[contravert]

You won't find a finer example of white privilege.

No one cares if a Chinese CEO (or anyone for that matter) speaks English, no matter the difficulty and effort the learning entails. Contrast this indifference with the flattery of the converse in this thread, and it's quite illuminating of the world we live in.

[VeejayRampay]

This has nothing to do with white privilege. I am a rather white English-speaking Frenchman, I've lived for 4 years in Vancouver and people never complimented for being fluent or bilingual. This is just either people fawning in front of powerful people or most likely some form of anglo-centrism where speaking a foreign language is something exceptional (which it's not).

That being said, good on him for making the effort.

[golemotron]

> You won't find a finer example of white privilege.

I don't buy it. The story is prominent person does something you don't expect, not prominent white person does something you don't expect.

[astrange]

It's not hard to understand someone speaking poor English, and we're used to encountering ESL speakers. On the other hand, if I make a mistake in Japanese, especially when writing, nobody can understand me. It takes a lot of practice to get from being able to use a convenience store to having any kind of conversation.

Some of that is because they're not used to non-native speakers, but much of it is just the structure of the language and room for error-correction. I'd assume it's the same for Mandarin with so many short words and tones.

[westiseast]

I wouldn't really agree. Mark makes lots of grammar, vocab, pronunciation and tonal mistakes and the audience seems to understand him with no problems. Spoken Chinese isnt tgat hard and in some ways is much more forgiving than English for non native speakers.

[westiseast]

Totally - I know plenty of Chinese people with equally busy lives who learn exceptional English because they have no choice. they often experience awful teachers, poor learning methods, and still manage it. I don't want to spit on Marks achievement, but I'd love a bit of realism - we should expect this standard, not wet our pants because one ridiculously rich guy can say "I like big fast trains" :)

[alexjeffrey]

white privilege? don't you mean anglocentricism? the bias would be equally present if Mark was African-American or Asian-American.

[stangeek]

Exactly. If learning Chinese is so difficult for an English speaker, why wouldn't the opposite be true?