While there is probably an article per week about China's growing influence in Latin America, much of it takes place at the upper political levels. Generally articles focus on trips by political leaders and agreements for eventual investment. Most people on the street do not feel the effects. If anything, they are more concerned about China taking their jobs than they are aware of China's investments.
One sign of that this is changing comes from today's Miami Herald article describing a sharp increase in the number of Latin Americans learning Chinese. It appears to be mostly businessmen and university students learning Chinese at this point, but at some point in the past they were the only ones learning English as well.
Learning a language is a significant investment of time and money. People are only going to spend this time and money if there has been real progress in investment and integrating economies that can offer them a reward. Government leaders can sign all the agreements they want and it doesn't matter; it's metrics like language classes we should be watching to determine the real level of China's involvement in any country.
2 comments:
Hello,
I'd like to share this website that helps learn Chinese online : www.clearchinese.com. It includes free Chinese lessons, an easy-to-use Chinese-English dictionary, free Chinese fonts, a discussion forum, daily mp3 lessons and more. If you want to learn Chinese on your own, then this is for you.
Good luck :-)
I am a Latino learning Chinese, and find that it is a very, very difficult language to learn. The only way to learn, total immersion! I have traveled to China, and found that pretty helpful, but, it is difficult to learn if you live in the states. I feel that sites like www.pyngo.com, are pretty helpful, because they help you get a partner to practice with, and also offer some online tools to learn. I hope this helps all my other Latinos! Keep learning Chinese my Latinos, it is a great part of the future, but also, don't forget your Latino roots!
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