5 Reasons Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time
Is learning Chinese a waste of your time?
If you want to maximize your ‘return on investment’ in terms of a good job, income, and ‘opportunity costs’, I’d have to say this is an almost certain yes. The Economist thinks so too.
While there are quite a few reasons why you might want to study Chinese, let’s look at some of the reasons why it could be a waste of your time:
Why Learning Chinese Could Be a Waste of Your Time
- Many Well Educated Chinese People Would Prefer to Speak to You in English - Even if your Mandarin is better than their English (uncommon, but not unheard of - and no the prime minister’s Mandarin in the linked video is definitely not better than the interviewer’s English)
- Little Applicable Value Outside of China - Most mid to upper level Chinese managers speak okay to great English. The only people you typically need Mandarin to communicate effectively with in a business environment is low level management. If you aren’t stationed in China, then, knowing Chinese won’t help you much in communicating with most Chinese companies.
- Possible Negative Market Value - To really be able to use your Mandarin, you’ll need to move to China, where you may have to take a large pay cut to get a job in which being fluent in Chinese would be an asset. This quote from the economist article linked above sums up things nicely:
Within China companies can hire an expatriate who speaks Chinese. Or, more often, they take their pick from an abundant supply of local graduates in English who are happy to work for 2,000 yuan (£130) a month. “I took an 80% pay cut to come here because I wanted to learn the language,” says Ken Schulz, a software engineer from Silicon Valley who studied Chinese full-time for four years at Beijing’s University of Language and now works in the capital at WorkSoft, an outsourcing firm. “I’m the only foreigner in an office of 1,200 people, and I hardly get any opportunity to use my Chinese.”
- Huge Opportunity Cost - To really learn Chinese well, including reading and writing, you need to spend years studying intensively. These are years in which you could learn several romance languages or another skill set or perhaps even a profession.
- Non-Negligible Maintenance Costs - Even though I speak Mandarin when dealing with customers, read a Chinese magazine / newspaper daily, watch a bit of TV, and speak almost exclusively in Mandarin with my girlfriend (and some friends), my Chinese skills are slipping. It takes a lot of effort just to maintain, nonetheless improve, your Chinese.
Do I Regret Learning Chinese?
No, but from a practical standpoint there are many things I could have done with my time to get into a better job and develop a skill-set that is worth more on the job market. Learning Chinese was a good move for many other reasons, just not the ones that have to do with making money or getting a better job.
And if you’ve already set yourself on the improbably hard journey of learning Chinese, this commentary won’t sway you one bit anyway. 加油!
Why Is Learning Chinese NOT a Waste of Time?
I hope you help out in the comments below by taking a bite out of this question or leaving your other thoughts about this post.
This was an intriguing article. But seriously, it seems that there is a huge discrepancy between what Chinese know about English-speaking world and what the English-speaking world knows about China. This seems like a recipe for competitive disadvantage in the long run. Hey…this is a great post and thought provoking, just wondering if you think its a problem in the long term for a huge gap in understanding.
Hey Elliott - That’s a good question.
Learning Chinese definitely helps to bridge the gap in understanding between China and the English-speaking world, but usually this is only if you go to China. If you are going to live in China, then there are definitely some strong advantages to learning Chinese - including the one you point out.
But what good is knowing Chinese if you don’t live in China or travel there extensively?
This was a bit of a devil’s advocate kind of post - it makes you question the real advantages of learning Chinese - one of them being what you are putting forward.
Nice post — I don’t know whether to chortle or grimace.
I came across your article through your comment on the China Law Blog, which was also right on. Depressing in a kind of funny way.
I also posted on a complementary subject recently: why 中文 (as opposed to just speaking Mandarin) is such a pain. Now I can add your angle: not only a pain but a waste of time :^)
But I still think we’re all just mincing words around the central problem. The real thing that makes Chinese hard to learn is the infernal characters. Everything else is a cinch by comparison.
Hey syz - Yeah, have to say depressing in a funny way. It’s only a waste of time when your main goal is trying to get a well paying job or build a skill that can earn a decent amount of money. Or to put it another way, there is a huge opportunity cost to learning Mandarin. But there’s more to life than opportunity costs, right?
more to life than opportunity costs
No doubt. Blogging itself (not to mention commenting) is an unequivocal waste of time, in the economic sense. It probably doesn’t even do much social good, despite what the blogosphere would like to believe. Maybe blogging, like Mandarin, should just be put in the “it amuses me” category where no one can argue with you. If it happens to have some pleasant side effects, then all the better.
