Could Chinese Replace English as the Global Language of Communication (Post Corona Virus)?

Could Chinese Replace English as the Global Language of Communication (Post Corona Virus)?

Largely, English is the global lingua franca because of the superpower status of the United States. But the Covid 19 version of coronavirus could have a lot of unexpected consequences.  One of those might be a change in the language that is used for international communication.

English is currently the global language of communic ation. It is the lingua franca that has been tacitly agreed to by the international community. All international treaties and documents are primarily in English though they are translations into other languages. All over the world, countries, communities and individuals invest perhaps billions of dollars per year to acquire proficiency in English. In short, English is the language that is the great unifier in the world. Without this common language, the world is a tower of babel where communication would be quite difficult if not totally impossible.

How did the world decide to make English the common language? Though originating in the United Kingdom - once the world's most powerful superpower - English probably was adopted as the world's language because of the dominant superpower status of the United States, where English is the official national language. It is inconceivable that the world's most powerful country, America, would have agreed to adopt another language as the language with which it would conduct business. 

After Covid 19, the USA is still probably going to be the most powerful nation in the world. But the Covid 19 disaster definitely exposed a lot of weaknesses in the American systems: economic, public health, political and financial to name a few. It is likely that nations such as China will soon challenge the USA for more sharing of power in a more open and notorious way. If that happens, then the use of English as the world's lingua franca may not be such a foregone conclusion anymore. The world's lingua franca could reflect the world's economic and technological superpower.   And there is a question mark about which nation or nations could really claim that label post Covid. 

It is true that Chinese probably would not be the world's lingua franca if for no other reason because it would be impractical, difficult and overly challenging to teach the world a whole new alphabet. This is a job that will probably take another 50 years and trillions of dollars in investment across nations. But it is to say that individuals would probably be wise to, in addition to investing in English proficiency, to consider investing in the Chinese language as well. Perhaps governments too can prioritize Chinese in schools from a young age so that the next generation of Western populations are ready in the event there a lingua franca paradigm shift. 

China's Dongfeng Motors and France's Renault End Joint Venture due to poor sales

As it turns out, French car manufacturer Renault has been forced to end its joint venture with China's Dongfeng according to several published reports. 

This divorce may come as a surprise to many people given that China - a country filled with people who are thought to love everything French - is the most populous country in the world with arguably the most drivers. How come it was so difficult to sell cars in such an environment?  

But it turns out that Renault is losing big money in China.   The cars just aren't selling in that market. They sold fewer than 20,000 cars in 2019 according to reports and this simply will not cut the muster so they are pulling out. A part of the problem would be the Covid19 pandemic but it also could be other factors.

Already, Renault has had to cut dividends to shareholders and also cut salaries of top execs to stem the losses they are experiencing. But it was not enough to save the joint venture and so they have decided to shutter it.

Their 50 percent stake in teh company will be acquired by Dongfeng and the rest is history. But the company will continue to manufacture electric cars with another joint venture partner in the region.

SOURCES
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/renault-exits-dongfeng-jv-halts-china-car-sales-2020-04-14

Air Quality Improves Dramatically In China During the Coronavirus Lockdowns

Air Quality Improves Dramatically in China During the Coronavirus Lockdowns

As the rest of the world struggles to deal with the coronavirus pandemic (things are now so bad in Italy that people are using social media to form groups that rob and pillage supermarkets in order to find food  - this despite the fact that the government has already earmarked billions in aid), you should be pleased to hear that air quality has dramatically impoved in China where the coronavirus was first detected. The improved air quality comes at the same time that the country moves aggressively to protect the "Citadel" from invaders who might be bringing the virus back to its original shores.

Other cities around the world are also experiencing improved air quality since the coronavirus lockdowns so this suggests that many countries were guilty of polluting the air but no place more than China if the assessment shared by the World Economic Forum is correct. 

China, a nation which has the dubious reputation of being the world's biggest polluting country, has implemented very harsh draconian and authoritarian measures to protect itself against a resurgence of the virus in the country. It appears that this is very good for not just keeping the new cases of Covid 19 low, but also for the air quality circulating above China. For example, A skynes report on air travel to China and the virtual nightmare it has become for international travelers.: "Each  stage was more stringent. At the boarding gate, officials were wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE) - suits, masks, goggles and splash guards."

But drastic airport procedures is not why the air quality is so great. The air quality has dramatically improved because of the lockdowns specifically. 

