Your say
Putonghua a waste of time?
Life Expat editors are strong advocates of learning Chinese because of the obvious benefits, but there are arguments against spending so much time learning this difficult language. Jeremy on thechinaexpat.com states five reasons why learning Chinese can be a waste of your time.
1. Many well-educated Chinese would prefer to speak to you in English
2. Little applicable value outside of China
Most mid to upper-level Chinese managers speak OK to great English. The only people you typically need Mandarin to communicate effectively with in a business environment are low-level management. If you aren't stationed in China, then, knowing Chinese won't help you much in communicating with most Chinese companies.
3. Possible negative market value - To really be able to use your Mandarin, you'll need to move to China, where you may have to take a large pay cut to get a job in which being fluent in Chinese would be an asset.
4. Huge opportunity cost
To really learn Chinese well, including reading and writing, you need to spend years studying intensively. These are years in which you could learn several romance languages or another skill set or perhaps even a profession.
5. Non-negligible maintenance costs - Even though I speak Mandarin when dealing with customers, read a Chinese magazine/newspaper daily, watch a bit of TV, and speak almost exclusively in Mandarin with my girlfriend, my Chinese skills are slipping. It takes a lot of effort just to maintain, nonetheless improve, your Chinese.
Right of reply
Jeremy is a Chinese speaker, but his thoughts sparked debate on the subject. Kmm said: "Great! More articles like this! Discouraging more people from learning Chinese just makes our market value that much greater. Well, to be serious with that point, although there is a great opportunity cost in learning Chinese, that also means that people who do learn the language are that much more uncommon."
Good for guanxi
Chris Lowe has taught English in two Chinese universities, and on the whole the students who actually studied had good English, with great pronunciation.
"I think that if a businessperson was serious about developing guanxi, then learning Mandarin would be useful for socializing with their Chinese counterparts. Not useful in the office, but useful at the restaurant and karaoke bar.
There are a lot of bosses in China who rely on their cheap interpreters, who do a great job. But doing away with interpreters when socializing would help with developing the relationship.
But you don't need perfect Chinese for that - in fact you don't need to read much Chinese at all for that. I had a friend who was great at that, but couldn't read any Chinese at all. He just could speak good social Chinese, and got on really well.
Mandarin made me money
Corey disagrees with the argument. "In the short term it can be easier to just use English but this puts us at a tremendous disadvantage when doing business (if Chinese understand our language and culture but we don't understand theirs). Personally speaking Chinese has helped me greatly financially already.
MBA or fluency?
Nino Brown says the arguments are valid if the learner's sole motive for studying Mandarin is economic gain. "Certainly, the 3-4 years one would have to spend in China to achieve something close to fluency would be better invested in an MBA or a JD program, by far. That said, I can't imagine anyone who sets out to learn Mandarin with the vague idea that it might be profitable, sticking with it for more than a week. It's just too damn hard. And let's be realistic, Mandarin is not an asset for Western companies. My company does extensive business in China, and has offices in several major cities. Most of our managers live in expat bubbles, and can't pronounce "ni hao", yet we have Chinese companies, and govt officials, lining up to do business with us. They could care less that we don't speak Mandarin. They, as all business people, care about one thing: the bottom line."
(China Daily 01/19/2009 page10)
