Mandarin the best way to understand China

When President Xi Jinping visited the United States in September he joined President Barack Obama in launching the 1 Million Strong Initiative, which aims to have 1 million American students at the K-12 level learning Mandarin by 2020. This is an ambitious goal, a fivefold increase from current levels. Today, approximately 200,000 US students in grades K-12 study Mandarin.

The benefits are clear: understanding China is no longer an option for Americans, but rather a requirement. Our next generation of leaders, regardless of which professional path they pursue, must have a deep understanding of China to effectively manage the most important bilateral relationship in the world, that between the US and China.

No relationship is more consequential, with significant global impact. The US and China are the two largest economies as well as the two biggest carbon emitters. They are nuclear powers with global reach and responsibility. No global challenge, whether climate change, international terrorism or freedom of sea lanes, can be addressed effectively without the two working together. Yes, there will be competition and even contention between the two countries for the foreseeable future, but we must not allow divergent interests to breed mistrust or hinder cooperation, or worse, lead to confrontation.

On the economic side, the US and China are inextricably connected because of trade and investment and the jobs they create in both countries. US and multinational companies are increasingly interested in hiring multilingual employees who can interact with their China operations. Chinese companies investing in the US are also looking for China-savvy employees for their US operations.

Whether a young American entering the workforce chooses a career in the Foreign Service or on Wall Street, in media or medicine, in the Farm Belt or Silicon Valley, there will be some aspect of his or her job that has a China component, and employers are hiring in part on this basis. Those young people who have a deep understanding of Chinese culture will fare well in the 21st century workplace.

The best way to understand another culture, of course, is through language. Chinese students learn English as a part of their mandatory K-12 curriculum. Yet in the US, less than 0.5 percent of our K-12 students are studying Mandarin. We must build a pipeline of China-savvy students and future leaders who can manage the bilateral relationship effectively.

How are we going to get from 200,000 to 1 million Mandarin learners? It is, to be sure, a weighty task. There are a number of clear challenges. Public school budgets, particularly for language, are being cut in many areas of the country.

Many students and their parents are not aware of the opportunity to study Chinese, or its benefits. Some worry that learning another language at an early age will interfere with building the necessary reading and math skills that are emphasized today. In fact, the opposite is true: studies show that learning another language has a positive effect on brain development, which in turn improves overall academic performance in other subjects.

More structurally, there are major barriers to a rapid expansion of Mandarin learning. First, there is a lack of clarity about effective curriculum, which often requires schools and school districts to start from scratch or adopt ineffective teaching tools that do not align with what students really need to know at different grades.

Another challenge is the dearth of Chinese-language teachers. In addition to welcoming the guest teachers who come from China for short-term assignments (two to three years), we need to build a robust homegrown teacher corps in the field of Mandarin language. Finally, we also need to leverage educational technology more effectively, particularly to reach underserved and underrepresented communities.

My first exposure to the Chinese language was as a very young girl watching my college-age cousin practice her characters during summer vacations in Maine. Later she was among the first group of Americans to be invited to China to teach English in 1978. Almost a decade later, I had the privilege of living with her family in Beijing for the summer during high school. For part of the time, I lived with a Chinese student and traveled around eastern China. It was a transformative experience, one that led me to study Mandarin in college, concentrate in Chinese studies in graduate school, and find my way to a China-focused career. Without that early exposure to China, I suspect I would have gone in a very different direction.

My China background has served me well over the years, and has always been seen as a nice addition to my overall skill set. Today, understanding China is a necessary skill in order to be a responsible global citizen and to have access to the best jobs in the global economy. While the challenges to the 1 Million Strong Initiative are significant, we have no doubt that, with the active support of Washington and Beijing, as well as US and Chinese business leaders, we at the 100,000 Strong Foundation will be able to achieve this ambitious and essential presidential goal.

The author is president of the 100,000 Strong Foundation.