There is 0 reason to learn mandarin if you're doing it for travel/business reasons
In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada.
In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most people speaks English.
In Malaysia people usually speak at least 4 languages. Because it was ruled by Britain before, people speak English fairly well.
Lastly, in China, well, nobody is traveling there now. International travel is down 97% this year, even after reopening. And if you're doing business there, well, there's no point understanding the contract in Mandarin because most likely it won't be enforced, and will favor local business anyways by the courts. What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound. So even if your read the English part of the sign you cannot understand it.
>What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound.
I don't think this is a fair take for a couple of reasons.
Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
Secondly, english as a global lingua franca is not a given and we in the anglosphere ought to be gracious in it's modern historical role, lest it decline (this is an exact mirror of dollar reserve privilege). Your statement reads as "be more accommodating for me". But through the prism of good manners it smacks of liberal entitlement.
>There is 0 reason to learn
hoo boy, i don't get paid enough for this... carry on
English IS the global lingua franca TODAY, used by most travelers to navigate through an unknown environment. if the signs in China are not translated into English TODAY, then there's no reason to go there TODAY.
I'm confused at what you think isn't a fair take. It is pretty screwy to replace existing English translation (useful to people who speak English) with phonetic transcriptions of Chinese words into Latin characters (useful to... who?). Sounds dumb to me.
> Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
There's no Mandarin/English translation for a "STOP" sign? I expect there is such a thing as a literal translation for most short instructions, the type of which you might see on a sign, for instance.
Which part of Taiwan did You visit? I visit Taiwan yearly. Only those night vendors served tourist area speak basic English. Futher away from Taipei my English less useful. Doing business with English is painfully slow.
I dont speak Mandarin I usually rely on my basic Taiwanese dialect.
In Malaysia it is depend on which part of Malaysia. Not all Malaysian Chinese can speak Mandarin. Certain part speak Cantonese or other dialect.
Even in places as English friendly as the Netherlands or Germany, working with locals is going to be smoother with a grasp of native tongues of the people you’re interacting with.
And if you’re actually interested in riding the ranks as a career it’s a must that you can be able to work in the language comfortable for your superiors (in some places that’ll be English, of course…)
It’s possible to not have it, but every successful outsider I’ve seen in foreign countries learn the local language even if it’s “unnecessary”
I recently read something suggesting that the US State Department and Foreign Intelligence Agencies are having a hard time with language training and I'm not sure anyone could hold up the argument that their capabilities have remained at the same level as during the Cold War. There are some circumstances that explain this, areas and languages of interest change more now. But I remember when Pakistan's underground nuclear test came as a surprise and even after the Global War on Whatever, I'm not sure the US ever had as much understanding as the Soviets. (Who knows about the Russians?)
Language will be a human struggle as long as humans run the world, I think you're absolutely correct on the meaningful and valuable practice of learning the language of the place you want to succeed in.
I'm only fluent in English, and I like it very much for its flexibility and expressivity, but I'm familiar with a handful of romantic languages and think every language has it's high and low points.
I can’t help but think that if you’re doing business in China from abroad, it’s good to know Mandarin. Seems like a weird take to claim there’s zero value in it.
It's definitely hyperbole, but the core idea that learning Chinese is rapidly becoming less useful for Westerners is fair. It'd be a fantastic idea if you live in BRICS and friends though. I expect China to essentially dominate that group for the rest of my lifetime, at the least.
How are you going to do any kind of business with Chinese companies without speaking Chinese? Even if you use an interpreter, clearly someone in the loop is speaking Chinese.
If there are any business to do in China in the next 10-20 years. Foreign investment in China is down 90% this year. Again, international travel in China is down 97% this year. Apparently everyone else except hacker news readers are aware of the shift.
I doubt I can train myself to do better than ChatGPT can, this late in the game. When I last needed to communicate in Chinese, which I often have to for products I’ve ordered or other mishaps, all I did was use ChatGPT and compare the result in other translation apps to make sure it approximated what I wanted to say. I also included the English version for completeness and accuracy. While it’s true I should learn other languages… right now it’s simply easier to assume computers can take on this role in the near future, at least until ChatGPT can be trusted as an education tool.
