As I mentioned in a previous article I had wrote, the number of people learning Chinese in the United States still lags far behind French and Spanish. In a sharp contrast, the number of people who study Chinese has increased tremendously in Asian countries. Take Japan for an example, it ranks as the most studied language in schools, just second behind English. This could signal that Americans are still unreceptive to the idea of learning Chinese or fail to understand the importance of this language in helping them compete on the global economic stage. This dilemma has has caught the attention of politicians in Washington. The US government responded that they provided millions in funding for schools to increase the number of Chinese classes being offered a few year ago by listing Chinese as a critical language. They also increased the number of teachers to help increase the exposure in the US to learn Chinese.
China currently has a population of over 1,3 billion people. It is hard to ignore the fact that learning Chinese is the language of the future although English is still the most widely used language in the world. It is ignorant to believe that we only need communicate in English and expect the rest of the world to follow us because China is the fastest growing economy in the world. If you fail to foresee the importance of learning Chinese, you would be shortchanging yourselves and possibly lose out on business opportunities.
As a result we are now starting to see a trickle down effect. In previous years we mainly saw Chinese families taking their children to learn Chinese as a way of maintaining their cultural heritage. It is different now, there are more and more non-Chinese parents to enroll their children in classes to learn Chinese. These countries believe that learning Chinese will increase the career opportunities for their children in the future. This realization has come to light as China continues to be the United States biggest trading partner. Learning Chinese will help give anyone who is interested in doing business in China a clear advantage in terms of economic opportunities. Chinese is not only spoken in China but also widely used in Asian countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
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