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SETTING THE PACE
the rest of the world isn't going to wait for people like this to catch up in the race to learn Chinese. East Asians have a head start, due to the long history of interaction between China and its neighbors. China is now South Korea's biggest trading partner—having surpassed Japan in 2002 and the U.S. in 2004—and its people are signing up for Chinese lessons with zeal. South Koreans are the largest group of foreigners studying in China, representing about 40% of the 110,800 total last year. This trend is boosted by cultural ties, both new and old. Korean music and drama are among the most popular offerings on the mainland today, while 60% of Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese (similarly, written Japanese has several thousand characters borrowed from China). While that language transfer took place over centuries, Chinese now spreads across Asian borders at the speed of an instant message. Woo Jae Hoa, a 22-year-old student in Seoul, practices Mandarin by chatting online with a Chinese girl he met on the Internet. He types phonetically as he has yet to learn many Chinese characters. His new pen pal responds with simple, out-of-a-textbook answers, though they also delve into lighter topics, such as Korean pop music.
But a shared history can also be a curse. The widespread popularity of Chinese-language study in Japan has been hindered by the sensitive relationship between the former enemies. Last year there were 24 students in Mitsuko Yajima's Mandarin courses at Asia University. This year, following anti-Japanese demonstrations in several large Chinese cities, there are just 14. "Japan is slow to nurture a population of Mandarin students," says Yajima, who has taught Mandarin at the university for 30 years. "We are way behind South Korea."
That's not just an academic concern. As China's economic clout grows, the ability to reduce frictions and misunderstandings in business communications offers a strategic advantage. Even enthusiastic promoters of Mandarin aren't predicting that it will ever overtake English as the world's common language. But just as knowing English proved a key to getting ahead in the 20th century, learning Chinese will provide an edge in the 21st. It won't be easy, though. Acquiring the language requires hundreds of hours of study, countless early mornings memorizing characters, or, if you're a salaryman in Tokyo like Hidetoshi Seki and his pals, practicing sentence patterns while everyone else is out having fun. "We deal with a lot of Chinese clients," says Seki, 39. "But we weren't sent here by the company. We're drinking buddies, and decided to do something more constructive with our time than guzzling beer." Getting ahead sometimes requires a little sacrifice.