Due to the lockdowns, the level of air pollution in China and other densely populated urban cities has dramatically reduced according to a Skynews report.

"Air pollution appears to have decreased in urban areas across the world as cities continue to be locked down to prevent the spread of coronavirus. In Europe, cities including Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt showed a reduction in average levels of noxious nitrogen dioxide from 5 to 25 March, compared with the same period last year, according to new satellite images.

Coronavirus vocabulary 
https://businessenglishparis.blogspot.com/2020/03/coronavirus-vocabulary-for-business.html

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SOURCES

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-to-china-the-virus-is-now-a-foreign-problem-and-theyre-creating-a-fortress-to-keep-it-so-11965056

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-italy-becoming-impatient-with-lockdown-and-social-unrest-is-brewing-11965122

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-how-lockdowns-have-caused-drop-in-air-pollution-across-the-world-11965509

https://www.ft.com/content/4ac1266a-436d-3128-b068-2d68ddc1485c
https://es.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/los-paises-mas-contaminantes-del-mundo

Xenophobia Rising in China Due to Coronavirus - Even Against People With Blue Eyes!

In a recent article in the Guardian, it was reported that xenophobia in China is on the rise, and not just against African immigrants. They are also scorning Europeans with "blue eyes."  The article aptly titled, "They see my blue eyes then jump back' – China sees a new wave of xenophobia Fears rise that Beijing is stoking mistrust of foreigners as part of an attempt to rebuild a reputation tarnished by the coronavirus crisis" goes on to explain how foreigners from Ireland and the UK are having trouble accessing restaurants, hotels, gyms and shops. One person explained that when people see his blue eyes, they "jump a foot back."

The xenophobia is not only directed toward Europeans as the article also cites instances where people of African descent (notably a geographic location that, for the moment-  as things could quickly change for the worse when this virus completes its cycle - seems to have fewer outbreaks of Covid 19 than the rest of the global population) are being denied entry into restaurants - or at a minimum, are being kept waiting an inordinate amount of time. 
The author writes, "An African couple in Beijing were made to wait for two hours at a restaurant before a worker let slip that they were not supposed to allow in heiren – 'black people'” Be that as it may, Africans and people of African descent have historically been ostracized in most countries and places and this is somewhat commonplace and normalized to the point that very few people are shocked or outraged when that happens. What is different is when Europeans and people with "blue eyes" are likewise treated with this type of scorn. This is new, and therefore strange and it raises red flags for everyone concerned.

The article suggests that Chinese officials are encouraging an anti-foreigner sentiment in its population and is attempting to blame foreigners for the global Coronavirus pandemic that originated in Wuhan China.  The author writes, "A recent online article, under an image of ship stacked with refuse being pushed away from China’s coast, was headlined: 'Beware of a second outbreak started by foreign garbage.'”

Could this virus be a precursor to something much worse and completely unthinkable in the world? Are we on the beginning brink of a world confrontation? Especially when you read that contemporaneous to all of this happening, the leader of North Korea Kim Jung Un launched two short-range ballistic missiles into East Sea?

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Hubei, China Roars Back to Life After a Two-Month Coronavirus Quarantine & Lockdown

Hubei, China Roars Back to Life After a Two-Month Coronavirus Quarantine & Lockdown

 Life started returning to normal on Wednesday after two months of lockdown in Hubei province, epicenter of China’s coronavirus outbreak, with traffic controls lifted, construction resuming and people catching buses and trains across once-shut borders. Reuters.

 Hope for the West today comes in the form of this news report from Reuters. There is an end in sight with this horrible, evil, Coronavirus situation. Hubei China is back to normal after a government lockdown more than two months ago. People are again taking the buses and metros and have returned to normal life, hanging out in the parks, going to restaurants and reporting to their jobs. The children are particularly happy no doubt to be able to go out and play again.

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It seems the biggest threat to their continued recovery is people coming in from the outside so even though the city has now lifted the travel restrictions for its 60 million inhabitants who were at the epicenter of this virus when it first broke out in the country and world (Wuhan China is the capital of Hubei and the first coronavirus covid 19 cases reported in the world were in Wuhan - which led US president Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to get into a blame game about whose fault the virus was), people who travel to Hubei are still subject to medical checks and they are required to inform the government if they have indeed been to a high risk country.

