The question was whether the doctors are doing what is best for the people …. and not just foreigners either. After all, the amount of foreigners in this country is pretty small compared to the rest of the population. Are the doctors not doing a disservice to EVERYONE by not being able to keep up with the research being done in other countries? Why is it that the responders only replied as if this is just an issue of a foreigner unable to communicate his problems to a doctor in order to get the help he needed? Why is it they say it’s only fair because foreign doctors don’t speak Chinese? What has that got do with anything? I’m astounded at their ignorance.

I sometimes wondered whether the inability to see subtle nuances or the whole picture was due to many Chinese people’s inability to understand the English language. Since that message was posted in their own language, I guess I’ve got to reevaluate some of my thoughts about this.

Equally ludicrous was the message one responder left about government officials. Yes, they do need to speak English in order to serve their own people because these aren’t the 1950’s! China has to deal with the rest of the world in many ways if it has any hope for the future. You may not speak English, but that only means someone else needs to communicate in that language for you because that is the language that is in international use. Hey, it would be great if you could all speak better English, but since you can’t, your political and business leaders do that for you …. and reap all the financial benefits for themselves in the meantime. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll throw a few scraps your way when they’ve satiated their own appetites.

China is developing into a modern country. Guess what? It isn’t happening that way without any outside help. A lot of that help is coming from money that flows in from foreign trade and investment. The way that happens is through communication. I hate to burst your bubble, but the bulk of that communication occurs in English. If you aren’t one of those speaking English, I bet you’re somewhere on the lower rungs of the social ladder and thus aren’t reaping the tremendous financial benefits that others are getting.

I know that makes some people feel bad, but those are the cold, hard facts. A lot of the angry responses seem to be from people who want to make excuses for their own ignorance. We’ve all probably done that at one time or another. When I was a boy in school, I also complained that math was useless and didn’t see the relevance of it. I certainly saw the usefulness of it in my later years. I also didn’t realize how much I didn’t know without it. I guess a person never knows how dark a room is until he opens his eyes and looks for a light switch.

Unfortunately, I think that without various assistants and translators, he’d be totally lost. No man (or country) in today’s world is an island. It’s been tried, but always with disastrous results. Your chairman has plenty of people employed who do the things he is not capable of doing himself. I’m sure they appreciate the opportunity for employment though. :)

Obviously, without English, his ability to study the latest ADVANCES would be limited by the information available in Chinese. Therefore, I think the subsequent poll asks an entirely inappropriate question.

The poll should not ask, “Is it necessary for those who study medicine to understand English?” Better questions would be, “Are doctors who don’t speak English actually reaching their full potential? Are doctors who can’t read English documents maintaining the highest level of quality?”

Don’t get me wrong, Chinese medicine has been around for a long time. Having received treatments via these methods, I can attest that the results can be quite good. However, perhaps the best results could be attained from doctors very knowledgeable with the best methods from both types of medical practices. Can a doctor who doesn’t speak English really be trusted to know the best Western medical procedures? To deny that Western medicine is useful would be ludicrous. Without it, Smallpox would have wiped most of us from the planet already. So are non-English speakers really being responsible? Are they being the best they can be or are they limiting themselves unnecessarily due to laziness? Do they think they are simply “good enough”? Do they care about helping people to the fullest extent or do they just care about making a living?

2. you find that it is much easier to read English than to speak it. In China, 哑巴英语(Mute English) is the common case instead of exceptions. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mute_English for more information.)

I know little about the medical area. But AFAIK, even in areas like software development, you can easily see lots of(if not majority of) developers who solely rely on books/articles written or translated by other Chinese. It is true that those good one can read English, but it is not necessarily that they can speak English with you.

It is perfectly possible I’m sure to become a good doctor reading only Chinese textbooks. If the guy writing this is Chinese, then why couldn’t they just speak Chinese? O r does it make them feel superior to speak English?

How arrogant!