Campo & alien, yes, Chinese is not practical enough, and an alphabetical language will probably remain dominant for business.

Assuming language will be needed at all, for business? I don't think it is now, nor will it be in the future. Certainly no need for 2bn Chinese to learn English, that would be a waste.

There are plenty of jobs for foreigners in banking in China, especially GZ. Salaries are about half the European rate, i.e. 25-50k/m. Chinese are not skilled in this area, but like a lot of things, it's not as hard as it sounds. 2-3 years down the road and the foreigners won't be needed anymore. Even today, most of the banking jobs require Chinese language - not the case as recently as 1-2 years ago.

Anyone else remember the 90's? Every second businessman and banker was learning Japanese, and paying big bucks for the lessons. It all fizzled out and about the only ones that actually got jobs out of it were babysitters and English teachers :)

Now, the real question on my mind is, just how long will the Chinese retain their interest in foreigners, Western countries, and in learning English? Is it really that beneficial for them, to go to the US or Europe, and all the effort of learning one or more languages? I don't think so, at least. The West has very little of substance to offer.

Alien, you're right I'm wrong. SwiftKey spellchecker confused me! And I knew it!

China is no longer the free-for-all it once was, so no longer interesting for white-thrash (not necessarily white, not necessarily American).

I don't know which aholes are worse. I'm leaning towards Google being worse, for me personally. Qq never did anything bad to me, that I noticed. Google did - it getting blocked in China is bad enough.

Word of warning about using qq to synch Google - there doesn't seem to be any way to revoke access, since you need to log into Google directly in order to revoke access.