Americans won’t know China well if they don’t know Mandarin

Without training a class of experts deeply steeped in Chinese culture, language and customs, the United States is hampered in understanding Beijing’s motives, crafting informed decision-making and avoiding the sort of cardboard imagery that stokes conflict.

And while tapes and websites have their place, there are few substitutes for studying in the country where a language and culture are rooted.

The number of American students studying in China, which was never great to begin with, has fallen to around 800, down from 14,887 in the peak 2011/2012 academic year. That compares with some 289,526 Chinese students in US institutions in 2022/2023 from a height of 372,532 in 2019/2020.

The make-up is also worrying. Harvard University Chinese language programme director Jennifer Liu notes that, among Americans at Harvard studying Mandarin in recent years, business students have fallen off faster than those studying security and international affairs, raising the prospect that more people will become spies or diplomats than businesspeople.

According to the Modern Language Association, the US study of all foreign languages fell across the board from a 2009 peak of nearly 1.7 million students hitting their college books to fewer than 1.2 million by 2021, the most recent year surveyed. Between 2016 and 2021, only Korean, biblical Hebrew and American sign language, of the 15 major languages studied by Americans, saw increases, even as Mandarin – down 14.3 per cent – joined a long list of those losing steam.

Behind the drop-off are several uniquely American factors. The vast majority of US states have no high school language requirement. There’s a shortage of language teachers. And there are limited opportunities to practice .

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