Can Chinese replace English as the Global Language?

English is nowadays known as the language of our global village. But as China lives an economic boost, there are no limits to how far this massive country and its language might reach. In the future will the term “westernisation” be replace by “chinanisation”? And will we live under the Beijing influence with Chinese as our global language?

A language is created from different cultures but will follow the steps from its own country. Let’s take English in Great Britain. In the 17th C during the age of colonization, Great Britain was the world leader, and that lead to English being the world’s language. Due to its large domination, an efficient proliferation of their language was happening through trade. Also, Great Britain ruled all commercial activities so for any one to participate in the dailies activities, they had to be able to communicate in English. However, Great Britain’s power is a shadow of what it used to be, but the language itself still remained as powerful and popular through out the whole world. Today, English is considered as the world’s global language or the first global lingua franca with its 480 million speakers.

Even though the outburst of the Chinese economy, Chinese itself is still regarded as a mysterious language. With its alphabet that consists of 6000 letters and its tones and variations, it still stays very foreign to a large number of the world’s population. Chinese is a descendant from the Sino-Tibetan and has now spread into several dialects which are not understandable within each other, for example Cantonese, Mandarin and Hakka. In main land China, the official language is Mandarin which took words from the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. All these facts give an image of difficulty and complexity to the Chinese language, but none the less, it is still the most spoken language in the world today with its 1,3 billion speakers.

It is commonly known that China’s future is very unpredictable, but it is becoming a very powerful country that throws out threats to today’s world leaders. So could Chinese replace English as a global language?
Chinese might indeed be a difficult language for Latin based speakers, but that does not stop the driving force in future economy to start negotiating and working in Chinese with international companies. With its massive population of 1.3 billion which represents more then 20% of the world population (1 person in 5 lives in China today), China clearly states that there is no clear reason why should such a strong country should live the consequences of “Westernisation” or “Americanisation”, stated in the China Daily, an article by Niu Chiang and Martin Wolff “Does China not yet realize the reality that the emerging China has the immediate clout to demand that those desiring to do business in China or with China should learn Mandarin, rather than expect 1.3 billion Chinese to learn English?"
However, a large disadvantage for Chinese being the next global language, is that is only spoken in 5 countries which are all situated in Asia (Singapore, China, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippine). Also, China has 937 million of native speakers, to only 20 million secondary speakers. This shows problems for the language being considered as global because only 2% of the speakers are not native speakers. So Chinese is still mostly considered as a mother tongue.
On the other hand, English is widely spread over the world. It is spoken in 115 countries by 480 million people in total with one third being secondary speakers. This shows how English is more of an international language.

In conclusion, Chinese is too local and therefore is far behind English as a global language, but with Chinese’s huge potential for the future, it is still a threat in the long term to overtake English in the race of globalisation.

Reference:
http://www.esperanto.org.nz/chinglish.html

China: Shifts in consumption patterns from overseas to domestic

Before China can be seen as a world leader, it needs to reinforce its domestic economy and maximise the local opportunities before overseas corporation seize the chance to do so. A conference at Chatham House (London) on the 12th of November examines this topic with the support of China-Britain Business Council. The discussion was leaded by four panellists: Benjamin Schmittzehe (CEO of Schmittzehe & Partners), Jasper Becker (Former foreign correspondent and Editor in Asia for 18 years), Eric Thun (Peter Moores University Lecturer in Chinese Studies, Said Business School, University of Oxford) and Dr. Kerry Brown (Associate Fellow, Chatham House).

Macro: Shift from export to domestic market

It is a common misconception to think that China needs to create a shift from an economy based on export to a domestic consumption economy. From a macro perspective, the government needs to focus on both markets equally. The domestic market by now represents 35% of the GDP in China, it might be lower than the UK and USA ranging from 60% to 75%, but nonetheless the local market already has a fundamental role that cannot be neglected. On the other hand, the net export rate is still growing fast and will rise once the global economy will pick up. This might be a factor why China is focusing more rapidly on the domestic consumption.
China has a traditional saving culture that is slowly being erased by the young generation. It is important to note that the successful entrepreneurs are between 20 to 30 years old which is very young next to the West.
One aspect on the government agenda is to create an “iron rice bowl” for the population so they do not need to worry financially about health, education and pension. Since this governmental support has yet to be seen, this is one of the main barriers for the Chinese to adopt a spending behaviour rather than saving. One popular way to save is through investment, mainly in large cooperation and in the government, which is worth around 40% of the GDP. This figure is high due to the large number of companies who work hand in hand with the government.

