Quote Originally Posted by itoko View Post
A lot of Asian countries learn english in school for couple semesters such as korea, japan. But China doesn't offer it so most of them either learn it from media sources such as tv/movies or music or if they have tutors. So when a chinese fly in for "work" most of them won't have spoken english much. Even the students coming over would only be starting to learn english.
No mate, that's not true. English is offered as an elective secondary language subject in all levels of education in China starting from kindy through to high-school/uni. Just like French, Spanish, or Mandarin are elective subjects in the Aussie school system. The same applies to all the other Asian countries we're discussing here. This is because the culture and language use in those countries are extremely strong, to the point where if someone refused to learn English, they could carry on with their lives there and have a successful career without a problem.
This is different for other Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The culture and pervasiveness of the national languages there are not strong enough to ensure that someone learning only Malay, for example, could make it in life. So there are mandatory secondary language subjects in those countries, eg. English, Chinese, etc.