have to be a very considerable military and economic reorientation in the world before people would feel compelled to learn Chinese in the way they feel compelled to learn English now. I don't see it (though I certainly would never deny the possibility of it happening).
Stan   Wed Jan 25, 2006 4:18 pm GMT
<<The same can be said about Russia but Russia is not a superpower:) >>

But you still won't want to start a war with them, right?
Claude   Wed Jan 25, 2006 4:39 pm GMT
India is rising in importance too. But the big advantage India has got over China is English, an Official Language in India.

Think about it.

Cheers. Claude.
lingex   Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:05 pm GMT
From a psy point of view:

Many years ago, when Mo's still the leader. China had the one child policy, many "extra" kids are brought to orphanages or just left on the streets. These children later developed retardation or learning disabilities, or some other psychological problem such as attachment disorders, because of the lack of care. They lost their "bounding" time with their mother in the first few years of their life.

Nowadays, China's polices had changed, families are together, or "bound" together... lot more children are growing up in a healthier environment.

China is getting to be a stronger country,... and China is not a complete communist country anymore,... urban cities in China are totally a capitalism rather,...
Claude   Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:22 pm GMT
lingex

"families are together, or "bound" together"

Strong families are making strong countries. I have got a fuller clue about it, because of my by marriage Indian family. And in India family is never an empty word. What about China ? I do not really know. How could I ?

Cheers. Claude.
Frank   Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:48 pm GMT
Over the last years, many people have been talking about China as a growing superpower. But very few know what really happens in this big and mysterious country. I am not sure that optimistic predictions about China's future will come true. Nobody knows what's gonna happen. And I certainly don't agree with people who say that we already should learn Chinese due to economic reasons. Maybe in 40 years people will really do it (which I doubt) but by that time we all will be quite old... let the upcoming generations decide whether they will learn Chinese or not, nowadays it's not so important...
Mxsmanic   Thu Jan 26, 2006 11:01 pm GMT
Chinese is no more difficult to learn than any other language. The written form is crippled in the sense that the Chinese never came to use an alphabet, and communicating via ideograms is rather inefficient, but that could conceivably be changed. It's interesting to note the degree to which technologies such as Unicode have been driven by a need to accomodate this flaw in Chinese and some other Oriental languages.
Travis   Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:08 am GMT
>>Chinese is no more difficult to learn than any other language. The written form is crippled in the sense that the Chinese never came to use an alphabet, and communicating via ideograms is rather inefficient, but that could conceivably be changed. It's interesting to note the degree to which technologies such as Unicode have been driven by a need to accomodate this flaw in Chinese and some other Oriental languages.<<

However, in the context of China, such actually does have its advantages. As many individuals in China today natively speak languages other than Mandarin but read and write in Mandarin, Chinese characters help to serve and an abstraction that removes how words are actually pronounced in any given Chinese language from the picture, and instead serve to encode meaning alone, regardless of actual pronunciation.