Chinese Educated VS English Educated: Cheers!

When President Hu Jintao visited America and was honoured with a dinner in the White House, Coca-Cola Co. Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent reportedly gave a toast: In honor of this very historic moment, I would like to propose a toast to President Hu and also to his esteemed delegation, 'kanpai'. To this, the crowd which included hundreds of Chinese started laughing. Kanpai which means cheers ,is in Japanese and in Chinese shoud be ganbei. I couldn't see what's funny about the whole issue but then too, I was reminded of a certain learned Chinese CEO in Malaysia who was hesistant about sending his daughter to a Chinese school. In his blog, he had lamented that Chinese-educated Chinese could not speak English well and often then not, these students could not communicate with others. The toasting incident perhaps raise the question of who actually is the one who cannot communicate - In the case when someone is Chinese educated and the other is English educated, meaning one goes to a Chinese school and is proficient in Chinese and the other goes to an English school and supposedly is proficient in English, who is the one who cannot communicate here? The one who could communicate should not be lamenting, don't you think? You don't know what I mean? Never mind - Ganbei!