Syz,
Somehow didn’t catch this comment until now - that’s pretty funny but true. It (blogging) can help you pick up a bit of pocket change, but for most people not much.
I do believe that a growing number of credible people in the blogosphere do contribute to greater understanding of many things, and a closer version of the “truth”, however. But that’s just a small fraction of most bloggers. So your comment is very telling.
Throw blogging (along with Mandarin) into the “communication” category - better for things other than making money.
Interesting take on the issue, the comment I’d like to make reflects not only Jeremy’s post but the supplementary Economist article as well.
I agree that if you plan on touching China business casually from the West and don’t plan to travel or live in China then no Mandarin might be a waste of time.
However, in my work for a real estate private equity fund based in Shanghai I’d say that my language skills are pretty essential.
I think it’s off the mark to assume you are going to be doing business with boatloads of Western educated Chinese working for large corporations (Chinese or foreign).
The major player in China is and will continue to be the Government / SOE hybrid class of entities.
One aspect of the business I do does involve foreigners and internationally minded Chinese but the guts of this business is dealing with the local and central government and private individuals associated with these groups.
MOFCOM, SAFE, officials in the Beijing Central government, officials in development zones, land and property sellers with good relationships to the above mentioned officials -we deal with these folks all the time and I think the high value asset class is a realm still dominated by local guys with local ways whether you want to acknowledge that or not.
Of all the meetings I have had to sit through that involve the government in some way, shape, or form I have yet to experience one that takes place in English.
The question you have to ask yourself is if you are working in this type of environnment in China do you really want to sit through an important discussion with no idea what is going on?
100% is clearly too much as I know plenty of American born Chinese who struggle to get everything including idioms, politico-speak, etc.
Some young Chinese even tell me they have to think carefully through meaning when it’s an official speaking who comes from a very “party-oriented” educational background.
80-85% is a reasonable goal and lessens dependency on your Chinese colleagues and allows you to discern motivations and trustworthiness of individuals.
Anything less than half and you’d be better off taking a nap or surfing the net at your desk rather than attend the meeting.
Just my opinion as I have lived through these scenarios in different degrees during my years in China.
Hi Pete - Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed response.
There is no way that I would deny the usefulness of learning Chinese, especially to the degree that you have described (and for example I wouldn’t be able to do my current job without being at least functionally fluent in Chinese). It definitely creates more opportunities.
The question is: What is the opportunity cost?
Sure, if you spent all of the time watching TV that you spent learning Chinese over the years, the opportunity cost in NOT learning Chinese would be huge. And learning Chinese is a better use of time (over the long run), financially, than many other uses of your time.
However, it seems it’s pretty safe to say that if you devoted the time you spent to studying Chinese to something else of equal rigor and difficulty, that there would be many ’something else’s’ that would help you much more financially and career-wise than learning Chinese.
To me, that’s the essential point of The Economist article, and some careful analysis of the years that led me here.
You may completely disagree, though (and after all, for some people learning Chinese to ‘real’ fluency is far more valuable financially than time they could have spent to, say, become a doctor or lawyer), and if so that’s great, it’s just I don’t agree =) At least for most people, or on average.
Plus, any such analysis (which will never really take place) would best include those whose goal it was to reach a level in Chinese that would be financially useful to them (not just for fun, for the experience, etc), but who gave up along the way. The graveyard of learning Chinese, you could say. I know of many such people (and someday I might be one of them).
Thanks again for the detailed response, Pete.
Ok!,
So if someone can suggest me just one language that will be most appropriate for me to learn at present, what will that be? I am currently a graduate student in United States trying to pursue patent agent job, where an international language skill could perhaps help me.
Hi Pat - I don’t know whether US patent agents need to know another language (or whether they could use this to their advantage on the job). However, if there is a place for using another language on this kind of job, it seems Chinese might actually be substantially more useful than many other languages, especially going forward.
Otherwise, my best guess for a best return on language learning investment in such a position would be Spanish - easy to learn, and the primary language of many different countries.
But someone else could definitely give a better answer than this and I hope they do.
Great! More articles like this! Discouraging more people from learning Chinese just makes our market value that much greater.
