Rory Truex
The United States is running critically low on China expertise.
At a time of heightened competition with Beijing, our education system is not generating enough American citizens with Chinese language ability, meaningful lived experiences in China and deep area knowledge. And despite the ever-present refrain in Congress about the China threat, the U.S. government is actively disinvesting in China studies.
The result is a serious and overlooked knowledge asymmetry that gives China — where fluency in English and U.S. culture is common — the upper hand in understanding its strategic rival.
I took a very well-trodden path to becoming a China scholar. I began studying Chinese in college and went to China every summer to study the language and teach English. After graduating I was accepted into a PhD program in political science and for my dissertation I conducted several months of fieldwork in Beijing and Hunan province over three years, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. During one trip, I did a lengthy homestay with a Chinese family in Beijing. Only after all these experiences did I feel I had anything close to a handle on China, and even then, it was only in my narrow area of study at the time — the Chinese legislative system.
This path hardly exists for the next generation of American China scholars, or if it does, it’s filled with so many bumps and potholes, it’s almost not worth going down at all. By most metrics, China studies in the United States is in decline, with fewer American students studying Chinese than before the pandemic and fewer still spending meaningful time in the country.
Enrollments in college Mandarin courses peaked around 2016, then fell by more than 20 percent by 2020, according to data from the Modern Language Association. In 2011-2012, 14,887 American college students went abroad to China. By 2018-2019, that number had declined to 11,639, and by 2020-2021, to just 382. Although some colleges have begun to rebuild their programs in China, the pace is cautious and uncertain.
This precipitous decline was driven, in part, by China’s draconian implementation of its “zero covid” policy, which ground foreign student and academic exchange to a halt for more than two years. Yet now that things have formally reopened, exchange has not rebounded much, in large part because of concerns over the safety of traveling to China. The State Department maintains a Level 3 travel advisory for the country, telling Americans to “reconsider travel” because of the “arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.” This assessment is probably a bit too pessimistic, but it is true that the Chinese government has (perhaps unwittingly) created a perception that the country is less welcoming to foreigners. In the past few years, we have seen the passage of nebulous and threatening security laws, the arbitrary detention of two Canadian citizens, the shakedown of a number of foreign companies and an ever-present propaganda campaign warning Chinese citizens that foreigners might be spies.
The United States has not helped matters. In their push for “decoupling” from China, certain government voices have advocated policies that have effectively gutted the ability of the United States to gain China expertise in the name of national security. Any American scholar with a research agenda that touches China risks coming under investigation by the U.S. government or being chastised by our officials on social media for aiding China’s rise. The Fulbright and Peace Corps programs, which boast some of America’s finest China experts among their alumni, were discontinued by the Trump administration. Confucius Institutes, which provided Chinese language education on many U.S. campuses, have largely been shuttered because of their ties to the Chinese government. But there have been no compensating increases in language funding or opportunities to make up for the loss.
The U.S. government funds foreign language and area studies chiefly through Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. That funding was cut from $110.3 million in fiscal year 2010 to $68.3 by fiscal year 2011, and it has never been replenished. For 2022, the total amount of funding was $71.9 million, of which only about 15 percent goes to East Asia-related programming.
These developments combined have led to a significant problem for our country’s stock of China expertise. I am involved in training the next generation of China-focused social scientists: Each year I help review the pool of applicants and recommend admission for a few students who want to study domestic Chinese politics at Princeton at the PhD level. These days it is rare to see an application from an American student. At the social science conferences I attend, the vast majority of the most promising young scholars of Chinese politics are Chinese citizens. This is a welcome development for the quality of research on China, but it is not a healthy sign for the depth of American understanding of its strategic competitor.
Contrast this with the level of linguistic and cultural fluency with the United States in China. English language education is compulsory and included in college admissions, so almost all young Chinese can speak some English, and many attain fluency. Roughly 300,000 Chinese students per year study in the United States. The asymmetry is striking.
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping appear committed to stabilizing relations, though it has been difficult to find manageable issues where cooperation is possible. Rebuilding academic exchange is one area filled with opportunity.
Washington and Beijing should respond energetically by restoring and expanding the Fulbright and Peace Corps programs in China. Seek assurances for American students and researchers traveling to China. Decrease the pressure on Chinese citizens traveling to the United States and tone down the absurd narrative that Chinese students and scholars are spies. Fund Chinese language programs more generously at American universities and high schools, and fund researchers studying China’s military, political system, economy, languages, culture and history.
In this moment of U.S.-China competition, we must do more than invest in weapons and semiconductors. We must invest in understanding.
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