I think you’d be surprised to discover how many people speak English as a second language, thanks to its extensive use in business and law. Even (perhaps especially) in China, where US-Chinese trade relations have been going strong since Nixon shook hands with Mao.
Only in the last ten years has the relationship between Wall Street and Hong Kong/Shanghai degraded and the appeal of English as a business language fallen by the wayside.
A bunch of them are likely Chinese or Taiwanese, the latter might also speak Mandarin.
Furthermore, I work in Estonia and all technical communication is in English. Source code is in English. To my coworkers and our clients I speak in Estonian. I suspect if China is going to be bringing in western engineers to their projects, they’ll also accommodate for English speakers.
I doubt they understand Mandarin.
I think you’d be surprised to discover how many people speak English as a second language, thanks to its extensive use in business and law. Even (perhaps especially) in China, where US-Chinese trade relations have been going strong since Nixon shook hands with Mao.
Only in the last ten years has the relationship between Wall Street and Hong Kong/Shanghai degraded and the appeal of English as a business language fallen by the wayside.
A bunch of them are likely Chinese or Taiwanese, the latter might also speak Mandarin.
Furthermore, I work in Estonia and all technical communication is in English. Source code is in English. To my coworkers and our clients I speak in Estonian. I suspect if China is going to be bringing in western engineers to their projects, they’ll also accommodate for English speakers.
Can learn
Technical talk is always half english anyway
You’d be surprised how many top level engineers are Chinese; there’s a joke about the AI race that it’s our Chinese vs their Chinese.
More than half of all new engineers of the world are chinese.