During last year’s outrageathon over Confucius Institutes on campus Jeffrey Gill provided informed opinion, unsurprising given he’s written a book them

Yes, universities needed to assert authority over them he warned.  But, “developing Chinese language proficiency and cultural competence is vital for Australia’s interests, and CIs can continue to make a valuable contribution,” (CMM August 20).

How “vital”? Quite a bit, given Dr Gil now suggests  that its character-based writing system will not necessarily stop Chinese can become a global language. Software converts characters to Pinyin and people can learn as much Chinese as they need, as many millions do with English, and “the inconsistencies and irregularities of English’s writing system show that linguistic properties alone do not determine whether a language becomes global.”