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Chinese will rule the World Wide Web | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 17 of 121 15 July 2011 at 6:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
China has both the world’s longest high-speed rail network and the world's fastest high-speed trains. It's also only the third country to independently send humans into space. It likewise is planning trips to the moon while the US will be losing its human spaceflight launch capability within this year. As of last year, China now has the most wind power capacity in the world, and its electric car industry is buoyed by a budget in the billions while Congress fights about allocating a few measly millions to its anemic American counterpart. As for derivative culture, have you not heard contemporary American music and watched contemporary American films? And the European fare is often even more insufferable. Finally, I find it funny you'd use an argument of "smoke and mirrors" whilst the collective economy of the entire Western world is propped up by national debt that often exceeds GDP by 100%. Have the subprime mortgage meltdown and PIIGS meant nothing? Or are these examples of "excusable" smoke and mirrors? 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fiveonefive Diglot Groupie Japan Joined 5694 days ago 69 posts - 88 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Swedish | Message 18 of 121 15 July 2011 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Everything you just listed about China was accomplished by copying and tweaking existing foreign technology. Japanese rail, American wind, American/Russian rocketry, so on and so on.
What parasitius was talking about was the lack of truly innovative technology being developed in China. And Speaking of Debt Regarding China's economy, it is not a matter of if we will see a collapse, but when we will see it. when 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 19 of 121 15 July 2011 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
By that measure, the same could be said of the West. What truly innovative technology has been developed in the past decade that hasn't merely been the tweaking of existing domestic technology? Besides, innovation is both a progenitor and product of wealth. Don't think that a China with a GDP per capita comparable to Japan's is going to be content with Apple product knock-offs (incidentally, Apple products themselves are knock-offs, but I digress).
China is a situation of local debt that can be buoyed by a healthy national surplus. The US is a situation of local debt burdened by an even greater national debt.
The Internet bubble crashed too. Some wealth was lost, but the Internet is bigger than ever and clearly here to stay. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| strummer Diglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4923 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 20 of 121 15 July 2011 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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wow wow.
I'm learning chinese for family reasons, and about the chinese language taking over the net i have to say that it will not happen. Chinese are many yes, but most of them are poor and their English skills are even poorer due to their ''mnemonic'' learning system. And we must not foget the mindset/cultural differences between the west and china that is way wider than japan/russia and the west( a westerner can share music or lifestyle more with a japanese than with a chinese). China economic growth i really do hope that will take out from poverty all the chinese, but as i saw on the world bank report, they will face a water shortage in the next years and we must not forget the pollution and the global warming., with these problems chinese domination is seriously compromised. Coming back on the culture matter, it does attract way more English language and english culture/entertainment/english speaking people mindset/english speaking countries, than chinese speaking countries/culture and mindset. Most of the chinese now were educated with Mao's red book and nothing else, and this with all the respect to the nice persons of that generation i know, makes chinese overall ignorant and uncivilised about some things, ex: walking in the middle of the road, spitting, let children piss everywhere, show off all their wealth to others, no respect for porr countryside people, etc... and this cannot be only the ''evil capitalism fault'' but most chinese still have an early 20th century mindset and a lack of civilisation on manners. I've knew many civilised, intelligent, smart old and young chinese, but sadly many of them still think like 100 years a go..... I see that life in china is very hard and that many young chinese want to change the country and make it better, and i really do hope they can be successful in this. Sorry for go out topic........ but i really would like to know others opinion about this matter, i want to see if waht i think is wrong or right, if maybe i judged too fast... i've nothing against china just there are some things in people's behavior i can't stand and also i can't stand how many people are suffering and many of those **** CCP officials are doing nothing but buying LV/gucci bags for their daughters and luxury cars with the people's taxes money, and still i can see people without arms, severely injuried people who begs in the underground......but i think these are the problems of many other developing nations is'nt it? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 21 of 121 15 July 2011 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
High-speed rail has been a big money loser in China and has also seen a lot of serious, high level corruption. The Chinese are way behind us in space technology. Remember, they just got to space, we got there when my dad was in diapers. Wind power/electric cars are cost negative, so whatever. I don't measure their economic strength in how subsidized their economy is. That just tells me they are in for a misallocation. I think a lot of this is done for show. China has come a long way, no doubt, but it also has a long way to go. That being said, it has a large population (what Japan doesn't have) and a (at least tenuous) reliance on the market (what Russia has never had). I think these two things mean that whatever happens, China is here to stay. Whether or not it will eclipse the West is an open question. But it has the potential to compete in a global way. Their government is pushing Mandarin as a common language in their country. This makes Mandarin an important language to learn, and it's on my short list. My personal opinion is that English has too much going for it, at least in the short to medium run. That doesn't mean Mandarin won't be a strong second in the world. In my opinion, it is THE non-western language that any Westerner should learn (sorry Hindi). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 22 of 121 16 July 2011 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A lot of people here don't seem to understand the implications of China's demographic scale.
