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The Chinese Are Coming


SuperMikey
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O was present at last weekend's Chinese New Year ceremony and the Chinese ambaddador was there to give a speech. I was quite impressed tbh and we had a great day out.

 

I do recalla couple of years ago that the City Council were courting ther Chinese olympic committee, maybe that is now on the cards? Big boost for the local economy.

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The Chinese already are the world's dominant superpower, imo. They own a good deal of the West's debt, make the vast majority of the worlds' goods. They're in pole position. In what respect are they lacking?

A very large proportion of what they make is still sub-standard. I rarely buy anything Chinese-made if I can avoid it.

 

By way of example, we recently built a section of a road in Tanzania, about 100Km long. The Chinese built the adjacent section, also about 100Km long. Both projects started at the same time.

 

We opened our road 4 years ago. The Chinese are still there, digging up bits they thought they'd finished, and doing them again.

 

Chinese contractors bid for almost every infrastructure project in Africa, often several of them. They are always cheapest. All of them. By a mile. It is by no means uncommon, though, for the job to be awarded to the lowest non-Chinese bidder.

 

Don't get me wrong, they are definately coming, but they are not here yet. And as they slowly learn how much it actually costs to do things properly, they are becoming noticably less and less dominant.

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This has been on the cards for a few years now. The power exchange, on a purely business point of view will swing heavily towards the Chinese in the next few years.

 

My colleague teaches 'Business English' to Chinese students and companies who employ a lot of Chinese staff, he seems to think that the larger British companies would be wise to teach basic business terms in mandarin or at least cultural awareness/differences/taboos etc if they are to move with the times as the Chinese will be very big players in the not too distant future.

 

At the moment, teaching phrasal verbs, collocations and idioms are a basic and necessary requirement for Chinese Business Englishstudents, I think that this will have to be reciprocal very soon.

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