New Cities in China = More Technical Writers

© 2010 Ugur Akinci
We are living in a rapidly urbanizing world which means there’ll be more need than ever for techncial writers who can make sense of technology and who can explain technical procedures to others in plain language.
United States has only 9 cities with population over a million and some, like Detroit, are actually losing population. Yet the situation is different in other parts of the world.
Take China, for example.  As these lines are written, China is experiencing a rural-to-urban migration of 1.2 million people per week. Imagine a new city of over a million souls arising out of no where on a weekly basis! The situation is similar, if not that rapid, in developing countries around the world.
Imagine all the construction, energy, electronics, transportation, urban planning, hardware, software and networking companies working day and night to erect those cities… and imagine all the documentation needs of those corporations and agencies… Such developments will make sure that we technical communicators will be in high demand far into the future.
If you’re thinking “but I don’t know Chinese” you have a point. But let me also remind you that a majority of the companies erecting these new cities come from the United States, Canada, and Japan. So I believe there’s plenty room in there even for technical communicators who don’t know Chinese. But obviously if you know Chinese, “that wouldn’t hurt either,” as they say.