Increase in income and international promotion of language: Evidence from China

Abstract Today, Chinese culture has spread worldwide, and Mandarin Chinese has been promoted internationally. This paper takes the perspective of economics to empirically study the relationship between increase in income and international promotion of language by constructing the cultural gravity model. The study concludes that international cooperation motivates people from the low-income countries (regions) to learn the languages of high-income countries (regions), and the language of large high-income country thus has a chance to develop into international lingua franca. China’s increase in income is an important driving factor for the international promotion of Mandarin Chinese. The effect of income increasing on the language international promotion shows obvious differences based on enterprise ownership, industry category, and intercontinental difference. According to the prediction results, by 2100, Mandarin Chinese may be generally used in about 21.9% (16.2–44.3%) of the total number of countries (regions) and widely used in about 55.3% (43.4–75.4%) of it in the world.