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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

Just give China a bit.

They're going to replace USAID in the poorest nations, offer more free Chinese education.

In time they'll unseat English as the global language.

The best colleges, by some metrics are already Chinese. Give a few hundred thousand Africans tier 1 free Chinese education and see how global perspectives shift in a few decades.

Next the Yuan will become the world reserve currency.

Edit: Sources are always better than opinions.

https://globalchinapulse.net/confucius-institutes-and-the-sp...

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> In time they'll unseat English as the global language.

The data strongly suggest otherwise.

English’s dominance is growing, with over 80% of online content in English.

There are 1.5 billion English speakers vs 1.1 billion Mandarin speakers. In third place is Hindi at 600 million, followed by Spanish at 560 million and French at 280 million.

86% of Mandarin speakers are native speakers while only 25% of English speakers are native speakers. The ratio for Mandarin has been holding steady while for English more and more non-native speakers are learning it.

Not only is Mandarin mostly spoken by native speakers as the ratios above illustrate, the Chinese birth rate is dropping.

So no, not only is English the world’s true lingua franca, it is extending its lead.

I'm always open to being wrong.

A smart African student might decide to learn Chinese as well as English.

A smart Chinese student may learn English, French among others.

We'll see what happens in the next 30 years.

Ah yes, the Chinese will be the benevolent overlords of the world, of course. They'll be so much more benevolent than the previous benevolent overlords, or the ones before them, let alone the ones after the Chinese hegemony has finally been broken after decades of abuse and corruption. History does not repeat but it certainly rhymes.

We've thrown out 80 years of soft power in 8 months.

Someone will fill in the gap.

Free college in Chinese seems like a great deal vs paying over 100k for Western college.

It's heartbreaking. There's plenty of US History to be ashamed of, but lots of accomplishments too.

We've not just thrown it away, but but set fire to it so that if it ever is possible to wrest control away from these vandals, it could take generations to repair.

Likewise, there's plenty about China to be wary of, but the way that they have collectively invested in the country to move it from a backwater to a premiere superpower (without the shortcut that WWII gave the US), must be recognized as a triumph.

We could be living in prosperity for all, but no, we have to argue over pronouns and bathrooms. FFS, we can do better than that!

Parent is not making a claim about benevolence, merely about a soft power incumbent that is about to be replaced.

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