When your company partners with China or expands their scopes, learning Chinese is deemed more necessary than ever. This expansion can vary from getting new Chinese clients or even working closely with Chinese coworkers on a daily basis. While English often remains the main working language, learning business Mandarin basics is a valuable long-term investment.

Better Communication

One major issue that you may encounter when your company starts expanding their reach is the difficulty to communicate properly with Chinese speaking people. Oftentimes, Chinese speakers are not equipped with adequate English language skills to help them communicate effectively for business purposes. Employees who don’t understand Chinese will often find themselves being unable to get involved in conversations and hence hinder their performance greatly. Therefore, workers in Singapore multinational companies nowadays are highly encouraged to understand Chinese for business purposes to ensure a smoother communication with Chinese partners and clients. 

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Supporting Daily Business Activities

Speaking is not the only part necessary when it comes to interacting with Chinese partners. Aside from communicating verbally, there are many instances where Chinese language becomes more prominent in your daily business activities with Chinese coworkers and partners. For example, work emails and WhatsApp messages for daily conversations may include partial Chinese terms that may seem foreign to non-native. In this situation, understanding Chinese for communication with Chinese partners and clients are necessary to help you understand instructions better and avoid making mistakes on your job responsibilities. 

Chance to Expand Business and Career

Aside from helping you with your current work, learning Chinese also promises a better chance to expand your business and career in the future. As we all realised, the Chinese language has become more utilized in many circumstances nowadays. This means, many global companies are actively seeking workers who can communicate in Chinese effectively for business purposes. Therefore, learning Chinese can be a long-time investment to help you secure a better job in the future and increase your chances of expanding your business overseas. 

Business meetings often come as a big hurdle for non-native workers since this discussion is held directly without sparing much time to understand the materials. Unlike emails and messages that can be read several times, business meetings in Chinese require every member to actively listen and discuss the agreed topic. This alone serves as a major that needs to be solved in order to work effectively with Chinese partners. If you’re a non-native worker who still struggles with similar issues, here are some tips to survive business meetings conducted partially in Chinese. 

Understand Commonly Used Business Terms

Before understanding a complete sentence, you have to understand common business terms used in your area of work. For example, you can search for common terms related to the industry you’re involved in. Learning these common terms are especially useful if you’re working in a very specific industry. These technical terms are often not taught in Chinese courses for conversational purposes, so keeping a list and understanding the usage has been proven to be effective to help professional workers in companies. 

Record Meetings

If understanding business meetings in Chinese entirely is still too difficult, another way you can try to implement it is by recording meetings beforehand. If you’re worried about confidentiality, be sure to ask any involved partners before about your intention and keep the recording safely from the public. After acquiring these meeting records, you can utilize it by repeating Chinese terms and finding what it really means. Furthermore, you can also learn how Chinese native speakers communicate to help you grasp their conversation better in the next meeting. This method is also highly recommended if you need to catch up on missed information during the meetings. 

Focus on Keyword and Clarify

If you’re a complete beginner who just recently started learning business Chinese, understanding the entire meetings might be a great hassle that seems impossible. Instead of forcing yourself to translate everything at once, a more effective method that you can try is by taking notes on keywords and important points during business meetings. If you’re not fluent enough to understand everything, try clarifying with your partners or coworkers who can converse in Chinese. With this method, you can avoid misunderstandings during business meetings in Chinese.

Working effectively with Chinese business partners means that at one point you are expected to understand business Mandarin to assist your working process. If your job suddenly involves Chinese as a supporting language, you must first understand the following steps to help improve your language acquisition in no time. 

Identifying Business Chinese Skills

The first step that you need to understand before diving into Chinese language learning is understanding which skills that you have to prioritise. To decide this, you can start by understanding your job responsibilities and day-to-day activities. If you work closely with reports, understanding written business Chinese expressions might be your main goal to achieve. On the other hand, workers that constantly need to pitch their ideas in business meetings might benefit more from learning verbal Chinese communication skills. 

Learn as Specific as Possible

One of the major questions you encounter when learning Chinese for business purposes might be: Which level of Mandarin is enough for business use? Although many companies point out that the HSK 4 proficiency can be a great starting point for business purposes, learning specific technical terms is equally important. Once you’ve learned basic Chinese skills, you can deepen your understanding in industry specific Mandarin terms tailored specifically depending on your current job. By learning more specifically, you can communicate better with Chinese partners without prolonging your study sessions with unrelated materials.

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Active Learning Method

Learning Chinese can vary from one another as each person has their own preferred study method. However, many experts heavily note the importance of practicing actively while learning Chinese. Unlike many materials that can be absorbed naturally to constant learning through textbooks, fluency in Chinese can be achieved faster by implementing your learning process on day-to-day activities. To help achieve your goal in communicating faster, you can start seeking for learning partners or business Chinese courses aimed to provide spaces for practice and build confidence.