It’s easy. The Chinese companies that do business with me speak English to me.
However, after the first couple of times trying to teach in China and South Korea, I turned down further gigs, because I felt the students were not understanding me.
I doubt it's about COVID now. The government has really ruined China's "brand" internationally.
1. You need an onerous-to-obtain visa to visit. There is no visa exemption.
2. Banking is a total pain for a foreigner. Many places only accept Alipay or Wechat, which require a Chinese bank account. Cash doesn't work well either, because the largest denomination is tiny.
3. Many US-China flights were canceled in the pandemic and never restarted afterwards. As a result, flights to China are expensive.
4. The Western apps are commonly blocked in China, and the local apps don't have an English translation. Your smartphone is a lot less useful in China.
5. Many US employers ban their employees from bringing company equipment (laptops) into China for fear of corporate espionage.
6. Lots of reports of hostile behavior toward westerners...
The list could go on. There's a reason e.g. Japanese tourism is booming!
2.) No business need to travel there. Foreign investment is down 90% this year. Literally no US/europe presence in the trade fairs in China the summer.
3.) Flights are super expensive, because of low demand, upwards of $5k-10k. travel out of China is down hugely due to the economy, you can search on youTube for videos from Shanghai airport where the airport is devoid of travelers, and filled with empty shops.
4.) It is very hard for travelers to navigate through China. No English translations in street signs. One needs Alipay to pay for anything in China, which is complicated to setup. Ethnocentrism from rising nationalism means there could be racism/violence against travelers.
I can probably provide some perspective on this given I:
- studied Chinese at university in both Australia and China
- worked there for about 5 years
- have a mobile app for learning Chinese [0]
I think the biggest difference between when I started learning (20+ years ago) and now is that China is no longer seen as a positive, growing force in the world economy. I started learning because I thought it would be useful for business in future, and I was probably right - up until around 2012.
Since then, the country became increasingly hostile to foreigners, foreign companies decided to cut their losses and pull out, the internet ecosystem has become worse and worse and visas are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. China doesn't have much in the way of soft power (unlike, say, Korea), so it's just not a top destination for anyone coming from overseas.
That being said, there's also been a huge outflow of Mandarin speakers to other countries (like Australia), and Mandarin is becoming the default second language at junior/primary schools.
Mandarin is always going to be relevant (I mean, there's more than a billion speakers - it's not like they're going to vanish overnight). But I do agree that the language is becoming less "useful", because there are fewer and fewer prospects for working in China. Even international tourism is becoming less and leas attractive.
As an American born person with some Chinese heritage, it's interesting to see this trend play out in myself alongside wider society.
When I was growing up, my parents and relatives would constantly try to convince me to learn my ethnic language, half to know my roots and half to catch the "China train".
In university, I took it upon myself to take Mandarin courses for several years, but only got to middling competency.
Now, as the years go on, I find that once innate desire to "one day learn Mandarin" gradually fade away. In terms of usefulness:
- it seems less and less likely that I'll ever live in China for a significant length of time due to all the common reasons others in the thread are mentioning
- I have many international Chinese friends, but our friendships are based on cultural affinity rather than linguistic affinity, so they're perfectly fine switching to English whenever we need to talk about something complex.
It's interesting, but many of my American peers of Chinese heritage are actually learning Korean or Japanese, which would have been extremely rare 10 years ago.
I'm not ethnically Chinese but I studied Mandarin in college in the early 2000s then moved to Taiwan for almost a decade. I don't regret doing it, but it didn't provide me any sort of business or career advantage like everyone thought it would in the early 2000s
People never looked at the need for foreign language with enough granularity. For example there was never and real large demand for Westerners to communicate with mainland China. We send specs, they manufacture them. China doesn’t really do FDI here. Now there was a time language skills were a major plus in law or finance in Hong Kong, but I’m not sure about that anymore. The new US TSMC plants might have some needs but probably won’t have trouble filling them.
10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China.
Today, even many Chinese companies believe that China is not a good place for making business (e.g: AliBaba, Ever Grande, Country Garden, Tencent, etc).
