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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 49 of 121 17 July 2011 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Economists aren't stupid. They take environmental factors into their projections. Are you really so arrogant as to think you've outsmarted the world's foremost experts on economic growth and development? China does NOT have too many people. Based on real population density (measured by food growing capacity), it ranks EIGHTY-ONE worldwide. Let me repeat that: There are EIGHTY other countries whose populations more greatly exceed their endowment of arable land, with some of those nations including Venezuela, the UK, Egypt, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Slovenia, Colombia, and yes, even your very own Switzerland. Ah, but you were concerned about water, not food, right? Well, then, let's take a look at the data! The ratio of China's total endowment of renewable water resources to its projected population in 2050 ranks it above most of South Asia and the Middle East. Moreover, cash makes the world go 'round, and China has plenty of cash to negotiate favorable deals with cash-poor/water-rich countries in Africa and Latin America, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (the highest water-to-population ratio of any country in the world, beating Canada) and Peru (which has a significant Chinese population), not to mention its water-rich political ally, Russia (who has been bending over backward to become China's best friend — see the Shanghai Cooperation Organization).
So I'm guessing a 100% rate of foreigners would mean total success. Great, I'm sure all those Chinese students will appreciate getting those "world class educations" while their American counterparts continue to pay state taxes toward public universities who have their eyes set on foreign shores and whose tuitions they couldn't afford anyway, perhaps with the exception of if they were to take out student loans that will leave them indebted for life, the funding for which at the national level ultimately come from China. Man, that's just brilliant. Nice to know we've got such a fantastic system going on here.
Is that a joke? Cars are cars. And this isn't India, where consumers are buying made-to-be-cheap vehicles like the Tata Nano. Most of these cars are European (after all, Volvo is now a Chinese company, thanks to cash-strapped Ford Motor Company selling it to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group), and GM has already stated that they sell more cars in China than in the US — but hey, why trust those damn commies at GM? And of course, more Ferraris are sold in China than in the US, but I'm sure the Ferrari isn't a "real car".
First off, my government is that of the U.S., and yes, you're probably right — it's so economically illiterate that it probably manages to be even more economically illiterate than its own self. Anyway, you're right — purchasing oil from corrupt authoritarian countries to fund militant religious nutjobs who hate us and have killed thousands of our own citizens is a much more sensible idea. Glad to know we've got our shit all figured out — what a relief!
This has got to be a joke — Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon ARE our broadband monopolies, and it doesn't take a mathematician to add them up realize that they collectively fall short of China Telecom and China Unicom. I bet it blows your mind that PetroChina is bigger than Apple Inc., and each of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank are larger than Chevron Corporation and Microsoft, eh? Not to mention General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Wal-mart, and Berkshire Hathaway, but I digress...
Self-reported numbers? State-controlled media? You mean the Boston Consulting Group, IHS Global Insight, TeleGeography, Automotive News, Containerisation International, The Economist, Goldman Sachs, PEW Research Center, the University of Groningen, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the International Monetary Fund? My Lord! I had no idea these were all Chinese! They are NOT to be trusted!!! ... Seriously, guys, this is getting redundant. What part of this:
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| HenryMW Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 125 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 50 of 121 17 July 2011 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Not at all what I was saying but nice job at avoiding the main point about the quality of higher education in America and China. And China doesn't hold all of our debt. http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/06/09/the-fed-is-the-bi ggest-holder-of-us-debt/ Foreign students get charged higher tuition than instate residents. I know that some states have cut their public universities loose. They support themselves now. If Americans were going to China to study, no one would be arguing that as a strength of the American system.
China isn't India. Even though 900,000,000 Chinese live in Indian levels of poverty. Again no one is denying China's size. And since when did owning Ferraris become an economic measure? I must have fallen asleep that day in class. I for one am partial to Porsches. Maybe China has a more ostentatious culture (I know many people who can afford them but don't have expensive cars)? Or maybe your numbers are wrong. http://www.ferrari.com/English/GT_Sport%20Cars/GT/Pages/1101 14_COR_Shanghai_Red_to_celebrate_the_999th_Ferrari_client_in _China.aspx
We import ~58% of our oil. Our number one supplier is Canada. Mexico is number two. http://geology.com/news/2011/sources-of-united-states-petrol eum-imports.shtml
http://www.forbes.com/global2000/list Check your numbers.
Except that the Chinese government routinely censors the media. I bet they don't publish criticisms about the government.
It is. I usually try to avoid these types of arguments on the internet because they take so much of my time (and this one seems to be off-topic, but I guess as long as it's open...), but I can't abide half-truths and bad facts. Edited by HenryMW on 17 July 2011 at 10:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 51 of 121 17 July 2011 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I fail to see why size or economic growth has any immediate influence on which language will be more important. What matters when you evaluate which language will be most important is cultural influence, not economic strength. Sure, some people will learn Mandarin for business reasons, and from my perspective, the more the merrier, but that will not change significantly the importance of English.