Consumption in China
The Chinese are starting to have the luxury to spend more on what they want compare to sticking to what they need. This is in partly due to capitalism. In the urban area, there is a growth in health care, education and pension funds which leads to more recreational spending. Tier 2 in China already sees saturation of product due to the over supply. In the rural areas, the spending is still on basic expenditure partly due to the lack of choice. This opens up a great opportunity for business to reach to the rural areas of China. For example the food spending in the U.S. in 1985 was equal to China’s food spending in 2005. There is large margin for growth in that industry as well as for many more. One of the main limits to domestic consumption is low infrastructure. On the bright side the stimulus package is helping move forward from that issue but is not the entire solution. One cost effective solution is internet shopping which has created a rise in credit cards use.

China joining WTO (2001)
It was a thought that the consequences of China joining the WTO would create a disadvantage for China as the multi nationals would dominate the market. This was not the case. The Chinese firms reacted quickly to the new competition which boosted the local economy. For example, the percentage of Chinese people owning shares is domestic firms in 2006 is higher than to 2001. This is just an example out of many of how the WTO in China has boosted the local market.

The battle for the middle
Each domestic industry in China is separated in three segments: the high end, the middle; and the low end. The low end sector is largely dominated by the Chinese and the high end sector by multi nationals. This is due to the technological and quality advance from the West. The advantages for the bottom end market for local corporations is that it can create or adjust its price to suite the population, it can focus solely on the Chinese markets and the industry is separated in large sectors which makes it more practical to provide for many with one single product type. However, all these advantages attract high competition within the domestic market, leading to very tight profit margins. On the other hand, the multi nationals enjoy the large economy of scale in the high end sector. They are also facing high competition difficulties as, as mentioned above, the urban area is a small portion of China’s population and the market is already saturated.
Nowadays, the middle market has the biggest growth, which is a big opening in China. Hence both local and multi nationals firms desire a large portion of it. To gain that advantage, the multinationals are localising design and sourcing to be more fitted for the competition in the domestic market. The other side of this change is that the local population (companies) are being trained by the multinationals, which helps them (Chinese) compete with a smaller gap. China is the only developing country that can grow in such way due to its “luxury of size”. The increase of competition that followed China joining the WTO is in favour to local businesses and augmented the opportunities in the domestic market.

China - New "Globalizer"

In 2005, CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation) tried to buy an offshore Los Angeles-based oil company and was rebuffed. Congress man in Washington “questioned the wisdom of letting a big American oil company get taken over by a partially state-owned company from a country that, while not an enemy of the U.S., is not an ally either.”

On November 4th, 2009, “Norwegian energy group Statoil said it was selling some of its US offshore oil assets to China's state-owned CNOOC, marking the first step by a Chinese energy major into the US market.” (see article)

Is American under estimating China’s power?

China is currently taking over the role of “Globalizer” form the U.S. who is letting it happen without much of a fight. Would America have already accepted that the rest of the world does not want to hold the U.S. dollar as the world currency any more? For a country with such pride, it is hard to believe. China may simply be maximising the opportunity the financial crisis has opened up.

China and America are the two biggest green house-gas polluters accounting for 40% of the world carbon dioxide emissions. Currently China is producing more than 7bn tonnes but is forecast to produce 12bn tonnes by 2030 of carbon dioxide emissions. On the other hand America is now at 6bn tonnes and is forecast to stay stagnant passing 2030. This creates a natural resources tag-of-war between both super-powers, and China is getting a head start.

Iranian officials cut a deal last summer China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). “Five major’ energy deals worth about US$ 120 billion over the years to come.” Iran today accounts for 14% of Chinese oil imports and Beijing has secured China a safe stake in the country.

This crisis is a perfect opportunity for China, a country which suffered less from the current crisis, to gain a fundamental step forward in today’s global race with the U.S. Some may says that this is possible due a shaken U.S. that is still entirely focused on self recovery, I like to think that China has clearly understood the game and is just started to play – The world has yet to see all the vibrant colours of the Dragon.

References:

Bill Powell. (2009). It's China's World. (We just live in it). Fortune. 160, NO.7 (October 26, 2009), p55.
Vivienne Walt. (2009). China bets on Iran. Fortune. 160, NO.7 (October 26, 2009), p54.
Pierre-Henry Deshayes. (2009). Chinese giant to buy US oil assets: company. Available: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20091104/tbs-chinese-giant-to-buy-us-oil-assets-c-8cc5291.html. Last accessed 6 Nov 2009.