Slightly off-topic: about 15 years ago Golman Sachs would say that the BRICS were the next countries to become rich.
Guess what...
Brazil and South Africa reverted back to its historical kleptocracy, Russia to autocracy, China to communism and India stuck in its economic protectionism.
> 10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China
When I was in college in the late 80’s, I studied Japanese and even did a foreign exchange program there because OF COURSE I would be working with Japanese people after I graduated.
I'm very interested to see how this picture will look 20-30 years out.
Wealth is concentrated in pockets and the average person gets by. China wealth Gini index is moderating somewhat around Japan tier. US Gini is very high and closer to the world average.
Parts of China did, parts did not. The income inequality is really quite striking for what's notionally a communist worker's paradise.
A few years back I was in Xining, an obscure third-tier provincial capital. The main shopping street could have been Tokyo.or Seoul, full of neon, fancy brands and expensive restaurants. But you walk one single block out and you're in a street market with flies buzzing around sheep heads and slabs of meat hanging off hooks.
It's sad, I think people wanting to learn a language represents some kind of hope, and 10 years ago we were overall bullish on increased international collaboration. Now things have become way more insular, a future of international collaboration between superpowers seems way less likely. It's really sad.
We are absolutely moving towards a more fractured world with regional centers of power. Frankly it's hard to imagine what would re-consolidate power. Probably something terrible. Last time that was the widespread destruction of the industrialized world (save the USA) and a long, protracted nuclear standoff that the United States won through economic diplomacy and security guarantees.
I would be interested in seeing the numbers around Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish etc. in my opinion, this may specifically be an avoid China phenomenon.
It's certainly more of a China focused phenomenon than say, Hindi and Spanish at least.
With Spanish learning rate would be high because it's just in general a very popular second language to learn, especially for Americans, regardless of any anticipated economic benefit.
With Hindi, English is also commonly spoken in India and a large portion of official business is done in English due to it being an option external from the many different languages spoken in the country. So there wouldn't be much benefit to learning Hindi specifically unless as a hobby.
Japan and Korea might be seeing an uptick in foreigners learning the language due to their cultural exports, which are increasingly popular in the West.
I can't understand this impulse. It seems blindingly clear to me that the international influence of China is rising and will continue to rise, and the need for Mandarin-English bilingual work will continue to skyrocket. If you do not believe that China is going to be an even more massive world power in the coming decades, then I guess I understand the drop in interest. I just cannot fathom how that could happen, though.
The article puts some import on "soft power"... but is the economic rise of China really going to be soft power? The manufacturing capacity in China is amazing. We're not talking about exporting cultural goods. It's real goods and real power.
The money quote for me:
> The market may have also got more competitive. Bilingual Chinese graduates now fill many of the jobs that require Mandarin. In terms of language skills, they are often more qualified than their Western counterparts. All Chinese children start learning English by age eight, some even earlier. University-entrance exams in China require a high level of proficiency.
So basically, the US students are being out-competed by the Chinese students. Learning Mandarin is not incentivized in the US.
I do not look forward to a time when all the important jobs require Mandarin proficiency, and none of the US graduates have the skills to occupy those positions.
I look forward to deeper comments or at least substantiated refutations.
> I can't understand this impulse. It seems blindingly clear to me that the international influence of China is rising and will continue to rise, and the need for Mandarin-English bilingual work will continue to skyrocket. If you do not believe that China is going to be an even more massive world power in the coming decades, then I guess I understand the drop in interest.
China is having less and less influence globally. Look at the decoupling. It is having more influence regionally. This is a global trend by the way - a weaker global order and a rise of regional poles of power. Regardless of this, English is the de-facto international language and China is hostile to foreign business. It's really only useful if you decide to move to China.
And even if this is not convincing, the trajectory of China is questionable at this point between allying with Russia, a complete disdain for democratic values with 0 constitutional protections (free speech, privacy, etc.), abysmal demographics, and shakey economics. There will be no Chinese global order.
this, from tfa, seems like perfectly adequate reasoning to me:
8<--------------------------------------------
Students in the West may have also soured on the idea of doing business with China. Mandarin teachers point to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as a seminal moment, when excitement for learning the language took off. Since then, though, China has grown more oppressive under Xi Jinping. Its human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been widely reported. In most rich countries negative views of China are at or near all-time highs.
