One of smart moves for China in the present transition to the multipolar world can be to make Spanish its second language in the same way as English in countries like Sweden. In this scenario a new generation of Chinese will be totally bilingual, with the second language being Spanish.
For China in its competition race to win the global markets, and global economic and cultural influence the most important part of the world, arguably, is going to be Latin America, or, even more broadly, the Spanish-speaking world.
To make the trade, technological and economic cooperation, tourism and cultural interaction with the Latin world easier and create a good counterbalance to the hegemony of the English language it will probably make sense for China to learn Spanish. But not just learn, but learn well - just like Sweden did English in the past. This is totally achievable within one generation, which is not a really long term by the time by Chinese standards. As with English, there are pretty powerful Spanish study courses created to be adopted in schools.
This may be especially true considering that the Chinese system is based on a very strong State, where institutionalization of teaching a language in all the Chinese schools from grade one and integrating the language in many institutions can be much easier and faster than in many other countries.
In the 21st century Chinese technical giants will have to court hundreds of millions of Spanish-speaking consumers and the task of better understanding their needs and doing business better in their mother-countries is inevitably going to be very important and critical in competition with the big tech counterparts from the Anglo-West.
The same goes for industrial standards that China is going to have to establish, make acceptable and attractive for the Latin World if China wants to become a driving force in industrialization of the Latin World on the one hand and achieve a deep industrial interpenetration between their own industrial base and that of the Latin World, not unlike the industrial interpenetration that took place in the West and that contributed a lot to gluing the collective West together economically, hence, politically.
Cultural aspect is no less important, and not because it stands alone aside from the economic one, but, on the contrary, because it goes hand in hand with the deep mutual economic development based on mutual interdependence in the industrial and technological standards and industry itself. The deep economic relations that generate trust and influence the cultural and diplomatic trust in a profound feedback loop are impossible without a deep industrial and technological interdependence - partnerships "joint at the hip" at the level of standards and sharing the industrial complex.
Language is the MOTHER OF ALL STANDARDS.
Just as millions of people from the Latin World are able to visit and do business in the United States, the same millions of people, from the Chinese perspective, should be able and motivated to visit and do business in China. And the opposite is true, in my view: the millions of the Chinese should have a much lower cultural barrier that restricts them from coming to the Latin countries, doing business there, interacting and cooperating with the Latino businesses, specialists and people in general.
Nothing can lower those barriers so efficiently as speaking the same language.
Language matters in globalization. Since the previous globalization most likely has died with the death of the unipolar word and the previous world order, designed and built in many ways by the Anglo-West, the locomotives of the new globalization will be born out of the countries/blocks that can offer the best models of catalyzing and facilitating cultural and business interaction, building trust and connections between the cultural and economic bases of their own country and that of other parts of the world.
I have no doubt that introduction of Spanish as a second language in China - a market with 18% of the whole global population - will qualitatively add to the competitiveness of both China and the whole Spanish-speaking world in its competition with the Anglo-West in a new globalization race.
Language matters in globalization, and the English, in my view, is a bright example of that.
Since the chances of Chinese being adopted and spread in other parts of the world - at least in those parts that are of significance in the context of the new economic order and globalization - are close to zero, the Spanish, in my view, can be the best choice for China in a win-win situation for both China and the Spanish-speaking world.
The perception, reputation, image of China and a boost in general trust in China can be too very important and instrumental corollaries of such a move.
To put it shortly, it may be time for China to drop this "linguistic bomb" and create a powerful counterbalance to English as one of the strongest contributors to the cultural, diplomatic and economic dominance of the Anglo-Saxon world.
Technically and institutionally it is totally possible as far as China is concerned. Whether such a move is realistic in other respects is hard to say.
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