Well, to be serious with that point, although there is a great opportunity cost in learning Chinese, that also means that people who do learn the language are that much more uncommon. Also, native Chinese speaker who speaks good English is quite different from a native English speaker who speaks Chinese. While in some careers perhaps one’s English level is not that important, there are other careers where not only do you need to know English you need to possess a level higher than your average native speaker (journalism, translation, law, are just a few that comet to mind). Therefore, I think being a native English speaker with high level language skills and knowledge of Chinese is something quite valuable indeed.
Also, one thing the article mentioned was that a lot of people give up learning Mandarin because it’s too hard.
What a load of BS. That’s not a reason to not study Chinese–it’s a reason to not begin studying and then quit.
Also, Jeremy: Do you really find your Chinese is getting worse? Given what you wrote about how much you practice every day, that seems pretty hard to believe!
Hi kmm,
You’re right =)
The ‘problem’ is that most people have no idea how much effort it will take to learn Mandarin to a useful level (useful defined as: the level at which you can use it for all communications if necessary), and go into learning it blindly.
My reading and writing is definitely getting worse, but very slowly. Speaking and listening is very slowly improving, but most of the improvement is coming from learning various technical terms that I’d rather not know. I’m definitely in the wrong field to put my native English abilities to their best use, for now.
It also rings very true that, as you say in your last post Strategies for the Extremely Introverted Mandarin Learner, is that it’s important to learn things, and especially vocabulary, you love.
This whole article is just a comment from a guy who has a negative attitude. If the basis of this article/comment is that learning Chinese has not been financially beneficial to the author himself who started this discussion - I say that more reflects on his shortcomings as an opportunity seeker than it does the economic value of the wealth of opportunities available to an optimistic non native who learns to speak Putonghua.
I work in the business consulting industry - where the knowledge of Mandarin Chinese by non-native speakers carries a large premium. I would also say that the value of understanding Mandarin Chinese will grow exponentially over the next 10 years and beyond due to the obvious emergence of China in world economic markets. There will be numerous business,military,consulting,teaching,translating,import/export,entertainment, etc. etc opportunities available to those who understand Mandarin in the coming years.
XieXie
I dont think learning Mandarin is a waste of time! At the end of the day, it is your choice to learn Mandarin. If you think it is a waste of time, then it seems to me that you do not enjoy learning the language.
Thats what I think anyway.
Hi somebody,
I don’t think it’s a waste of time - it’s just there are skills you can spend your time developing which are much more rewarding financially. The thing is, many people start out learning Mandarin overestimating the financial / job benefits that will accrue to them and underestimating the time it will take to really have a functioning command of the language.
I don’t regret learning Mandarin, but I also know a lot of people who initially wanted to go really far with it but gave up along the way because it was just too much.
I’ve taught English in two Chinese universities, and on the whole the students who actually studied had good English, with great pronunciation. And they will work for peanuts.
I think that if a business person was serious about developing guanxi, then learning Mandarin would be useful for socialising with their Chinese counterparts. Not useful in the office, but useful at the restaurant and karoke bar.
There are a lot of bosses in China who rely on their cheap interpreters, who do a great job. But doing away with interpreters when socialising would help with developing the relationship.
But you don’t need perfect Chinese for that - in fact you don’t need to read much Chinese at all for that. I had a friend who was great at that, but couldn’t read any Chinese at all. He just could speak good social Chinese, and got on really well.
Only a few people are going to find that learning Mandarin pays back financially.
Personally, I’m learning it to communicate with my in-laws.
… There’s lots of discussion of the value of Mandarin education for foreigners here at China Law Blog or here from The China Expat, with the general undercurrent that the literal economic value is low is because it takes too many years to be successful at it…
I disagree with this. In the short term it can be easier to just use English but this puts us at a tremendous disadvantage when doing business (if Chinese understand our language and culture but we don’t understand theirs). Personally speaking Chinese has helped me greatly financially already. I just feel it’s so much easier to understand your counterparts when you speak their language and understand the culture, as opposed to relying on an interpreter.
I do agree that it’s much more important if you are living in China than not. Also it would be better not to study it unless you really want to go through with it and learn it well. Your field, position within the company etc. also plays a role , so I don’t think there is an easy answer. A person’s language ability and interest are also really important factors to consider.
Hi Corey - Right on. Learning Chinese is not for everyone, far from it. It’s good that you have benefited from learning it, and most who carry through to the end do. But how many can? =)
@Chris Lowe - what total, utter, tosh. I worked in a patenting office with 200 chinese engineers, all of whom were university graduates and many of whom had post-graduate qualifications. My discussions with them were almost entirely in Chinese, as was email correspondance - the reason for this was that innaccuracies were a lot less likely to creep in that way - especially given the way so many trusted that Jinshan dictionary to do the translation for them.