Most of the films and series on TV are American or British,the vast majority of music likewise, and people use English words and expression in their language all the time. Such an influence takes time to acheive. I would not place any bet on which language will be the most influential in a 100 years, but I am willing to bet a substantial sum that Mandarin will not have taken over in 20 years, on the internet, within music, films, litterature or science. China can be as big and rich as it wants, but until it becomes cool it doesn't stand a chance. How many know the names of other Chinese actors than the few who have made it to Hollywood? How many Chinese authors do you know - 5, perhaps 10 if you are really well read, and how many British and American authors do you know - 50 -100 - 300? Mu husband may quip that the book about American culture is as thin as the book on Swedish war heroes, but the fact of the matter is that we are swimming (if not drowning) in American culture, and it is only when China can compete with that role, that Mandarin will stand a chance. 7 persons have 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 52 of 121 18 July 2011 at 1:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I know — that was my whole point about why domestic universities prefer them.
If Chinese universities were considered the most selective and prestigious in the world, and they were filled with American students, that most certainly would be seen as a credit to the American people.
Did you seriously believe anyone thinks China owns "all" our debt? When a foreign entity owns more of a country's debt than its own people, and is second only to a fiscally irresponsible private organization whose only way to pay it off is to print more money and thereby decrease the wealth of its constituent citizenry, that's a big effin' problem.
Chinese PPP GDP per capita is 2.3 times that of India. By comparison, U.S. PPP GDP per capita is 2.3 times greater than that of Slovakia (or Seychelles — take your pick). Don't think all those graphs I posted earlier omitted India due to error.
...and yet China has ridiculously higher savings rates than almost anywhere else in the world. The U.S., of course, has one of the lowest. In other words, Chinese consumption has been understated relative to its wealth, whereas American consumption has been overstated.
So your rebuttal is the Ferrari CEO stating, "For Ferrari, China represents the present and the future." Interesting.
Let me put it this way: In 2004, Americans spent more than $200,000 per minute on foreign oil alone – or $13 million per hour (these dollar figures are unadjusted amounts from 2004; given the past seven years of inflation, these figures would be even higher if adjusted to 2011 rates; additionally, oil was only $38 a barrel in 2004; it’s currently ranging from $97.49 to $118.32 a barrel). Every year, America has funneled more than $25 billion into Persian Gulf imports alone (again, unadjusted). For a more current estimate, given 20.7 million barrels per day at $100 a barrel, this means that Americans spend $2,070,000,000 on oil every single day – in a regular year, this would calculate to $755,000,000,000 ($755 trillion) being pumped into oil – two-thirds of which ends up being pumped into vehicles that get an average of 25 miles to the gallon. Yeah, that’s way more sensible than investing in electric cars, the technology of which already works perfectly fine right now in 2011, and will only continue to become more cost-efficient in the years to come.
...which of course was my entire point. For the lurkers out there, this was the situation back in 2004: 
Now, as for your continued comparison of China to India, note that China has 116 million broadband users, while India has just short of 12 million broadband users — I don't know how much clearer this disparity could possibly get.
I was going by market capitalization as of the first quarter of 2011, as ranked by the Financial Times Global 500, which is as follows: 
Anyway, note that the second largest entity on the Forbes ranking is HSBC Holdings, which of is the parent of course the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and whose executive director is, of course, Chinese.
Ahem:
'Nuff said. Now, onto Solfrid Cristin, who is one of my favorite members on this forum, so I hope I don't come off as confrontational:
...in the West. Most Southeast Asians watch Korean (and to a lesser extent, Japanese) films and TV series. As for China, it's tied with America as the world's second largest film industry (behind India, none of whose films are in English), having produced 520 films in 2010 alone, and it boasts the world's largest outdoor film studio. Moreover, the Sinosphere has an incredibly rich tradition of cinema, with literally hundreds of films having been produced each year in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the Mainland for well over the past half-century, and there are dozens of famous household-name Chinese directors — Jia Zhangke, Feng Xiaogang, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, John Woo, Michael Hui, King Hu, and even more actors and actresses. The catch, of course, is that little of this has had any presence in the West — like I said, this is an extremely regional matter, and I am by no means suggesting that Chinese will dethrone English in its European home turf.
...in the West. Hispanics listen to Hispanic music; Arabs listen to Arab music; South Asians listen to South Asian music, and East Asians - from Japan and China down to Thailand and Indonesia - listen to a combination of local and Korean music. Japan and the Sinosphere additionally have their own massive domestic music industries. Between Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland, there is a massive local music scene encompassing more artists than anyone could ever listen to in one lifetime. Most relevantly, dozens of these artists are outright superstars — Faye Wong, Jay Chou, Teresa Teng, Leo Ku, Joey Yung, Jacky Cheung, Jolin Tsai, Li Yuchun, Elva Hsiao, Coco Lee, Angela Chang, Zhou Bichang, and Jane Zhang are just a few. Again, all of these are virtually unknown in the West, so it's understandable that a European would think there's no notable contemporary pop culture coming out of China.
