Asia is starting to become the centre of the worlds economy and that means that more and more business is being done with Asian countries. To facilitate this business it is becoming necessary to learn to speak the language, the question is which language. China and Japan are rivals for dominance in Asia so which one has the brighter future.

There was a time when doing business in Asia meant doing business with the Japanese and a lot of people started learning to speak the language in order to do just that. There are still plenty of good reasons that you would want to learn to speak Japanese, it is still one of the largest economies in the world and it is still one of Americas largest trading partners. There is still a huge amount of business conducted with Japanese companies and they are still one of the primary sources of new technology. The Japanese also have a lot of money invested in American businesses, so one would think that it would be critical to learn to speak Japanese. The reality is that it is starting to become more and more important to speak Chinese rather than Japanese.

China is about to replace Japan and India as the most important economy in Asia if they haven't done so yet. Their populations is so much larger and the potential for growth so much greater that sooner or later China will become the super power of Asia. In all likelihood China will eventually supplant the United States as the worlds top superpower some time this century. Clearly the future is with China.

China also has the advantage of being a largely untapped market, meaning that there is a lot more growth potential in China than there is in Japan. This has resulted in a lot of businesses changing their focus and where they once invested in Japan they are putting more and more of their money into China. As China becomes a world power businesses in the west will have more and more need for employees who can speak the language. Since most countries have large ex pat Chinese communities they will have no trouble finding employees who speak Chinese, if you want to get a job with one of these companies you will have to be able to speak the language as well. With few overseas Japanese this wasn't an option for most companies dealing with Japan so even employees with mediocre Japanese skills were valuable, this won't be the case with China.

In a perfect world you would learn how to speak both Chinese and Japanese, and if you can do it you will have lots of job opportunities. In reality that is very unlikely since both are difficult languages to learn. Although the appear similar to westerners because they use similar writing they are in fact very different languages. Since it is likely that you will only be able to learn one the better options is to learn Chinese, there will be a far brighter future than if you learn Japanese.