China In Your Hand?

The awesome T'Pau hit puts me in mind of a very likely theme for the 21st Century, namely the dominance of China as possibly the sole outright world superpower.

It's equally likely though that we may see the formation of a small group of superpowers along the lines suggested in George Orwell's 1984, where Oceania encompasses America and Western Europe, Eurasia is for all intents and purposes the former USSR reborn and Eastasia is China and the Pacific.

Either way, one thing is certain. China, whose population accounts for nearly 1 in every 4 people on this planet, is not going to be the quiet, invisible giant it once was throughout much of the 20th Century. I find it simply astounding that for the past 50 years or more the most that the average Joe or Joanne in the West could tell you about China was the Great Wall, invention of fireworks and Chinese tea, oh and Communism of course.

The Communist Party may still hold onto the levers of power in China, but Communism itself is as dead and discredited as anywhere else (no, I'm not going to accept Cuba or North Korea as counter arguments - in the former case Communism daily demonstrates its copious fundamental failings, the latter is more akin to a religious cult than a political system).

So... among the items I suspect future generations will readily identify as "21st Century Stuff" is the Chinese language (or languages for the pedants). Yes, we all know they speak English, just like everyone else, but history suggests that generally speaking (no pun intended) it's the guys giving the orders who get to choose what language to deliver the orders in.

It's basically good advice anyway to learn the language of those with whom you do most business, and that means it's soon gonna be time to learn Chinese.

If that seems maybe a step too ambitious for you at present then why not try an oblique approach and pay China a visit. All the benefits of a holiday of a lifetime plus the opportunity to learn more for yourself firsthand. It's a well known phenomenon that many people first start to learn a language when they take a vacation - it's partly a matter of necessity in order to get around and order food etc, but also it's much easier to absorb a language when it is being used all around you rather than learning out of context so to speak.

In closing, as I recall the song "China In Your Hand" had nothing whatever to do with the country China. The reference was to China as in pottery and the whole thing was in fact about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the band was named after a Vulcan Priestess in Star Trek, and singer and co-writer Carol Decker was (and still is) Something Else (as Eddie Cochran famously put it).