I'm a college student studying Business,Law,Computing and Philosiphy @AS& A2 (americans may not understand this qualification but that's not important anyway) I plan to go into university to do business management and I'm always trying to look ahead and adjust as I see fit .

I was watching this thing on the BBC about the credit chrisis ( the whole sub-prime mortage issue etc) and how China was doing increasingly well as an eastern economy and so on, I heard a while ago that China or some other eastern country was going to be the leading world economy in future.

 Any way I wanted to know which language would be most usefull for me to learn , I don't want to be left behind if/or when the east overtakes the west economicaly , i'd like to have the language so I could do business , possibly live in that country (I like to be where the money is lol).

There is more than one Chinese language, and even more dialects. There is as far as I know only one Japanese. So maybe you should just learn that. Also I'm sure you probably don't want to live in china. China does well because they mistreat many people.

Learn Mandarin. Thats the way of the future. all chinese (those who count) know how to speak Mandarin.

@Moongoddess: also plenty of indian languages....

A guy I know through work has to go to China quite often, and his thoughts are: 'I hate the fucking place'. He said there's almost a visible line between the have and have nots. He prefers Japan to China and India to Japan. Also bear in mind that these are other people's opinions and you shouldn't let them sway such an important decision.

I would go for India myself as I prefer the food.

so he hates China for the poverty that is openly seen as well as social status differences but on the other hand likes India?

Now that is really quite funny. 

Entirely true, and it just goes to show that you shouldn't let other peoples opinions sway your decision, as I said.

You have a choice of:

Japanese - advanced economy, good country

China - industrialising, screwed up country

There are actually 10 Chinese languages which are (in order of the amount of people who speak them): Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka, Gan, Jin, Hui and Ping. If you're going to learn one I'd suggest Mandarin.

India - industrialising, has problems but massively improving

India has loads of languages spoken in different areas. The most common are English, Punjabi, Hindi and Gujarati I believe but there are 30+ in total.

Just watch Firelfly and you'll get the answer!

China is a great country that will get even greater after som cautious reforms and decentralization.

India is a great industrializing country with a lot more problem with extreme poverty compared to China, more democratic governance and regions with far more regional independence, not able to orchestrate investments an pair with China.

Japan will lose influence to China in the region and as I see it Japan is on decline and in some ways less interesting then the two other seen from an economical perspective.

 there are several Japanese dialects.

well all of you know more than me lol i say stick to english its da best language lol, i however can also speak italian, i am currently trying to persuade me fren to help me larn a japanese language