Was learning Chinese useful for that job? Yes - but equally as useful was the fact that I had a technical background. This is where I feel a lot of people come a-cropper, it’s not much use knowing how to speak Chinese if you have no other skills - knowing Chinese merely facilitates the use of your own skills in China.
I’ve had loads of interviews since I got back, all of them from people interested by the fact that I did learn Chinese - so you can’t say that it doesn’t at least make you stand out.
Hey Foarp - Good to hear that learning Chinese makes you stand out in the job market - that is a big plus with the visa shutdown going on and perhaps having to go home.
You’re right on that Chinese is a tool that facilitates the use of your other skills - and the more technical your job, the more useful knowing Chinese very well is. It helps avoid some of the misunderstandings that inevitably pop up.
It’s extremely easy to lose the language if you don’t use it everyday. If an individual is in a situation where they can use the language extensively than its not a waste of time to invest.
I don’t think it’s every a waste of time to learn a foreign language. Serious linguists will learn and practice more than one language at a time. I do agree with you, however, that unless you are in China, you probably won’t be using it very much.
The article, I think, makes a valid argument if the learner’s sole motive for studying Mandarin is economic gain. Certainly, the 3-4 years one would have to spend in China to achieve something close to fluency would be better invested in an MBA or a JD program, by far. That said, I can’t imagine anyone who sets out to learn Mandarin with the vague idea that it might be profitable, sticking with it for more than a week. It’s just too damn hard. And let’s be realistic, Mandarin is not an asset for Western companies. My company does extensive business in China, and has offices in several major cities. Most of our managers live in expat bubbles, and can’t pronounce “ni hao,” yet we have Chinese companies, and govt officials, lining up to do business with us. They could care less that we don’t speak Mandarin. They, as all business people, care about one thing: the bottom line.
For the purposes of this discussion, what is fluency? I can only guess at what previous posters mean, but I’m going to say HSK 6 — a.k.a. the level non-native speakers should reach to get into undergraduate studies with regular students.
I agree with Nino Brown that unless you are ready to focus hard and be consistent with effective methods, that it does take 3 - 4 years to get “close to fluency” if fluency is HSK 6. I disagree that you would “have to spend [those years] in China” to get the result.
I am approaching the 4 year mark. I spent 15 months (starting with a year in Taipei from zero) of that time in Chinese-speaking areas and the rest in Canada, studying by myself with some classes (the thing I wouldn’t have learned on my own was classical Chinese). Though I haven’t written the HSK, I think I am ‘close to fluency’ by that definition as I can recognize about 2500 characters, translate Chinese to English live for hours, or speak Chinese all day when I need to without speaking it regularly otherwise.
Chinese could be a waste of time. But, considering you can learn your target language by switching over things (reading books, watching tv, listening to music, news, radio, etc) you would do anyway and enjoy–and that you can build and maintain a vocabulary of useful size on just a few hours a day–it doesn’t seem like that huge of an opportunity cost.
To paraphrase David Moser, if you can still remember why you’re learning Chinese, give up; nothing could be worth it. If you’ve forgotten, you just might have the mindless doggedness to succeed.
I think that learning Mandarin is only when you have to deal with everyday things, like going to the restaurant or to the supermarket or to manage an informal chat with somebody who doesn’t know English. at least, my very broken Chinese comes in handy when I go to my favorite restaurant, but I would say that it’s quite possible to make a decent living in China without speaking Chinese.
Now, my job is English teaching, so they are the ones who need to learn English in the first place.
Tell me any subject of study that will help you make more money with minimal effort. Accounting ? Real estate?
Certainly, learning Chinese is a bad move if you want to make money, so is learning music, art, physics, swimming, etc, etc.
Learn Chinese if you enjoy it and want to know more about the culture of China. If that helps you make more money down the road, that is bonus.
Hey Jay,
You’re totally right on the reasons to learn Chinese.
And learning Chinese doesn’t take minimal effort, it takes about the same amount of time and effort as studying a full skill set, such as accounting which you mention.