The city of Wuhan itself is still under quarantine, however the government is expected to lift the restrictions on April 8, 2020.
 "The lockdown of Hubei’s capital Wuhan will be lifted on April 8, a milestone in China’s war against the epidemic as Beijing shifts its focus toward stemming imported cases and rebooting the economy."

The big task now is going to be rebooting the economy, according to Reuters. Let's see how the Chinese leadership make their comeback. But all in all, this is good news for everyone around the world, not just in China. It means there is an end in sight and we all just have to hold tight till the end arrives.

SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-toll/chinas-hubei-eases-coronavirus-curbs-new-imported-cases-decline-idUSKBN21C01A

US and China Locked in Superpower Superstruggle over Coronavirus - But Masks Needed

US and China Locked in Superpower Superstruggle over Coronavirus - But Masks Needed

The United States and China are having a major spat over messaging pertaining to the coronavirus it appears. President Donald Trump who was president during the coronavirus outbreaks in 2020 blamed the Chinese government for "covering up" what was going on with the outbreak and not being totally transparent with the rest of the world about it back in December when the first incidences of the virus allegedly appeared in Wuhan China. The president and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dubbed the virus the "Chinese Virus" and the "Wuhan Virus" respectively.

 

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President Xi Jinping, then president of the People's Republic of China cried foul. In addition to tossing out American journalists from the country and rescinding their press credentials, the Jinping government stirred the wrath of the Trump administration by repeating a conspiracy theory that the virus had been taken to China by American servicemen and women. However the Americans countered with a theory that the virus started from wet markets where in certain provinces in the People's Republic of China, bats are consumed as food. The Covid 19 strain of the coronavirus were believed to have been contracted from infected bats.

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While both countries saw their respective economies spiral downwards (given that citizens were under a mandatory lockdown and confinement due to the virus) the two leaders continued to have tense interactions concerning how to handle the virus and who was to blame.

China reportedly shared the genome for the virus with the West despite this standoff however the countries had difficulties negotiating a deal for much needed medical masks which were to be manufactured by China and sold the the US who badly needed them to stem the viral spread of the deadly respiratory ailment in the United States.

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China Gets Defensive About the Coronavirus and Expels American Journalists From the Country

 

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Hello Readers of China Buzz Today! How are you all???


I have taken a 10 year sabbatical and now I am back, taking charge of all my blogs including this one. 😁I just updated another blog I had let go for about a decade called Small Biz Society International Blog. I have about 11 or 15 of these blogs that I just let go about a decade ago and completely forgot how to even log in to them. I was trying to clean my digital archives and found a bunch of these blogs which were all under the same log in. I figured it would be a good idea to maybe start blogging on them again.

So, I visited China a long time ago, around 2011. I wrote a love letter to the country on this blog when I returned to America and you can read all about it here. 

In addition to that, I wrote a piece on China for Small Biz Society International Blog called, simply China which you can read here.

Since that time, a lot has obviously happened in the world. At the time of my visit, Barack Obama was president of the United States and I was living in the USA. It could have been in Brooklyn but I may also have been studying at the time so I was in Texas when I wrote the last post on China Buzz. Now I am living in Paris and spend a huge part of my day on a new blog called Business English Paris.

These days, there is a new president in the USA and his name is Donald Trump. And he and the Chinese Prisident Xi Jinping have a very uneasy relationship to say the least. The last straw seems to be the insistence on President Trump to dub the coronavirus which is currently decimating the world by taking lives and making people very ill, the "Chinese virus" or the "Wuhan virus" (the first case of the virus showed up in Wuhan China.)

The Chinese government objects to this and has accused  the president of being "racist", of using racist tactics and of trying to stigmatize China and Chinese people by calling the virus the "Chinese virus." As a result, the government of China has decided to revoke press credentials of dozens of American journalists in the country. They also stated that they were taking "countermeasures" for Mr Trump's expulsion of dozens of Chinese journalists in the USA.

The situation has gotten so out of hand, that reputable media in the US and Europe are calling it an "escalation between superpowers." According to a recent piece in the New York Times,

Reporters at foreign news outlets in China were among those who aggressively reported on the coronavirus epidemic in January and February, including in its earliest days, when it was a regionalized outbreak in central China and the Chinese government sought to play down its severity.

The news organizations have also reported in the past year on other issues deemed extremely sensitive by Chinese officials, including the mass internment of Muslims in the Xinjiang region and the shadowy business dealings of family members of leaders, including President Xi Jinping.

Oh, what a difference a decade makes! 

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