Quote from cashonly:
China will most likely be the next world economic power. We can only thank communism for holding them back this far.
A few days ago, I came to the conclusion that China in fact already is the new world economic power: guess who's financing the American deficit by stockpiling USG Bonds and above all,
why?
I think they are using the opportunity the asshole (AKA GWB) gives them, which is to tighten the grip on the US economy via massive stockpiling of Bonds. Once they own enough of them, just the threat of selling them simultaneously could influence the future US administration's decisions with regards to Taiwan or (perhaps more importantly) the unilateral expansion of China's maritime borders well into Vietnamese territory.
Oh, and regarding your original question - have a look at a lingual map of China (though in German, I think it's self-explanatory)
The "CIA World Fact Book 2004" states that standard chinese is Mandarin (AKA Putunghua, based on the Beijing dialect).
At my former university, they introduced a course called "East asian business administration", and the majority of students are
native Germans. I talked to the principal, and he told me that it's quite easy to learn 2000-3000 written signs within just a few months.
What makes chinese a little complicated (as far as I understood) is the fact that intonation is crucial - a wrong intonation can result in a completely different meaning.
In my opinion, it's very intelligent from you to raise your kids with chinese. I grew up with 2 languages too, and it helped me tremendously learn English and other languages at later stages. But what about a third language, e.g. Spanish?
Cheers!
