I have once at school for some time studied a little bit of chinese (in an extracurricular activity), but didn’t get very far. The biggest problem for me back then was that I am a person that learns much by reading and writing, but that was impossible as I couldn’t learn the kanji (don’t know how they are called in chinese ) eventually I stopped, because it wasn’t offered at school anymore and lost most of they knowledge (wasn’t that much anyway, cause a 5th to 7th grader who studies 2 hours a week will not retain much, even worse we started new every year, because the teachers stopped and it wasn’t really effective overall.
So know I am at university and started studying Japanese in April. First I was progressing really slowly, but recently I was able to pick up speed and get a first goal, reading and understanding most of an NHK easy article.
Personally I wouldn’t be able to study Chinese as well now, but I have planned that if I one day reach a level in Japanese that satisifies me and that I can maintain I want to add Chinese aswell. For me the main reason of not being able to do both lies in the fact that I don’t have the time, I have a full week of university, need to work a little bit and want to stay fit, so I am glad, if I am even able to study one language during the semester. But if you would have university courses for both I guess the time won’t be a major problem.
I think the combination is even quite good, because both languages have quite some differences in many aspects, as they stem from two different langauge groups, so you will be able to keep the aspects apart, but you will be able to use quite much of the kanji related knowledge in both langauges, as often meanings are the same (even if the signs are not totally equal, because of the different simplifications) and even some readings (音読み) sound quite similar.
So my conclusion is, if you are good with langauges this is definetly an awesome program, but you should remember that it took you five years to learn those two langauges. Those will open you many doors in international organisations, but if you don’t have any other skills that might become a problem.
I guess that’s it, can’t really help you probably
(Aside from that program is there anything else you are interested in? If this is the only program that caught your eye that is probably already a great assistance for deciding ) And would the program be linguistic based, so you at least have the possibility to go into research or is it just plain langauge learning?
Whatever, if this is want you want to do then do it instead of regretting it later. In my opinion those two langauges in combination should be possible and someone speaking chinese will be more and more valuable in the next centuries. (Wouldn’t advise you to go with korean japanese, as you don’t gain so much potential of the combination, because the amount of people speaking those is small when compared to the people speaking chinese and western people speaking chinese will be more and more valuable in the future)
Sooo that was really unordered and I don’t know if I made any point but I hope I was at least able to help you with the problem if chinese and japanese are a feasible combination.