Implications of increasing Europe’s trade with China

Is English still the language of business? There is no simple answer to this question, but there is also no doubt that China is investing more and more outside its borders, including the European continent. Companies and governments around the world with no significant economic ties to China in the last decade of the twentieth century are now trading with this giant, some of them heavily. How then are these countries doing business with China? Is it in English, the so-called “language of business”? Or is it through language services? If the latter is the case, who has adapted to whom? Are Chinese entrepreneurs learning other languages or are people in other countries learning Chinese? Are language service providers (LSPs) translating more from Chinese into European languages or vice versa?

Text by Rocío Txabarriaga

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Implications of increasing Europe’s trade with China

It’s the economy, liebe Freunde

Just 20 years ago, trade between China and Europe was sporadic and statistically insignificant. In the first half of 2009, the European Union (EU) was China’s largest trading partner with a volume of US$224.69 billion, surpassing the United States. China is also the largest recipient of EU exports. Even though China’s accelerated economic presence in Europe and emerging economies has been dubbed by some as opportunistic, the fact is that China has seen continued and explosive growth throughout most of the past decade — averaging a 10% gross domestic product expansion while the economies of Europe, the United States and most of the world were contracting. Global recession was on the horizon in 2007, and Chinese entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to invest in and outright acquire companies in multiple verticals around the world, many on the verge of ...

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