8<--------------------------------------------
i know that if i were a student in an american university right now, the thought of doing business in or with china would not cross my mind - kind of similar to how, when i was growing up in the 80s, there was very good money indians could make working in saudi arabia, but neither me nor any of my friends would have been remotely interested in going there.
I'd hire a Chinese student who graduates from a US university. Their understanding of Chinese & American culture/language would be far better than an American who studies Mandarin for a few years.
China has shown how hostile and vicious it can be, and damaged its reputations as a safe business environment.
No one can sleep well at night, knowing that they're completely reliant on a foreign
country with such aggressive and hostile policy. Which is why many countries all over the world are starting programs to diversify and promote local manufacturing to cut back on reliance on China, one step at a time.
So, don't worry about future jobs, for me, I'm betting it's downhill from here for China. They played their card too early.
It's not China vs US. It's China vs the whole world, china has literally no friends that share its interests because it's so self-centered and intolerable, not even many of it's own oppressed people.
In short, china reputation as a safe business environment/partner is already damaged, and if it continues with the same policy and overplay its hand, then in the next two decades its role will diminish and it'll be isolated, even if it was still super power by then.
Their population is set to drop about 500,000,000 by 2100, and they have scared away investors with the imprisonments. Also, destroying your own tech sector in the name of ideology means they aren’t super interested in the people.
I think the general feeling is that even if China continues to rise, “we” don’t really want anything to do with them. Alternatives will be found and China will at the very least be a soft enemy that espouses something we don’t want to be, very much like the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
Soft power matters. "Cool" matters. China will always struggle against freer and more open societies that bring people into their culture, music, art, and other forms of expression. The comparison to what Japan and South Korea have done should be a wake up call for these places. Even Russia doesn't have the cultural cachet it did during the Cold War.
Something which I think I in my "western ignorance" underestimated is the massive amount of soft power Japan wields through its economy and culture in East/South Asia. Possibly because Japanese culture mainly reached geeks such as myself in Europe.
All the way down to Oceania and even the most nationalistic PRC national, every single one of them that I know have experienced Japanese manga and anime since childhood in the same way that Disney had a reach across "The West". Heck, look at today's "geek culture" in the PRC and tell me that you do not see the obvious parallels to Japan.
I don't think framing it as unilaterally China's fault is helpful. Obviously they have their issues, though it seems like ~40 years of increasing trade with them has improved their standard of living and backed them off of a lot of ideology, even of they still have a long way to go. The issue now is the regression back to isolationism - according to the article it's over the past 10 years that interest has eroded.
It's just not that useful. It's only useful in China and foreigners can't really conduct business there. It's basically only useful if you move to China which is just a handful of people and shrinking at this point.
"unless you live in a bilingual neighborhood" is key here. Many countries across the world teach English as a second language and in western trade it's the lingua franca. Mandarin is spoken in various countries, but many of the Mandarin-speaking countries also have English as a common second language.
Readit News
In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada.
In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most people speaks English.
In Malaysia people usually speak at least 4 languages. Because it was ruled by Britain before, people speak English fairly well.
Lastly, in China, well, nobody is traveling there now. International travel is down 97% this year, even after reopening. And if you're doing business there, well, there's no point understanding the contract in Mandarin because most likely it won't be enforced, and will favor local business anyways by the courts. What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound. So even if your read the English part of the sign you cannot understand it.
I don't think this is a fair take for a couple of reasons.
Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
Secondly, english as a global lingua franca is not a given and we in the anglosphere ought to be gracious in it's modern historical role, lest it decline (this is an exact mirror of dollar reserve privilege). Your statement reads as "be more accommodating for me". But through the prism of good manners it smacks of liberal entitlement.
>There is 0 reason to learn
hoo boy, i don't get paid enough for this... carry on
> Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.
There's no Mandarin/English translation for a "STOP" sign? I expect there is such a thing as a literal translation for most short instructions, the type of which you might see on a sign, for instance.
