Vietnam, South Korea and Japan

Japanese Guest   Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:51 pm GMT
All depends on Vietnam, South Korea and Japan.

Only these 3 countries can choose between English and Chinese as first foreign language.

If they choose Chinese, there will be a domino effect, and a lot of people in Asia and the World will study Chinese.

It can be the opposite. If all other countries around China, prefer to use English, Chinese will have a relative importance.
South Korean   Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:03 pm GMT
Well, Korea will never choose Chinese over English, at least not in any time soon. The importance of English far surpasses that of Chinese and Japanese, the other two also significantly popular foreign languages. While Chinese is growing in popularity, it is not even a mandatory course of study in public schools. I still see that Japanese is slightly more popular.