A quarter of the world's 20 most popular websites are Chinese. Despite this, Chinese has a Internet penetration of only 32.6%, and with a growth of 1,277% over the past decade (compared to English with a penetration of 42% and a growth of 281%), it doesn't take very sophisticated mathematics to realize that parity will easily be achieved within a few years. I've already addressed music and film, and as for literature, all I'll say is that most young people these days — be they Anglophone, Sinophone, or otherwise — don't read much more than Facebook updates and Twitter feeds anyway. It's sad, but it's the truth. That said, China is the largest publisher of books, magazines and newspapers in the world. Guo Jingming and Han Han are two authors extremely popular among Chinese youth, and Jin Yong has sold over 100 million books worldwide, with an asteroid named after him to boot.
The US is one of the most hated countries in the world, with the UK trailing not far behind. The stereotype of the average American is someone fat, stupid, arrogant, racist, uncultured, violent, and imperialistic — not "cool".
Hollywood is tied for the second largest film industry in the world, and likely to drop to third within the decade — why, then, is it the barometer by which we measure global cinematic recognition?
I hate being redundant, but for the sake of thoroughness, this is an entirely regional matter. Of course an American such as myself and a European such as yourself are going to be well-versed in Anglophone literature. The problem with this, however, is that there's a world outside the West. Chinese students study the likes of Sima Qian, Zhuangzi, Mencius, Confucius, Lu Xun, and the I Ching — they do, after all, have a literary tradition extending back thousands of years. I could similarly post a list of dozens of 20th century writers, but this post is already long enough. Wikipedia has a massive wealth of information on Chinese literature, and yet, incredibly, it's only the tip of the iceberg, because most Chinese don't use Wikipedia, and thus China is proportionately severely underrepresented relative to articles about topics pertaining to the West (the same is true of most of Asia and Africa).
"We", being Europe and the Anglosphere. Indians are listening to A.R. Rahman, not Beyonce. Northeast and Southeast Asians are listening to SNSD and Super Junior, not Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne. Arabs are listening to Fairuz and Amr Diab, not Bob Dylan and Chris Brown. This alone is half the world's population, with the other half consisting a third of Latin America, who mainly listen to Hispanic music but—yes—sometimes American as well, sub-Sahara Africa, which is at least a century away from ever being an influential consumer market, and, of course the West, which—yes—revolves around American culture. Between this post and the twelve others I've posted in this thread, I've said all I have to say about this topic — and I've probably spent upwards of twelve hours doing so. If anyone has any truly new and substantial points to add to this discussion, I'd be happy to address them, but otherwise, I feel this is regressing into nothing more than a back-and-forth rhetorical exercise. I stand 100% behind everything I've thus far said, but if you (this "you" being a collective address) still aren't buying it, there's nothing more I can write or cite to change that, and that's fine. Only history will eventually bring closure to this argument, and, of course, by then, we'll have all forgotten this silly little Internet conversation. Que lástima... 10 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 53 of 121 18 July 2011 at 6:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nway,
im not arrogant just concerned cause after see what disasters can cause global warming, i just could not believe that economic forecast could be so good. If china s future is so bright im very happy , cAuse my wife s family lives there! As i stated before im ignorant in economy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tibbles Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5192 days ago 245 posts - 422 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 54 of 121 18 July 2011 at 8:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
However, I would not minimize the pervasiveness of American pop culture. Ask any Indian or Singaporean or Indonesian or Taiwanese who Lady Gaga is or who Michael Jackson was, and more often than not they'll know. Furthermore, Lady Gaga is even making inroads in India's insular pop music industry: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230374530457635 8841711275986.html While American pop culture is not dominant everywhere to the exclusion of local cultures, it has pretty much seeped in to some degree everywhere except maybe North Korea. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 56 of 121 18 July 2011 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All these figures and tables make my head spin. To me it all boils down to population size and per capita income. There is no doubt that China is a major economic force and will become even greater. There is no wonder that every exporting business in the world is drooling over the Chinese market. Think about it, if I can sell one widget to one in a 1000 Chinese, that's many times more than 1 in 1000 Americans. That's why there is this gold rush mentality in the West about the Chinese market. I'm not surprised that Ferrari sells more cars in China than in the USA. I would even think that Ferrari always sold more cars outside of Italy than inside. Maybe Steinway sells more pianos in China than in the USA. I do know that the whole luxury goods market has gone crazy over China.
I don't doubt that at some point there will be more native speakers of Chinese (I'm not saying Mandarin) on the Internet than native speakers of English. If you want to call that ruling the internet, then that will be the case. A whole different issue is that of Mandarin replacing English as the lingua franca of the world. English is still spreading around the world at a fast rate, and particularly in China itself. Of course, there is a lot of interest in Mandarin in the West for obvious reasons, but I hardly see any sign of Mandarin becoming a universal lingua franca in the near future. In fact, I think we'll see more Chinese becoming proficient in English than foreigners becoming proficient in Mandarin. Just like the luxury goods market, the language teaching industry is crazy about China. In the long run, who knows what will happen? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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