Dead Comment
In Malaysia it is depend on which part of Malaysia. Not all Malaysian Chinese can speak Mandarin. Certain part speak Cantonese or other dialect.
And if you’re actually interested in riding the ranks as a career it’s a must that you can be able to work in the language comfortable for your superiors (in some places that’ll be English, of course…)
It’s possible to not have it, but every successful outsider I’ve seen in foreign countries learn the local language even if it’s “unnecessary”
Language will be a human struggle as long as humans run the world, I think you're absolutely correct on the meaningful and valuable practice of learning the language of the place you want to succeed in.
I'm only fluent in English, and I like it very much for its flexibility and expressivity, but I'm familiar with a handful of romantic languages and think every language has it's high and low points.
However, after the first couple of times trying to teach in China and South Korea, I turned down further gigs, because I felt the students were not understanding me.
1. You need an onerous-to-obtain visa to visit. There is no visa exemption.
2. Banking is a total pain for a foreigner. Many places only accept Alipay or Wechat, which require a Chinese bank account. Cash doesn't work well either, because the largest denomination is tiny.
3. Many US-China flights were canceled in the pandemic and never restarted afterwards. As a result, flights to China are expensive.
4. The Western apps are commonly blocked in China, and the local apps don't have an English translation. Your smartphone is a lot less useful in China.
5. Many US employers ban their employees from bringing company equipment (laptops) into China for fear of corporate espionage.
6. Lots of reports of hostile behavior toward westerners...
The list could go on. There's a reason e.g. Japanese tourism is booming!
1.) There is a very high dislike of China across the world.
Large majorities in most of the 19 countries surveyed have negative views of China https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views...
2.) No business need to travel there. Foreign investment is down 90% this year. Literally no US/europe presence in the trade fairs in China the summer.
3.) Flights are super expensive, because of low demand, upwards of $5k-10k. travel out of China is down hugely due to the economy, you can search on youTube for videos from Shanghai airport where the airport is devoid of travelers, and filled with empty shops.
4.) It is very hard for travelers to navigate through China. No English translations in street signs. One needs Alipay to pay for anything in China, which is complicated to setup. Ethnocentrism from rising nationalism means there could be racism/violence against travelers.
On a more personal note I've had a family member recently return from living in China. Harassment from local law enforcement had a large part to play.
Also starting from zero since covid restrictions.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-problem-people-do...
Thats what I feel like anyway
Lots of English speaking opportunities too, but I wanna know what people think and how in their native language, I want access
Dead Comment
- studied Chinese at university in both Australia and China
- worked there for about 5 years
- have a mobile app for learning Chinese [0]
I think the biggest difference between when I started learning (20+ years ago) and now is that China is no longer seen as a positive, growing force in the world economy. I started learning because I thought it would be useful for business in future, and I was probably right - up until around 2012.
Since then, the country became increasingly hostile to foreigners, foreign companies decided to cut their losses and pull out, the internet ecosystem has become worse and worse and visas are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. China doesn't have much in the way of soft power (unlike, say, Korea), so it's just not a top destination for anyone coming from overseas.
That being said, there's also been a huge outflow of Mandarin speakers to other countries (like Australia), and Mandarin is becoming the default second language at junior/primary schools.
Mandarin is always going to be relevant (I mean, there's more than a billion speakers - it's not like they're going to vanish overnight). But I do agree that the language is becoming less "useful", because there are fewer and fewer prospects for working in China. Even international tourism is becoming less and leas attractive.
[0] https://polyvox.app
When I was growing up, my parents and relatives would constantly try to convince me to learn my ethnic language, half to know my roots and half to catch the "China train".
In university, I took it upon myself to take Mandarin courses for several years, but only got to middling competency.
Now, as the years go on, I find that once innate desire to "one day learn Mandarin" gradually fade away. In terms of usefulness: - it seems less and less likely that I'll ever live in China for a significant length of time due to all the common reasons others in the thread are mentioning - I have many international Chinese friends, but our friendships are based on cultural affinity rather than linguistic affinity, so they're perfectly fine switching to English whenever we need to talk about something complex.
It's interesting, but many of my American peers of Chinese heritage are actually learning Korean or Japanese, which would have been extremely rare 10 years ago.
