Learning Mandarin – 3 Factors Which Will Change The World

Studying Mandarin in China is just beginning to gain the popularity that it will have in the future. China is on the rise: its economy is growing at astounding rates, politically and diplomatically China has been whitewashed by its successful navigation of the recent economic crisis. Culturally China is also beginning to gain popular acclaim, Chinese artists are becoming more and more interesting with each passing year and overseas production of the cultural main stream is taking more and more notice of China and what China is set to become.  Let us quickly look at these factors, one at a time, and see what is happening in the world, and what we think will happened in the near future. How is China rising and what will it do to Mandarin language studies in the short and medium term?

China’s economic growth has been double digit for most of the last two decades. The effects of the domestic economic reforms were made visible at the same time that they were kicked up into the next gear. The early 1990’s will be remembered in the history books, not only because the spelled the end of one super power, the Soviet Union, but because they were also the beginning of the rise of another. In 1990 China formed it first stock exchange, though this specific change was not instrumental in the overall changes, it serves as both an important milestone and a symbol of the winds of reform that were blowing at the time. Later on in the decade China applied to enter the world trade organization and steps were taken that made it much easier for companies and private investors to transfer capital into and out of China. This coupled with more far reaching and more subtle shifts in policy paved the way for what can only be called a genuine growth miracle. During the last twenty years a billion people, a sixth of mankind, have been lifted out poverty and been set on a course for economic independence from the state. Furthermore, the level of sophistication in the economy has also been steadily rising – from producing more or less only low tech goods China has become a worthy exporter of more and more advanced equipment and machinery. Today China is world leading when it comes to volume of high tech goods, though it still has a long way to go before it reaches a point where it is at the forefront of the research and development of these products.

Second on our list is Chinas political and diplomatic stature. China is the biggest investor in Africa today. The kind of growth China is experiencing requires unrivaled access to basic factors of productions such as ore and oil. In the wake of the economic crisis, which China sailed through with ease, investment capital started to flow outwards and The Middle Kingdom has gobbled up corporations worldwide for the last 2 years. Everything from Volvo to Brazilian power grids is for the taking and China is a very interested buyer.

Last on our list was the significance of China in contemporary popular culture. Never before has so much focus been given on the eastern giant than is the case today. The worlds production companies are waking up to a reality that there are 1.2 billion new consumers that are very interested in finding out how the world views them. In movies such as 2012 – a disaster film where China saves the world, and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps where Chinese investors are courted by Wall Street’s top men, China’s perceived future role is clear. It has long been the case that China needed to assume a more powerful position; after all, China is the country with most people in the world, and as mainstream culture begins to adapt to this more and more people will become keenly aware of the changing and more equal relationship between the east and the west. At the forefront of this realization lies the key to understanding and accessing China – the Mandarin language. As people become more and more aware of the remarkable achievements of China that are taking place, more and more people will come to learn the language.