According to a piece in the New York Times Mandarin Makes Inroads in U.S. Schools. The demand for new programs in Mandarin Chinese is ten times higher than the demand for other languages on the new advanced placement list and it looks like even more programs will be started. This is a nod to the growing importance of Chinese in world economy. The article does put emphasis on the number of speakers of Chinese in the world being larger than any other but it does not note that the vast majority of those speakers are in China. The language does not yet challenge English as an international language of commerce, literature, or culture. That day may indeed come, but it isn’t quite the lingua franca or common tongue of the world and while China certainly is ever the “golden dream” of many with its huge potential markets, most of the folks in that market are still too poor to buy the sort of goods the west dreams to sell them. In order for that potential market to become worthwhile or profitable the infrastructure has a very long ways to go. However, the push towards Mandarin training is certainly an important one, albeit independant of real economic opportunities at this point in the game . . . the future, however, is bright . . . assuming stability is maintained.