Do you think Chinese language must be universal?

As a native Chinese, I dont think so. An investigate recently show that the 27 percente of the riches in china have plan to immigrant.because the dont feel "safe" in China. and by the way ,I dont think China can export the culture when you can not open the website u2b,twitter,facebook when you are in the airport of china. English is my second lauguage, and Español is my 3rd one, for business, mutli-languages quite help .

All I can say is English is and will always be an universal language because it is spoken in almost every corner of the world unlike Mandarin which is spoken mainly in China,some parts of Africa and some parts of America.

I don't think Chinese will be at the same position as English simply because the English language system is widely adopted in the world that many local languages can be easily translated to English. But on the other hand, I do believe that people who know Chinese will surely have an advantage in the future. The upswing of China is not to be under-estimated.

No offense to Mandarin native speakers, but I hope that language will never be considered like an universal one. English has a very short alphabet, a simple grammar and the vocabulary isn't specially big, but Chinese has a writing system that is too complicated, and the phonetics are complicated too. Now China is a strong country when it comes to economy, so many companies are asking for Chinese speakers so they can deal with Chinese companies, but even so I don't think a language that most of learners never learn to read completely can be a universal language. There's beauty in a complicated language, but to be universal it needs to be simpler.

It's starting to look that way, isn't it? Our last Prime Minister down here was fluent in Mandarin Chinese as well as English. This didn't seem to increase our good relations with China under his term though, they were much better under John Howard, before him, who couldn't speak a word of Chinese. China has recently overtaken Japan's economy in many aspects to become the world's second largest. It puzzles us how such economic liberalism can mix so successfully with such authoritarian leadership - but it seems to be working very effectively! Yes, it may come to that, but I doubt many English-only speaking people will be happy with such an idea. We might even say it would be redundant to do so because so many Chinese also speak English as a second language. However, it would help if two people who wish to communicate, especially in business, spoke each others languages, if only a little, to correct any misunderstandings quickly & put all parties at ease when dealing with each other. What should come together with learning a second language in all aspects of oral & written communication is a thorough cultural understanding so people may know how to conduct themselves correctly in such situations. Already in every corner of this world we have seen many so-called natural disasters increase dramatically in recent times in both frequency & intensity. We may soon, out of necessity, end up living together side by side, if not in our own country, then somewhere else. So there would be many benefits to be gained by adopting Mandarin Chinese at least as a second language. I've studied Japanese very solidly for four years full time, so I hope this helps prepare me for studying Chinese! If all those Kunji characters have completely different meanings over in China, it'll stand me on my head!

I don't think this is good idea. That language is extremely hard to remember because of so many strokes and i don't want to spend that much time learning it. Sorry to my Chinese friends but i don't want to learn that language.

I don't think that Mandarin is a very easy language to learn for a Western European person like myself. I think I would find it very challenging to learn to speak, write and read Mandarin. I don't know if around the world it would catch on as a universal language. Some companies indeed want their employees to know Mandarin as well as English. I believe with some many people and areas of the world being Spanish speaking then Spanish would be a better choice for a universal language. Due to business Japanese is taught in Australian schools I know.

The major flaw in this idea is "the Chinese language". It doesn't exist! As you already mentioned, Mandarin is one language used in China. There are about 18 or more other languages that may also qualify as being Chinese. Cantonese would also be a very popular "Chinese" language candidate for the universal position.

It seems like the power of China is getting greater and they are becoming stronger and stronger. They have recently overtook Japan to be the 2nd largest economy in the world. They are now actively participating more and more in global issues and are being considered as a major power in the world. I live in Singapore and we are suppose to be bilingual in both English and Chinese. And this is one thing that our government incorporated into our educational system so that we can be prepared to work in China because China is now a growing business. Plus, it can be seen that people from other countries who are not Chinese natives are signing up for classes to learn Chinese. Perhaps one day, Chinese will be a universal language because people need to go to China. It might just happen, whether we want it or not.

I don't think it is a good idea because, as of now in universal most of the people know English. If not possible to write but at least they can speak but if you go to Chinese language then most of the people in this world are not known. Then how it is possible to make it as universal language?

hi, i think it should not the Chinese language must be the universal because Chinese are only the large number of people and large country here in Asia,but the most largest is in the America and all of them used the language of English and even in the Europe.

I do think we are heading for a 2 language world. Everyone wishing to conduct international business or politics really needs English or Chinese, so why not both. Most people, if they learn them early enough, have no problem with three languages, we see this all the time in Europe and Southeast Asia particularly. Someday maybe all youth will be taught their native language, English and Chinese as basic requirements. It will be far harder for us older generations. Ironically, I once read English is the hardest language for Chinese speakers to learn and Chinese is the hardest language for English speakers.