10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China.
Today, even many Chinese companies believe that China is not a good place for making business (e.g: AliBaba, Ever Grande, Country Garden, Tencent, etc).
Slightly off-topic: about 15 years ago Golman Sachs would say that the BRICS were the next countries to become rich.
Guess what...
Brazil and South Africa reverted back to its historical kleptocracy, Russia to autocracy, China to communism and India stuck in its economic protectionism.
When I was in college in the late 80’s, I studied Japanese and even did a foreign exchange program there because OF COURSE I would be working with Japanese people after I graduated.
Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap
A few years back I was in Xining, an obscure third-tier provincial capital. The main shopping street could have been Tokyo.or Seoul, full of neon, fancy brands and expensive restaurants. But you walk one single block out and you're in a street market with flies buzzing around sheep heads and slabs of meat hanging off hooks.
Deleted Comment
With Spanish learning rate would be high because it's just in general a very popular second language to learn, especially for Americans, regardless of any anticipated economic benefit.
With Hindi, English is also commonly spoken in India and a large portion of official business is done in English due to it being an option external from the many different languages spoken in the country. So there wouldn't be much benefit to learning Hindi specifically unless as a hobby.
Japan and Korea might be seeing an uptick in foreigners learning the language due to their cultural exports, which are increasingly popular in the West.
The article puts some import on "soft power"... but is the economic rise of China really going to be soft power? The manufacturing capacity in China is amazing. We're not talking about exporting cultural goods. It's real goods and real power.
The money quote for me:
> The market may have also got more competitive. Bilingual Chinese graduates now fill many of the jobs that require Mandarin. In terms of language skills, they are often more qualified than their Western counterparts. All Chinese children start learning English by age eight, some even earlier. University-entrance exams in China require a high level of proficiency.
So basically, the US students are being out-competed by the Chinese students. Learning Mandarin is not incentivized in the US.
I do not look forward to a time when all the important jobs require Mandarin proficiency, and none of the US graduates have the skills to occupy those positions.
I look forward to deeper comments or at least substantiated refutations.
China is having less and less influence globally. Look at the decoupling. It is having more influence regionally. This is a global trend by the way - a weaker global order and a rise of regional poles of power. Regardless of this, English is the de-facto international language and China is hostile to foreign business. It's really only useful if you decide to move to China.
And even if this is not convincing, the trajectory of China is questionable at this point between allying with Russia, a complete disdain for democratic values with 0 constitutional protections (free speech, privacy, etc.), abysmal demographics, and shakey economics. There will be no Chinese global order.
8<--------------------------------------------
Students in the West may have also soured on the idea of doing business with China. Mandarin teachers point to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as a seminal moment, when excitement for learning the language took off. Since then, though, China has grown more oppressive under Xi Jinping. Its human-rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong have been widely reported. In most rich countries negative views of China are at or near all-time highs.
8<--------------------------------------------
i know that if i were a student in an american university right now, the thought of doing business in or with china would not cross my mind - kind of similar to how, when i was growing up in the 80s, there was very good money indians could make working in saudi arabia, but neither me nor any of my friends would have been remotely interested in going there.
No one can sleep well at night, knowing that they're completely reliant on a foreign country with such aggressive and hostile policy. Which is why many countries all over the world are starting programs to diversify and promote local manufacturing to cut back on reliance on China, one step at a time.
So, don't worry about future jobs, for me, I'm betting it's downhill from here for China. They played their card too early.
It's not China vs US. It's China vs the whole world, china has literally no friends that share its interests because it's so self-centered and intolerable, not even many of it's own oppressed people.
In short, china reputation as a safe business environment/partner is already damaged, and if it continues with the same policy and overplay its hand, then in the next two decades its role will diminish and it'll be isolated, even if it was still super power by then.
Deleted Comment
All the way down to Oceania and even the most nationalistic PRC national, every single one of them that I know have experienced Japanese manga and anime since childhood in the same way that Disney had a reach across "The West". Heck, look at today's "geek culture" in the PRC and tell me that you do not see the obvious parallels to Japan.
Going by [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...), you can see how if you want to expand your reach, some languages make more sense to learn than others.