Why would moving to an even more authoritarian country be good advice? What?
Instead we are seeing increased siloing of scientific domains. The EU is cracking down on EU-Chinese research cooperation (as recent arrests and deportations in France have shown), India still has a de facto freeze on Chinese R&D and China is still enforcing export controls on IP to India, and South Korea and Japan are still controlling any IP generated from their industrial research fusion programs.
We're instead seeing at least 6-7 different scientific and capital ecosystems forming, and with collaboration being tightly controlled by governments.
The EU continues to use English as the lingua franca for scientific communication due to the diversity within the EU.
On the India side, research done as part of the pact with Japan [0], Taiwan [1], South Korea [2], the EU [3], and the US [4] is done in English.
And on the Vietnam side (based on my SO's experience), all of her ASEAN-Japan and ASEAN-SK collaboration was done in English as well.
[0] - https://www.jst.go.jp/inter/english/project/country/india.ht...
[1] - https://www.iitrpr.ac.in/indo-taiwan/
[2] - https://www.ikst.res.in/ikst-en/index.do
[3] - https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-resear...
[4] - https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/the-us-india-...
It is not.
The vast majority of English speakers do not live in the US or the UK. English is the most widely spoken language in the world. If you are at dinner with people from several countries, the "Lingua Franca" will almost certainly be English.
The popularity of Mandarin relies on the sheer mass of native speakers in China. That population is shrinking and that shrinking is expected to accelerate. The cultural export of China is inherently limited by its ideology - there's a reason we have (had, really) "Hong Kong Cinema" not "Peking Cinema".
All Japanese people learn English at school; few learn Chinese as you can verify by reading about the Japanese school system from various sources including Wikipedia.
Similarly in China, English is the only mandatory foreign language taught at school.
Frequently, Chinese or Japanese. For example companies in these countries employ translators. Are you suggesting they rely on primary school-level English to negotiate?
That is to say, I would not be surprised if, in China, people are quiet fluent in English.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_education_in_...
> The following is the set of compulsory subjects currently taught in the Japanese education system from the primary to secondary levels:
> * Foreign languages: English (rarely: Korean, Spanish, Arabic, French, German, or Chinese)
In 1930, if you wanted access to the great science universities and literature, you learned German. Things can change. Quickly.