Thought provoking article. I have used my Chinese extensively in conjunction with my Spanish. The more people that drop out, the better! The real angle is China-Africa, China-S.America, China-Middle East—I live in Mexico and the average Mexican has trouble learning English, even the super wealthy. None of them have the patiences, resources, or time to learn Chinese, especially given the majority of decent middle income jobs are in English-based tourism. So many high level deals in Mexico are still in Spanish, they would rather speak Spanish and Spanish is definitely an asset—my Chinese blows most Mexicans away-and my Chinese isn’t amazing, 5 Intermediate HSK–but conversational enough to do deals, ganbei, et al bullshit. Keep on quitting, quitters! But Mexican commodities and resources are of definite interest to Chinese–as is Chinese investment in Mexico. There are angles out there—you just can’t be a negative quitter like this poster.
Thank you all for posting. I am somewhat an odd man out, in that I live in the United States, and speak Mandarin daily to earn my bread and butter. I do it mostly by telephonic interpreting, some translating Chinese to English, and some on-site interpreting. I often feel the lack of another skill, whether technical or commercial, but I take solace in knowing that I really do need the time I have to practice and develop basic language and interpreting skills.
Nice post. I also question the opportunity
I was considering learning chinese as a way to increase my ver. I make asatility. decent income as as software engineer - can learning chinese make me “more” employable, say with a chinese firm, - without moving to china ?
@prospective learner - maybe learning any amount of Chinese would help you get a job now or in the future with such a company, but to use it in an engineering environment and guarantee it expands your opportunity set you’re going to need to put in many years of study.
Learning Mandarin is a skill that I wish that I will have one day. I currently live in Guangzhou and just taking a taxi is almost impossible. The advantages of Mandarin seriously out way the cost of wasted time for me anyway. Other languages that I need on a day to day basis are Spanish and Portuguese.
Interesting view. One that i’m leaning towards agreeing with.
I was born in Shanghai and grew up in Australia. My reasons for learning Chinese are basically 1. I am Chinese, therefore I should probably learn the language. 2. I want to eventually move to China and open up a business.
If you’re opening your own business, you often don’t get the luxury of having all your customers being fluent enough in english. China is a huge market, and if you know the language and culture and mindset of the people,you can be quite successful. One other thing is, if you are planning to stay the long term, anything above 5000 yuan per month is really comfortable living in my opinion.
On the other hand, Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn. I agree it’s absolutely not worth it to even start if you are merely curious or have no patience and will not be using it regularly for the long term.
While that goes for most languages, Chinese is a couple of notches more difficult. Especially for westerners. As you have mentioned it is also incredibly hard to retain if you don’t use it.
Hi Zee - It’s most useful if you are going to open your own business, though a lot of people have done so without learning Chinese.
5000 per month in Shanghai doesn’t get you far in Shanghai these days (unless you’re living outside of the second outer ring or have housing included), but for all second tier cities it’s more than enough to live off of.
I work in China and I use Mandaring everyday, because it is the way I communicate with my collegues. I got this job and the job before it because I could speak Mandarin. To me Mandarin is money. Many forieners in China get by just fine without Mandarin and have no plans to learn it. I think this is because they don’t know what they are missing out on. And I will admit it is not particularly obvious what you are missing. Many Chinese people take great pride in their international outlook and English skills. So they may tend to under-emphasize the need to speak Mandarin. But as another poster mentioned speaking Mandarin is a leg up and one that other people will take years of training to match.
[...] have always said that sometimes being a Chinese speaker is sometimes a disadvantage. Those who do not speak Chinese stare at me in wonder when I emphatically state this. But on a day [...]
[...] have always said that sometimes being a Chinese speaker is sometimes a disadvantage. Those who do not speak Chinese stare at me in wonder when I emphatically state this. But on a day [...]
How helpful is it for a person to take the HSK to find employment in China? Bear in mind that a) they have studied/interned there in the past and b) they have a degree in Chinese (not engineering or IT) and looking for translation or journalism type of work.
Great article and very well thought out. I do, however, think it is a bit extreme. Chinese may not have served you as well as you thought it would but that also depends on what field you go into. I also think that as the world becomes more connected, knowing Chinese will become more and more of an advantage. Their population is so huge that it is hard not to see it having advantages to knowing.
Very interesting, In 15 years of Retail, I often assumed knowing Chinese would be an asset, but after working for a while as an ESL teacher, I realized the same, most Chinese natives would rather speak in english. I thouroughly enjoyed your take on this.
Rev Jeff Lewiss last blog post..Traffic Echange Reviews