The Chinese will just have to learn English?

[Rubber Duck]

It would appear that the converse is going to be true!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4594698.stm

[drbiohealth]

Amazing! World order changeth!

[IDNCowboy]

It seems that many don't learn it but they go to professional school later on and learn the language

[gammascalper]

Originally Posted by Dwrixon

It would appear that the converse is going to be true!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4594698.stm

Don't bother looking -- bird's nest has been registered. I checked a long time ago!

[Domagon]

Perhaps, but such stories remind me of all the hype back in the 80s with everyone touting learning Japanese.

On the face of it would seem Chinese would be a no-brainder being that China is an economic powerhouse and has a massive population.

But China is not a totally unified country by any means nor the languages / dialects spoken.

Many people are assuming that China is going to rule the world based on their large population and manufacturing base ... certainly makes sense on the surface, but when one looks a bit closer, China has a lot of serious issues that will limit their global influence - and that includes language ... sure many people will want to learn it, but many will find that English remains important, and in many circles that's not changing anytime soon.

China has yet to come to grips with the massive economic, environmental, and health care issues that ever coming closer to roost, especially as China's relatively young population ages. Heavy-handed central government coupled with very corrupt local / regional governments makes China somewhat unstable. China much like the former Soviet Union consists of numerous diverse regions / populations - much of China's obession with censorsing newspapers, internet, etc is directly related to quelling dissention so as to prevent regions, such as Taiwan, from breaking away.

Countries like U.K. and Holland have incredible global influence despite their relatively small size - land area and population / number of speakers alone are poor indicators of whether a language will dominate in the global economic landscape; more likely multiple languages will dominate to some extent, much like now.

Ron