India has approximately 125 million English speakers. Nigeria has approximately 75 million English speakers. Pakistan has approximately 18 million English speakers. The Philippines has approximately 46 million English speakers. That, plus all the other English speakers in the developing world, amounts to approximately 300 million English speakers who could be considered poor — if not outright impoverished (this isn't including all the millions of unemployed Americans living off food stamps). Should we, then, conclude that English can't possibly be an influential language, because so many of its speakers are mired in poverty? No, because the English-speaking world also includes nearly half a billion members of the "middle class". And the same phenomenon is transforming the Sinosphere. As most English-speaking countries remain economically stagnant (USA/UK) or hopelessly impoverished (India/Nigeria), China continues to accumulate wealth at a rate unprecedented in human history. The Sinosphere can have its 300 million poor people, just as the Anglosphere has South Asia and Anglophone Africa. It doesn't make a damn difference, and the language isn't any less influential because of it. Put simply, there is utterly no reason to believe mainland China can't achieve the same per capita wealth as Taiwan and Chinese Malaysia, not to mention Japan and South Korea. And by the time this happens, China will have already long surpassed the English-speaking world in GLP (Gross Linguistic Product, heh). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 121 16 July 2011 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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China is not growing at an unprecedented rate in human history. It is just one in a long line of countries that industrialized quickly. In economics, just as in real life, getting the award for most improved isn't the award you want. Poor countries can post 10% annual growth. Rich countries generally can't. Americans that live on food stamps still live better than a big part of the world, and China's equivalent is much, much worse. And keep in mind that stagnant in the West is still means you're rich. Growth in China still means you're poor. The current economic problems will eventually go away.
The strength that English has is that it is spoken in several countries. Some are rich, some are poor. English is influential because it is spoken in North America and England and because the rest of Europe seems to have adopted it as a common language. Not because of what's going on in Asia. That's just icing on the cake. Mandarin is basically spoken in only one, very large country. That's good for Mandarin and better than what most languages have, but bounce beyond your borders matters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 24 of 121 16 July 2011 at 8:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
But, it is. This is a commonly known fact, and frankly I'm surprised you'd take issue with it. It's well known that China has over the past thirty years accomplished what the West took a century to do, starting from the Industrial Revolution. This is, indeed, the most rapid accumulation of wealth in human history.
China is not India or Indonesia or Vietnam. There's a reason why no one's talking of the "Indian Century", even though India's also been posting excellent annual growth, and has a similar demographic factor. Is the success of Chinese outside of China not a clear enough indicator? There is a cultural factor here not replicated in South Asia or Africa or Latin America or Southeast Asia.
Yes, poor Americans have more social safety nets than poor Chinese. But how many times do I have to repeat myself that this doesn't matter a damn? If China can maintain a middle class of 300 million, that already puts it on parity with the US. How is this not getting through to people? -_-
Tell that to the Chinese nouveau riche splurging money on luxury designer handbags (genuine, not knock-offs) and Ferraris (more of which are sold in China than the US — likewise, GM now sells more cars in China than the US as well).
I wish it were so, but every economic indicator points otherwise. Most Western youth (Northern Europeans being the exception) are collectively scientifically and mathematically illiterate relative to their East Asian peers, and their parental generation has engineered an economic system utterly devoid of long-term structural integrity. Add to this the aging of Europe and the demographic tilt in the US toward poorer and more uneducated baby-making machines, and, well, you get the point.
The difference between two small countries and one large country is an arbitrary matter of geopolitics. Arabic is spoken in many countries, but if English were only spoken in the US, it would still be a more useful language.
Likewise with China, Taiwan, Singapore, and half of Malaysia, not to mention the 40 million overseas Chinese across the world.
Well of course Europe will naturally tilt toward English. And Latin America, given a choice between the two, would tilt toward English. Asia and Africa, home to well over half the world's population, are the grounds where the "battle" between English and Chinese are going to play out.
One very large country that happens to house one-fifth of mankind currently alive (alternatively, the European, North American, and Australian continents combined), with per capita wealth catching up quickly and a 5,000-year legacy serving as a proven track record. Edited by nway on 16 July 2011 at 8:56am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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