The East is Red (not)

For all those members who are so keen to assert (with Chairman Mao and Mad Dr Mahathir - what a combination!) that this is the "Asian century" and we should all be learning Chinese, here's a reality check (and another one will be posted shortly)

In Chaucer's time it was a humble Teutonic dialect inflected with Old French and Latin. By the age of Dickens, borne on the prow of empire, it had colonised India, North America and Australia. The next decade should see the final victory of English as some 2 billion students, most of them in Asia, adopt the sceptred isle's mongrel tongue as their own. According to English Next, a new report to the British Council on the rise of global English, the Indian economic miracle is grounded in its colonial linguistic inheritance. Following in its footsteps, China is now setting the pace by making English compulsory in primary schools from grade 3, while mandating that 80 per cent of under-40-year-old police officers pass an English test before the 2008 Olympics. "More people are now learning English in China than any other country," says the report by linguist David Graddol. "Within the formal education sector an estimated 176.7 million were studying English in 2005"

China's water problems make solving Australia's look like child's play, writes Stephen Wyatt. China's water is fast disappearing. Most of what has not been consumed by industrialisation, urbanisation and China's rapid growth has been poisoned. Water is the biggest resource constraint to China's continued economic success and, according to the Chinese government, water scarcity costs industry $US25 billion ($33 billion) a year and agriculture $US19 billion